Bootlegs Revisited

 Another return to an older topic, in that case the blog was written in 2009.   Since then I’ve collected most of the King Crimson Collector Series. 

 I also picked up a few TOOL bootlegs:  one from the Fear Inoculum Tour and three from the 10,000 Days Tour (thanks, Diane!).   The band only has two official live recordings: a 1993 Lollapalooza recording, and Salival, combined with either a VHS or DVD, which dates from Undertow, the first album, and includes “You Lied”, a great non-TOOL song.  According to drummer Danny Carey, the band has a huge stash of live recordings, but has yet to release any of it, a la King Crimson Collectors Club, which is odd considering they went 13 years from 10,000 Days to Fear Inoculum AND they are not only fans of King Crimson, but toured with them.  I picture a huge warehouse full of live recordings no one has had the time or patience to wade through to determine how decent the sound quality is or whether the performances embarrass the band.  Who knows.  I dare say we’ll find out. 

 AC/DC.  I picked up a ten pack, for $50 – meaning each CD of a show was $5.  Six of them are Bon Scott shows and four from Brian Johnson.  The latter gave me a recording of Brian Johnson singing “Bad Boy Boogie”, a Bon Scott song, to complete my ersatz playlist of Paris ’84, our first concert.  Keep in mind that Bon Scott era AC/DC has only ONE official live album, If You Want Blood (You Got It), recorded on the Powerage tour.  That set was “Riff Raff”, “Hell Ain’t A Bad Place To Be”, “Bad Boy Boogie”, “The Jack”, “Problem Child”, “Whole Lotta Rosie”, “Rock’n’Roll Damnation”, “High Voltage”, “Let There Be Rock”, and “Rocker”.  The bootleg package has some intriguing song choices, including “Sin City”, “Gone Shootin’” and “Up To My Neck In You”.  One show was from September 1977, yet Powerage wasn’t released until May 1978, meaning those lucky audience members heard those songs before others did the following year.  The Bon Scott bootlegs are two from Dirty Deeds, three from Powerage, and one from Highway to Hell tours. 

 I also picked up a bootleg of their Madison Square Garden show on the Rock Or Bust tour in 2017 with Axl Rose singing.  We saw the following show, Verizon Center in DC, with an identical setlist.  Why the band didn’t see fit to record the show and release it themselves, I don’t know.  As a practical matter, Axl sounds a lot more like Brian Johnson than Bon Scott.  I found his inter-song banter to be unintelligible.  However, the song choice alone was well worth the purchase.

 Black Sabbath.  I also picked up a few Sabbath bootlegs, one (Lausanne, Switzerland in April 1970) includes “Sleeping Village >> Warning”.  Many older Sabbath shows have extended jams, “Sometimes I’m Happy”, and alternate lyrics.  I don’t think of Black Sabbath as a jam band, but some of the improvs put them in that category.  The other commonly known Sabbath bootleg, which I picked up recently and will be officially released with the Sabotage boxed set, is the Asbury Park show, known as Killing Yourself to Live.  It has “Megalomania”, “Sabbra Cadabra”, and “Spiral Architect”.  I awhile ago I picked up the Paranoid boxed set, mainly for the quadraphonic mix from 1974.  But it included the Brussels and Montreux shows from the Paranoid tour, which had been bootlegs for years.   

  Coverdale/Page.  After Deep Purple broke up, singer David Coverdale formed Whitesnake.  From 1978 to 1984 (David Coverdale’s Whitesnake through Slide It In) they were more of bluesy band (WS Mark I), and from 1987 (self-titled) to the present they’ve been more of a commercial metal band (WS Mark II).   Many accused the Mark I version of being a bit too reminiscent of Led Zeppelin.  So it was odd, or possibly appropriate, that Jimmy Page and David Coverdale collaborated on a single album, simply called Coverdale/Page, in 1993.  I bought it when it came out and listened to it a few times since then.  It sounds like Jimmy Page and David Coverdale made an album together.  What I didn’t realize was that the band actually toured – in Japan.  A bootleg of their Japanese tour (Live in Osaka) features “Slide It In”, “Here I Go Again” and “Still of the Night”, by Whitesnake – with Jimmy Page playing – and “Rock And Roll”, “Kashmir”, “In My Time of Dying”, “White Summer/Black Mountain Side”, and “Black Dog”, with David Coverdale singing (except on WS/BMS).  The remainder of the set – 50% - are C/P songs.   Overall an interesting addition.

Grateful Dead.  This band is famous for allowing audience members to tape their shows and trade them, much to their record company’s anger and frustration.  Eventually many of these wound up being officially released: no less than 38 Dick’s Picks, 38 Dave’s Picks, and 17 Road Trips, plus Cornell ’77 (probably THE most famous show), Egypt ’78, and a quadruple set of Closing of Winterland 12/31/78, a four disc set covering a bizarre show which began at midnight and ran to the morning of January 1, 1979.  I’ll repeat again:  Cousin Jimmy was a student at Cornell in ’77 and saw the concert, then my uncle Buddy took the family to Egypt and he saw the following year’s show there. (Count our blessings….!)  I suppose “official bootleg” might be a contradiction in terms, but others on this list are truly non-official.

The Dead even have a database, DeadBase, which will tell you which songs were played, and when. 

Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl.  Note that, from 1963-70, the years the band was in existence and releasing material, no live album was released.  Part of this was because those shows from 1963-66 (last concert at San Francisco) the crowd noise far exceeded the band’s tiny ampage.  Imagine if Pete Townshend had spoken to them and recommended a few Marshall stacks to even the odds.   With the screaming girls drowning out the band’s performance, it’s more novelty and morbid curiosity than an enjoyable experience.

Other General Principles

Sound Quality.  This often varies considerably, but I’ve found that even for shows which are relatively worse, after you listen for awhile your brain seems to screen out the noise and you start hearing the music.

 Song Selection.  Hearing rarely-heard songs live is one major benefit.  Again, AC/DC only have ONE official live album from Bon Scott’s era, so six bootlegs give you many songs you weren’t going to hear on If You Want Blood. 

 I Was There!!  In the unlikely event someone recorded a show I was actually at, I’m happy to get the bootleg.  As it is, the Dead shows at RFK in 1992 and 1995 seem to be the only ones I can think of off the top of my head which qualify.  

Sweet Leaf

Yes, more s**t about stoner rock and Black Sabbath.  Here, though, I have to be critical.

By the way, a bit on why Black Sabbath serve as the inspiration for stoner rock.  Let’s look at the band’s top two competitors in the 1970s:  Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin.

Deep Purple were hardly even a drinking band, and with the obvious 800 lb gorilla exception of Tommy Bolin, who OD’d on heroin a few months after Mark IV crashed and burned on their Asian tour of Come Taste the Band, wasn’t into drugs.  They don’t sing about getting drunk, high, or otherwise screwed up.

Led Zeppelin were into alcohol (Bonzo) and heroin (Page), but Plant was writing the lyrics and preferred to be pretentious and up in the clouds.  Singing about drugs was beneath his dignity.

That leaves Sabbath:  the #1 song is, of course, “Sweet Leaf”, an obvious tribute to cannabis.  “Hand of Doom” is a caution against heroin – which even Ozzy knew to avoid – whereas “Fairies Wear Boots” (also from Paranoid) refers to “tripping”, i.e. LSD use.  And they had to praise cocaine with “Snowblind”.  Add this to the doom and riffing, plus the otherworldly change-ups best seen on Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath and Sabotage, and you’ve got a strong recipe for a band inducing its fans to fire up a bong.   

Back to this dirtweed idiocy claiming to be a stoner rock Sabbath tribute album….

Track Listing: Into the Void (Cancer Bats); Dirty Women (Mos Generator); Changes (Bloody Hammers); The Warning (Wo Fat); The Writ (Stoned Jesus); Hole in the Sky (Scorpion Child); Hand of Doom (Death Hawks); Lady Evil (House of Broken Promises); Planet Caravan (Machuca); Sleeping Village (Witch Mountain); Electric Funeral (Solace); Solitude (Ulver); “After Forever” – in fact, Tomorrow’s Dream, you morons (Pentagram); Sweet Leaf (Weedpecker); Paranoid (Golden Void); Iron Man (William Shatner).

I got this because two bands I really like, Wo Fat and Weedpecker (do they toke?  Need you ask?  I have to wonder what Polish weed is like) are on this.   They do a decent job of it.

With one exception, they’re all Ozzy songs:  House of Broken Promises (who?) cover “Lady Evil”, hardly the best song on Heaven & Hell.  I’d have gone with “Lonely Is the Word”. 

The Death Hawks (who???) butcher “Hand of Doom” by making it into a half-assed acoustic song.  Black Sabbath have several acoustic songs.  Why ruin this one? FAIL.

I don’t know if was the producer of this album or the ever-f**ked Bobby Liebling who was responsible, but if you can’t tell “After Forever” from “Tomorrow’s Dream”, Tony Iommi should come to your house and kick you in the nuts.  Free of charge.  Having said that, the cover itself is not bad. 

I’m puzzled as to why “Sleeping Village” was put on disc two, well after “The Warning”, which it runs into on the first album.  I’m also puzzled that Witch Mountain bothered to cover it at all.  8 albums – more, if you include 13 or any of the non-Ozzy albums - and that’s the song you chose?  SMH.

Is William Shatner a stoner rock band? Lest we think that some group of non-Montreal Star Trek actors thought it would be clever to name themselves after Captain Kirk himself (or Denny Crane) it turns out that this is, in fact, Shatner himself.  He makes a decent attempt to actually SING the song, a more heroic attempt than his “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” effort, and Zakk Wylde brings the artificial harmonics we recognize from his work with the Ozzman.  Someone was probably a bit too stoned when they put this on the list.   From the rest of the mistakes I guess whoever did this doesn’t know any better.  Maybe it was a joke, but given the consistent incompetence on display here, the ignorance explanation is more plausible.

What’s funny is that by now I’ve been into stoner rock for years and bought lots of stuff from All That’s Heavy.  Yet I only recognized a few of these bands.  Moreover, stoner rock stalwarts like Fu Manchu, Nebula, Kyuss, Monster Magnet, etc. are absent.  So who put this thing together?

Then there’s the idea of a tribute album at all.  With any given song you can…

1.         Screw it up.  Why bother?  In particular, making an electric song acoustic is the easiest way to do this.  Let the band itself make this mistake.

2.         Play it verbatim.  In that case, there’s little point in doing it at all.  Then again, doing so is a way of saying the original version is the best.  

3.         Play it a little differently.  How?  Here’s your chance to either shine or crash & burn.  Choose wisely, but there is not to TRY but only to DO.  Where have we heard that before?

Before this, we had these two more mainstream (and much better) tribute albums to Black Sabbath:

Nativity in Black.  A better, A-List group.  After Forever, the actual song (Biohazard); Children of the Grave (White Zombie); Paranoid (Megadeth); Supernaut (1,000 Homo DJs); Iron Man (Ozzy w/Therapy); Lord of this World (Corrosion of Conformity); Symptom of the Universe (Sepultura); The Wizard (Bullring Brummies): Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath (Bruce Dickinson with Godspeed); N.I.B. (Ugly Kid Joe); War Pigs (Live) (Faith No More); Black Sabbath (Type O Negative).

Nativity in Black II.  A sequel, with some bands reappearing.  Sweet Leaf (Godsmack); Hole in the Sky (Machine Head); Behind the Wall of Sleep (Static X); Never Say Die (Megadeth); Snowblind (System of a Down); Electric Funeral (Pantera); N.I.B. (Primus with Ozzy Osbourne); Hand of Doom (Slayer); Under the Sun (Soulfly): Sabbra Cadabra (hed(PE)); Into the Void (Monster Magnet); Iron Man (Busta Rhymes).

Even these had some good tracks and some absolute stinkers.  The first one was mostly faithful versions with no misses.  But NIB II had some horrendous ones:  Machine Head, Static X, System of a Down, and Busta Rhymes were absolute s**t.  Dave Wyndorf screwed up "Into the Void" with a confusing ad lib about "dinosaurs in Vietnam".  I'm ambivalent about hed(PE)'s version.  The rest on that album were fine.  

The Sword and Witchcraft

I’ve been trying to get my brother – who mostly shares my taste in music and is my most consistent concert companion - into stoner rock, but he’s been reluctant and indifferent.  Recently he articulated his major beef:  “all the bands sound like they’re ripping off Black Sabbath.  If I wanted to listen to Black Sabbath, I’d listen to Black Sabbath.”  Fair enough dispute, though after having listened to Pentagram and sHeavy, plus Witchcraft & The Sword, adding in some Obsessed, I’d say the more accurate critique would not be that they all sound like Black Sabbath, rather that they all sound like each other.

http://thehardtimes.net/news/innovative-stoner-metal-album-blends-influences-black-sabbath-black-sabbath/

Funny enough, let’s talk about Witchcraft.  They’re from Sweden, of all places, so add them to ABBA and Ace of Base, then add in Opeth and Ghost BC.   Supposedly they started as a de facto Pentagram tribute band, which are for their part Washington DC’s answer to – drum roll, please  - Black Sabbath.   I can hear that.  But I hear enough other stuff thrown in that it becomes a bit different.  Still heavy, still droning, still riffing, but different.   Why?  Because vocalist Magnus Pelander, instead of copying Ozzy Osbourne, as sHeavy vocalist Steve Hennessy does (while looking like early-era Whitesnake David Coverdale) – mind you, Hennessy is the only one who comes close to getting Ozzy’s voice down - or even copying Pentagram vocalist Bobby Liebling – who looks more like a long-haired Marty Friedman than Ozzy Osbourne – he’s actually copying The Sword vocalist John Cronise.   See?  Mixing it up by copying each other instead of Ozzy, Tony, Geezer or Bill.  

For that matter, I’ve yet to hear a stoner rock vocalist who sounds anything like Ronnie James Dio.  Then again, Hennessy is the only stoner rock vocalist I’ve heard who sounds like Ozzy.  But sHeavy sounds so much like Ozzy-era Sabbath that many of us thought their early track “Electric Sleep” was a long-lost Sabbath song.  Listen to it yourself and decide.

 

Incidentally, Pentagram won’t be touring much anymore these days, as Liebling is going to prison for beating up his mom.  Yeah.  Liebling has been a heroin addict for a while, but like most addicts swerves from periods of relatively clean stability where he has his s**t together, to other times when he’s more of a colossal screwup.  It’s sad because musically the albums, including the most recent, Curious Volume, are actually pretty good.  In fact, you’d never know what a colossal screwup Liebling was by his music.  They’ve been around since the early 70s, but attempts during that decade to get a record deal went south on two major occasions:  he turned off Gene Simmons & Paul Stanley (KISS, you know), and then Sandy Pearlman and Murray Krugman (Blue Oyster Cult, you know).  It wasn’t until the 1980s that Pentagram finally released an album.   I managed to catch them live at American University and then the Baltimore Soundstage, both times headlining.  Anyhow.

Back to Witchcraft.  They have five albums, Witchcraft, Firewood, The Alchemist, Legend, and Nucleus.   All of them are pretty much the same, of equal quality as well as sound, with no major departures.  There’s some softer interludes and change-ups which break the monotony, so you can listen to an entire album without getting bored – though a five album marathon might be pushing it.  I haven’t been able to see them live yet.  They’re from Sweden.  They need to ask Papa or Mikael Akerfeldt who does their visas, as neither Ghost nor Opeth seem to have any trouble getting into the US to tour. 

Having absorbed their repertoire with much appreciation and satisfaction, I’m now swerving back to The Sword, who are from Austin, Texas.  Although I’ve yet to catch Witchcraft in concert, I’ve been lucky enough to see The Sword a few times:  the (new) 9:30 Club in DC in 2010, opening for Kyuss Lives at the Ram’s Head Live in Baltimore (2011), headlining the R’N’Roll Hotel in DC in 2015, then opening for Opeth at the Fillmore Silver Spring in 2016.  Not particularly energetic or exciting live, though: more of a band that just comes out and plays their music.  Now they have six albums, plus a live album:  Age of Winters (2006), Gods of the Earth (2008), Warp Riders (2010), Apocryphon (2012), High Country (2015), and an acoustic version of that album, Low Country (2016).  The Sword are somewhat faster than Witchcraft, but share this deal where every album sounds pretty much the same, making a multiple disc marathon somewhat dull. 

Song Length.  Black Sabbath songs are relatively short, with “The Warning” from the first album being the longest studio track and the extended “Wicked World” from Live At Last being the longest live track.  Witchcraft have several 10-15 minute songs.  The Sword songs are about 5-7 minutes long.  And The Obsessed scarcely tax your patience, with songs which are 3-5 minutes long, fairly brief and intense.   Though if Wino’s on it, be it The Obsessed, Saint Vitus, or Spirit Caravan, we’re talking some measure of doom involved.

Then you have Earthless.  They’re coming around on tour next spring, so I decided to listen to them again to determine if I wanted to see them for the first time in concert.  I only have two of their albums, the split with Harsh Toke and Rhythms From a Cosmic Sky.  Here we’re talking 15 minute instrumental jams.  But it’s not mellow and laid back like the Grateful Dead or the Allman Brothers, rather it’s intense soloing like Deep Purple’s “Child In Time” or Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird”.  You kind of have to be in the mood for that kind of thing.  But it’s clearly different than Black Sabbath.

Even bands which sound like each other, like Fu Manchu and Nebula (thanks to Eddie Glass, a common member), there’s subtle distinctions.  FM are more straight ahead and even somewhat punk oriented, with shorter songs and subject matter about skateboarding or vans, whereas Nebula have longer songs and are space-oriented.  Bottom line is that you have to have the patience and inclination to really listen to the music before you can begin to distinguish them from each other – and from Black Sabbath – but the differences are there.  Black Sabbath obviously serves as the starting point, but each of these bands take slightly different directions.   For some, Pink Floyd is the opposite end they’re going for; for others it’s the Misfits or Ramones.

As for the overall resemblance to Black Sabbath?  As it is, they have 9 studio albums with Ozzy Osbourne, three with Dio + the Heaven & Hell album (The Devil You Know), 5 with Tony Martin, and one each from Ian Gillan and Glenn Hughes.  Is that really enough?  

David Coverdale vs. Glenn Hughes

As noted on Facebook, I’ve digested Burn and Stormbringer – the two Deep Purple Mark III albums – yet again.  Moreover, back in 2015 I caught Whitesnake at the NYCB Westbury on their Purple tour, in which they played ‘Snaked versions of DP Mark III & IV songs along with Whitesnake songs. 

The backstory on the Purple album is that Coverdale had originally planned on working with Ritchie Blackmore.  These days Blackmore is doing his Blackmore’s Night stuff, Renaissance music, though very recently he whipped out the Stratocaster again and did some electric shows.  Long story short, the reunion didn’t work out.  [For that matter, current Purple nixed Blackmore’s bid to play with them at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, despite current guitarist Steve Morse waiving objection to this, presumably because Ian Gillan hates his guts, for good reason.]  So Coverdale is the only former DP member in this project, which remained a late model Whitesnake endeavor.  

One person he didn’t indicate contacting was Glenn Hughes.  His recent deal with Black Country Communion was on hold thanks to Joe Bonamassa’s busy solo schedule.  But I can figure out why.  It looks like the two of them don’t get along together.

Deep Purple Mark III & IV.  In 1973, Mark II fell apart when Ian Gillan quit and Roger Glover was fired.  The remaining members decided to hire vocalist David Coverdale and bassist Glenn Hughes to replace them.  They put out Burn & Stormbringer before Blackmore quit, complaining of the excessive soul/funk direction the band was going, which he dismissed as “shoeshine music”.  They got Tommy Bolin to replace him (Mark IV), did one album, Come Taste the Band, and then disbanded after the trainwreck of a world tour supporting the album.

So what happened next?

David Coverdale.

Whitesnake.   David Coverdale formed this band, which has two phases:  blues-rock (1976-84) (White Snake through Slide It In) and hair metal (1987-present) (self-titled Whitesnake through Purple).   Jon Lord and Ian Paice were in the band on Ready & Willing (1980), making this 3/5 of Mark III.  I prefer the earlier incarnation, and “Saints & Sinners” was the first song I learned how to play on guitar.   The bluesier incarnation certainly has more interesting and provocative album covers, Lovehunter being my favorite.  The Snake is Coverdale’s animal and he’s been the only consistent member.   He really doesn’t need a solo band as this is firmly under his control.   [Steve Harris’ solo album British Lion really makes no sense.] 

Technically White Snake and Northwinds are solo albums, with Trouble being the first actual Whitesnake album. As a practical matter I consider them the first two Whitesnake albums. 

He did a one-off album with Jimmy Page, Coverdale-Page.  It’s heavier and not as AOR as I thought it would be.  I guess this came from all those complaints that Whitesnake was essentially ripping off Led Zeppelin.  Sean C at ASP was a big proponent of this thesis.  After having heard Led Zeppelin I through CODA, and White Snake through Slide It In (not sure anyone would accuse hairmetal ‘Snake of this) I’d say it has a modest plausibility, but not a whole lot. 

Glenn Hughes.

He recorded three albums with Trapeze before joining Deep Purple.  He has 14 solo albums from 1977 (Play Me Out) to 2016 (Resonate), of which I only have Music for the Divine (2006).  There are the three albums with Deep Purple Mark III and IV, plus umpteen live albums associated with those two lineups. 

Black Sabbath & Black Country Communion.    Hughes did a one-off album with Pat Thrall, bounced around, did Seventh Star with Black Sabbath – right after Born Again with Ian Gillan – and eventually wound up with Bonamassa, Jason Bonham, and Derek Shirinian as Black County Communion. 

To be fair, he’s toned down the “shoeshine music” somewhat over the years, but never completely.  And generally he remains on the bass as well as vocals, still a Fender Precision.   

Pentagram & Ghost

Here are two bands that take Black Sabbath as a starting point and each do something “completely different”.

Pentagram.  This band has been around since 1971, loosely based in the Washington, DC area, and essentially our equivalent of Black Sabbath.   For a band that’s been on-again, off-again for all that time without ever making it big – and only getting an album released in 1985 – they’ve had as much inconsistency and turnover on lineups as you might imagine.  The only consistent member is singer Bobby Liebling.  The band has several albums, and a recent studio album, Last Rites.  The music is close enough to Sabbath that it’s borderline a de facto tribute band, although Liebling sounds nothing like Ozzy, Dio, or any other singer for that matter.  I caught them recently in concert at American University in DC; from what I can gather, Liebling’s eccentric and unreliable personality may have made his band persona non grata at the established DC clubs like the Black Cat or 9:30 Club.  Hopefully if Liebling can stay clean - more likely now that he and his wife Hallie have a child, so he's settled down to a normal life as a responsible adult - the band may finally get its act together and start playing better venues.

    As of 2014, however, they remain a cult band.  The closest they got to the big time were a failed audition – in a band member’s basement – in front of Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley (who were NOT impressed) in December 1975, and earlier that year, a Liebling scuttled demo session in NYC with Murray Krugman, who worked with Sandy Pearlman in Blue Oyster Cult. 

    “Last Days Here” is a recent documentary about the band, which for obvious reasons focuses heavily on Liebling.  Until recently he was living for the past few decades in his parents’ basement in Germantown, Maryland, a virtually hopeless drug addict with zero marketable skills.  Eventually he moved up to Philadelphia, found a girlfriend (who is now his wife), and got the band going, with some of the inevitable hiccups along the way.  His persistence in sticking with the band is somewhat admirable, although it’s not like he has much of a choice.  Steve “Lips” Kudlow of Anvil – subject of a very similar documentary on that 80s metal band – at least has a catering business for elementary schools to fall back on. 

    Concert.  At American University, most concerts seem to be at the Bender Arena, a small basketball stadium, in between Richie Coliseum (1500) and Baltimore Arena (14000) in capacity – as indeed it is (4500).  I guess the AU student activities group couldn’t get that many, because this Mary Graydon Center Tavern can fit maybe… 300 people.  I don’t know if that many people were even there.  The “Tavern” was nothing more than a huge empty room with no seats.  Even the “stage” wasn’t even above the floor, so if you weren’t in the front row what you saw were the tops of the band member’s heads and not much more. 

    Liebling is a very strange person, visually:  he looks like an old woman, in fact a witch (!!!), with a beard.  His vocal style is distinctive.  His “stage presence”, as it is, seems to be his oddity.  The guitarist, Victor Griffin, reminds me a bit of Duck McDonald (Blue Cheer) but plays a Les Paul.  I know that Les Pauls can definitely give a heavy sound, but shouldn’t there be an unwritten rule that if you’re going for a Black Sabbath sound you should play an SG?  Anyhow.   The band doesn’t jam, and plays its own material fairly faithfully.  If you like their studio recordings, the live show should do just fine, and if you like Black Sabbath, chances are you’ll like Pentagram.

GHOST.   Also known as Ghost BC, this particular band is from Sweden and formed just a few years ago.  Aside from the singer, Papa Emeritus II (not his real name) the two guitarists, bassist, keyboardist and drummer are all known as Nameless Ghouls, and wear identical black robes and plague doctor-esque plastic masks.  PE2 dresses as a satanic pope or anti-bishop, with mitre, robes, etc. and face painted as a skull, a bit better detailed than the Misfits mascot. 

  They have two albums, Opus Eponymous and Infestissumam, with a covers EP called If You Have Ghost.  Soundwise?   Harken back to 1970-72, when Blue Oyster Cult, then known as Stalk-Forrest Group, were rejected by Elektra and told by Columbia to beef up, as that label wanted their own Black Sabbath (who were on Warner Brothers).  Oddly, none of BOC’s songs or albums sound like Black Sabbath.  I’d describe Ghost as, “Blue Oyster Cult with Tony Iommi on guitar instead of Buck Dharma”. 

   Back in December 2000, Wishbone Ash came by to a local club.  At that time, as now, the only original member was Andy Powell.  For that reason, I was skeptical, but 2 hours before showtime I decided, “what the hell”, and went.  WISE DECISION.  Although he wasn’t backed up by Ted Turner, Martin Turner and Steve Upton, the nobodies Powell did hire were certainly competent.  The three guitarists I’ve seen play with this band over the years, Mark Birch, Ben Granfelt, and Muddy Manninen, are all excellent (maybe even better than Powell himself).  I was blown away.

   Likewise with Ghost, who I had never seen in concert.   Here’s some advice: if you keep seeing bands you’ve seen before, you’re far more likely to be disappointed hearing the same sets than to be surprised hearing songs they’ve never played before.  The Nameless Ghoul Guitarists play reissued Gibson RDs (one black, one white); unlike the original 70s models, the reissues have stock PAFs and no active electronics.  Killer guitar sound, mind you, although the tube amps were tastefully hidden away.  Behind them, a backdrop of a cathedral with faux stained glass images of quasi-satanic subject matter, and various smoking braziers of incense.   If Anton LeVey were alive today, he’d probably be their biggest fan.  Like KISS, what you get is a full concert experience, but the music is still a compelling ingredient of the live show.  They even covered the Beatles’ “Here Comes The Sun”, as heavily as anyone could imagine that song being played… “it’s alright…”   Check them out on Youtube (apparently they don’t have any concert DVDs yet) or better yet, do yourself a favor and see them live.   

Randy Rhoads

Warning: I come not to praise Randy, but to bury him.

 Shortly after Classic Rock magazine featured an article about Randy Rhoads, now Guitar World is doing so as well.  I’ve reached my quota of RR articles for my lifetime.

 Background.  After Ozzy Osbourne left Black Sabbath in 1979, he had to begin a solo career by default.  His now-wife Sharon Osbourne took it upon herself to assemble a band around him:  Randy Rhoads (guitar), Bob Daisley (bass), and Lee Kerslake (drums).  They recorded Blizzard of Ozz, an excellent debut album, followed it up with Diary of Madman (Rudy Sarzo took over on bass, Tommy Aldridge on drums), and on tour for the second album, Randy was killed in a freak accident.  The tour bus driver took him up in his private plane (against Randy’s objections) and crashed the plane into the tour bus.  Night Ranger guitarist Brad Gillis took over for the remainder of the tour, eventually replaced by Jake E. Lee for two albums, then Zakk Wylde.

 I’ve mentioned before my introduction to Ozzy through Speak of the Devil, though shortly afterwards I did tape Blizzard, Diary, and Bark at the Moon, which by that time (1984) had been the most recent Ozzy album.  Listening to these albums always brings me back to memories of high school in France, listening to them on tape (remember the Walkman?) riding the school bus.

 Quiet Riot.  Before Ozzy, Randy was in this band, which only became famous AFTER Randy joined Ozzy’s band.  Their top album is Metal Health.   I never liked Quiet Riot, and I was never a big enough Randy fan to get the original QR albums (Japanese imports) with Randy on them.  From what I understand, the biggest impediment to QR’s fame and fortune was Kevin Dubrow’s unlikeable personality, off the chart even by the lofty standards of prima donna rock singers.   Randy was apparently considering leaving Ozzy after the Diary tour, but whether he would have retreated into obscurity to pursue classical music, or rejoined QR, no one seems to know.  This is part of why I consider him so overrated:  we have no idea what he would have done had he not had his talent “cut short” by his freak airplane death.   

 Blizzard of Ozz.  “Crazy Train”, “Mr. Crowley”, and “Suicide Solution” survive from this album into Ozzy’s live set, but I prefer “Revelation: Mother Earth”.  But from “I Don’t Know” through “Steal Away (The Night)” there isn’t a bad track on the album. 

 Diary of a Madman.  A good follow-up, but I really only like the title track.  “Flying High Again” is the track which survives in the set.  The rest is decent, but seems more like filler than strong songs: the consistent quality of the last album isn’t here.

 Ozzy-Randy Tribute.  Three Sabbath tunes reluctantly played with no great enthusiasm, and the rest is solo material.  This was released in 1987, five years after Randy died.  I’ve listened to it once or twice but it didn’t impress me.

 Impression.  Randy can play guitar.  Better than Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen, Ritchie Blackmore, Angus Young, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, David Gilmour, Frank Zappa, Robert Fripp, the Iron Maiden & Judas Priest twins, or least of all, Tony Iommi?  Not in a million years.  Randy added in a super-pretentious “acoustic/classical guitar” ingredient (which has been done by…umpteen other guitarists before him, and since), which we add to “died in freak airplane accident” results in “guitar god without equal”.  No, I don’t think so.  What I find especially damning about him was his attitude towards Black Sabbath and Tony Iommi:  “I’m MUCH better than that.”  Who did he think he was? 

 Wylde v. Randy.  This is why I prefer Zakk Wylde.  He doesn’t believe that acknowledging Tony’s genius takes away from his own talent, such as it is.  I don’t think of Wylde as being so much as 5% less than Randy, but since Wylde is still alive, we can’t criticize Randy, so Wylde ends up relatively underrated between the two.  For that matter, Jake E. Lee isn’t any worse than Randy.  Undeniably, Rhoads was certainly the most likeable of Ozzy’s solo guitarists.  He was shy, good-natured, and rarely indulged in the decadent rock excesses of his peers – a polar opposite from someone like Michael Schenker.  For his part, Wylde strikes me as fundamentally down-to-earth and unpretentious, even if he does pile on the Yankneck (CSA from New Jersey) and biker images a bit thick.  Black Label Society is essentially a Motorhead tribute band.  If you’re not going to do anything truly original on your own, why not just stay with Ozzy?  Like I said, however, I’m not convinced Rhoads would have blazed a unique, revolutionary new guitar trail had he survived the Diary tour.    

 Bottom line:  Randy’s role in Ozzy’s career can be safely appreciated without ignoring Tony, Jake or Zakk.  Let’s keep him in perspective and enjoy his albums, but not elevate him to a (guitar) god or saint he never was.

Brian Johnson and Tony Iommi

Those who know me well, know my favorite two bands are AC/DC and Black Sabbath.

 Rockers and Rollers.  This is the book by Brian Johnson, the singer for AC/DC.  He took over from Bon Scott in 1980 after the latter’s untimely “death by misadventure”.  Now he’s been with the band for over 30 years, well beyond Bon’s tenure.  However, while all the Bon albums were excellent, only the first few BJ albums were of top quality:  Back in Black, For Those About To Rock (We Salute You) and Flick of the Switch.  The band ran out of steam after those three early 80’s albums and have been coasting in neutral ever since, though as a live experience the band remains as energetic, entertaining, and enjoyable as ever.

            Johnson’s book is a loosely collated collection of non-chronological anecdotes.  While he loves cars, he almost never mentions American muscle cars (even though he lives in Florida now): his focus is on the motley array of oil-leaking, short-circuiting, rusty iron which England produces and a handful of luxury cars (some of which are actually English).  Sometimes he races around in sports cars, but never mentions Nick Mason (maybe the Pink Floyd drummer snubbed him somewhere along the line).  He’s never at a dragstrip, he doesn’t seem to know how to work on cars himself, and the racing part seems like an expensive hobby he can now indulge in now that he’s got some money in the bank.  He’s more Tim Allen than Jay Leno.  As a car enthusiast I found the car element of his story extremely disappointing. 

            The non-car portions are marginally more interesting:  a series of rock star anecdotes which are as much about his pre-AC/DC band Geordie as about AC/DC, which gets about as much coverage as Rush did in Neil Peart’s books – with the obvious exception of Roadshow.  One mention each of Cliff Williams and Phil Rudd.  And these revelations: Malcolm drives a minivan?  Angus doesn’t even have a driver’s license?  Who would have imagined that when it comes to horsepower, AC/DC are left behind at the dragstrip by the Beach Boys?

 Iron Man.  Ah, this was MUCH more like it.  The guitarist for Black Sabbath, Tony Iommi, manages to keep the attention of a fan who has already read 99% of the literature available on the band.  Iommi’s account is chronological and makes no pretense of being a car book (!).  What’s even better, Iommi steers clear of simply repeating all the Ozzy stories we’ve already heard over the years, without shunting Ozzy off as some irrelevant nonentity only incidentally responsible for the band’s success.  What does Tony tell us?  In addition to explaining how each Black Sabbath album was made – and not in particularly tiresome detail, mind you – he helpfully discloses a full range of topics of interest to us rabid and/or rancid Black Sabbath fans:

            1.         Exactly what happened to his middle and ring finger and how he solved that problem

            2.         Which bands he was in before Black Sabbath

            3.         What happened in his month with Jethro Tull and his experience at the Stones’ Rock & Roll Circus

            4.         His 4 marriages

            5.         His fun with Frank Zappa

            6.         Why Dio left Sabbath after Live Evil and Dehumanizer

            7.         What was Glenn Hughes’ major malfunction

            8.         What is the problem with Tony Martin and Ian Gillan

            What’s even more remarkable is that Ozzy comes off as extremely sympathetic – as do Geezer Butler and Bill Ward, and even Sharon Osbourne (though I’m puzzled that even now he doesn’t know the story behind Speak of the Devil).  I’m surprised, Ronnie James Dio comes off as less likeable than them.

            Overall, easy to read (big typeface and doublespaced) with interesting pictures and again – well worth the time of anyone who thought they already knew all there was to know.  THANK YOU, TONY.

Black Sabbath Revisited

A few weeks ago my brother uttered the blasphemy of blasphemies, heresy of heresies: that the albums Heaven And Hell and The Mob Rules were superior not only to Technical Ecstasy or Never Say Die, but ANY album Black Sabbath released with Ozzy Osbourne on vocals.  Much as I acknowledge the high quality of those two Ronnie James Dio albums, and recognize the relatively (!) low quality of the last two albums with Ozzy Osbourne, I cannot agree with this bold assertion.  But it does make an album-by-album analysis appropriate at this…juncture.

 Black Sabbath.  The debut album was released on Friday, February 13, 1970 in the UK, June 30, 1970 in the US.  The “popular” songs are “Black Sabbath”, “The Wizard”, and “N.I.B.”  European versions of the album featured “Evil Woman” instead of “Wicked World”, though I prefer the latter song.  The lengthy “Warning” was a track I learned to play along to by ear in college, on a recently purchased Gibson SG, without following any tablature; this is the “underrated gem” on the album, but “Behind the Wall of Sleep” also applies.  I bought this one on vinyl along with Paranoid, copied both to a 90 minute tape, and listened to them on the train ride up to The Hague for Model United Nations in high school (January 1985).  The Deluxe Edition features an alternate take of “The Warning”.

Paranoid.  Released September 18, 1970 in the UK, January 7, 1971 in the US. The second album is often considered the best, though I feel that SBS (below) deserves that distinction.  The “popular” songs are “War Pigs”, “Paranoid”, “Iron Man” and “Fairies Wear Boots”; the hidden gems are the balance: “Planet Caravan”, “Electric Funeral”, “Hand of Doom”, and “Rat Salad”.  A typical Sabbath set would open with “War Pigs”, close with “Paranoid” as the encore, and feature “Iron Man” somewhere in between, so clearly this album is crucial to a Sabbath collection.  The Deluxe Edition features a DVD-Video version of the complete album in 5.1 Surround (quad).

Master of Reality.  Released July 21, 1971.  I got this on cassette from the PX at Henderson Hall, the Marine Corps base next to Arlington Cemetery in northern Virginia, in summer 1984.  The other choice was Sabotage.  Since this album had two tracks from Speak of the Devil, “Sweet Leaf” and “Children of the Grave”, whereas Sabotage only had one, “Symptom of the Universe”, this one made the cut.  The album name provided the source for Chris Goss’ band name – Goss is known as a stoner rock idol, and closely associated with Josh Homme and Queens of the Stone Age.  The popular songs on this album are as noted above; the hidden gems are really the balance:  “After Forever” (a pro-religion song the fundies seem to ignore or just be completely unaware of), “Lord of this World”, “Solitude” – another haunting slow song – and “Into The Void”, covered by Soundgarden with completely different lyrics.  “Solitude” alone makes this a “Ok, now I want to kill myself” album.  Shouldn’t every Sabbath album qualify as such?

Vol. 4.  Released September 25, 1972.  I seem to recall buying this on vinyl along with Master of Reality, though for the latter it was simply rounding out the collection as I already had it on tape, whereas with this album I hadn’t heard it at all.  The popular song is “Snowblind”, and the hidden gems are “Wheels of Confusion” (only played live at the Hollywood Bowl – ten days before the album was released!), “Changes” (later done by Ozzy’s solo band), “Laguna Sunrise” (yet another slow instrumental, which seems to evoke images of a lazy Florida hotel in the early 60s), and “St. Vitus Dance”. 

Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath.  Released November 1973.  I bought this on vinyl along with Sabotage.  Others may disagree with me, but I think this is their peak.  Oddly, only the title track seems to survive as a hit, although Metallica were shrewd enough to cover “Sabbra Cadabra”.  “Fluff” is one of their best instrumentals.  “National Acrobat”, “Spiral Architect”, and “Killing Yourself to Live” are all excellent, and even the two weakest tracks, “Who Are You” (with Rick Wakeman on keyboards) and “Looking For Today” are still very good.  Not a bad track on the whole album – and certainly at least as good, if not much better (IMHO), as/than H&H and Mob Rules.  And the album artwork, both front and back cover, is one of the best in rock.  Unlike LZ IV, this is one of these albums where the artwork matches the quality of the album.

Sabotage.  Released July 28, 1975.  Inevitably, it was impossible to top SBS, but Sabotage suffers in comparison but not absolute terms – as well as having not merely a less impressive cover, but one which seems fairly thrown together (even with all their money, Sabbath still dressed like bums).  “Symptom Of The Universe” is the best known, but here it has a very nice acoustic 2^nd half which only resurfaced live with the Tony Martin era Cross Purposes tour set.  “Megalomania” is live on Past Lives; so far as I know, neither “Thrill of it All” – one of their best songs, ever, and easily the equal of anything on a Dio album by ANY band – or “The Writ” were ever played live.  “Hole in the Sky” was covered by Pantera.  The weakest track is “Am I Going Insane (Radio)”, but with so many strong tracks on the album, it can’t sink the album as a whole.

 Technical Ecstasy.  Released September 25, 1976. I bought this on vinyl along with Never Say Die.  Hipgnosis, best known for Pink Floyd covers (e.g. Dark Side of the Moon), struck out on this album; two robots passing each other on escalators, one apparently male, the other female.  It may be for this reason alone that this album gets such a bad rap; on Joe Siegler’s Black Sabbath website, there is a link to an article by Dan Marsicano on why this album is underrated; I agree that it is.  “Dirty Women” was brought back into the set for Ozzy’s return to Sabbath (1997-2001).  But the good songs are damn good: “You Won’t Change Me”, “All Moving Parts Stand Still”, and even “It’s Alright”, Bill Ward’s sole singing job on a Sabbath album, covered by Guns N’Roses.  For me, “Gypsy”, “Back Street Kids” and “Rock’n’Roll Doctor” (trying to be Blue Oyster Cult, as Marsicano described it) are indeed subpar, though no worse than simply mediocre.  “She’s Gone” is another sad and depressing song which was Sabbath’s particular forte. 

 Never Say Die.  Released September 28, 1978 (US), October 1, 1978 (UK).  I agree that this album deserves its bad reputation.  About the only songs I like on here are “Air Dance” (very similar to Frank Zappa – no wonder he was accompanying the band on their final tour with Ozzy, on which Van Halen was the opening act) and “Junior’s Eyes”.  I really can’t stand “Johnny Blade”, and the rest of the album is mediocre. 

 Live At Last.  Released summer of 1980.  An honorable mention for this live album, released well after Ozzy left the band but recorded on the Vol 4 tour (March 1973) – and includes “Killing Yourself To Live” (from the as-yet unreleased Sabbath, Bloody, Sabbath) with alternate lyrics.  The extended version of “Wicked World” is awesome: an unusually jazzy improv by Tony Iommi, snippets of “Supernaut”, and a heavy version of “Changes”.  Now this is included on Past Lives.  

 Vinyl.  We bought all the Sabbath albums on vinyl, up to and including Seventh Star.  Eternal Idol was the first album which came out when we were no longer buying records.  I bought We Sold Our Souls For Rock’N’Roll on vinyl in Paris, but never bothered to buy the CD version of it.  Of course, our vinyl versions, which were NEMS reissues from the 80s and not first generation Warner Brothers releases, did not have gatefold sleeves (except for Vol. 4, and that one was missing Ozzy and Bill), much less the posters.

 Remasters.  The first set was from Castle; they have lyrics and liner notes.  I can’t say I’ve noticed a HUGE difference between these and the original CD releases.  I haven’t heard the Rhino remasters; nor can I say I can trust Joel Siegler’s testimony that the Rhino versions are much better than the Castle series (which I have), as he has essentially become Sabbath’s webmaster and cannot risk alienating them by describing the newer ones in anything less than glowing terms.   For that matter, I really dislike the Amazon.com “user reviews” which try to tell me why these albums are so important – I know they are, I bought them ages ago, on vinyl, no less! – but fail to address the issue of whether the 3^rd generation remaster is any better than the previous two.  I do have a few of the Deluxe Editions, which claim the standard album is also digitally remastered.  At least with Judas Priest someone with no connection with the band took the trouble to listen to the various remastered versions of Rocka Rolla and Sad Wings of Destiny to give us an opinion as to which one he thought sounded best.  I’ve yet to see anything comparable for Black Sabbath.

 Bootlegs.  I have, on tape, several bootlegs: the Paris 1970 show (“War Pigs” as “Walpurgis Night”, with alternate lyrics), a Sabotage tour show with “Sabbra Cadabra”, the Reading 1984 Born Again show (includes “Smoke on the Water” in the encore), a Seventh Star tour bootleg with Ray Gillen on vocals (Hammersmith Odeon) (on CD), and the Rob Halford/Ozzy Osbourne show from 1992.

 For that matter, I might as well review the Dio albums.

 Heaven & Hell.  Just like Back In Black – by my other favorite band, AC/DC – Sabbath hit the ground running with their first album with Ronnie James Dio.  The title track, “Neon Knights”, “Children of the Sea”, and “Lonely is the Word” are all excellent.  “Die Young” and “Walk Away” are good, though I could do without “Lady Evil”.  And the artwork is killer.   But again, I still put Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath ahead of this album.

 The Mob Rules.  UGH.  I can’t stand the artwork, and unlike the prior album I also can’t stand the title track.  “Country Girl”, “Voodoo”, “The Sign of The Southern Cross”, are all quality, as are the lesser tracks.  Perhaps I’m biased by the terrible artwork.

 Live Evil.  The double live album with Dio, recorded in Seattle on the Mob Rules tour.  The mix of H&H, Mob Rules, and classic Ozzy tuneage is good, as is the sound quality.  Of course, the highlight is Dio’s pedantic instructions to an obviously English-speaking audience of Americans on the “Heaven & Hell” sing-along portion, i.e. “here’s the example.”  For all his skill as a singer, his crowd-control skills lagged well behind…Ian Anderson…Eric Bloom…Jim Morrison…Rob Halford…Bruce Dickinson…even Ozzy Osbourne and Ian Gillan, though I still put him a bit further ahead from Tony Martin.

Dehumanizer.  My friend Ken salivated over the imminent release of the album, and the tour for this album in 1992 was my first opportunity to see Black Sabbath in concert; the Seventh Star tour was cancelled before it reached Paris in 1986. 

            I really didn’t like this album.  Sorry, but I do NOT worship Ronnie James Dio – either in Elf, Rainbow, Sabbath or solo.  To me, every single track on this album is mediocre.  Tony and Dio clearly developed a “system” for writing songs which put them on auto-pilot.  If you like the formula, fine, but if you don’t it’s just another album of writing by the numbers.

 The Devil You Know.  The same deal with this album.  The “X of the Y” is the pattern for ¾ of the album.  Aside from “Fear”, “Bible Black”, and “Nevermore”, all the rest of the songs feature that type of song title and chorus.  This might as well be “Dehumanizer II” – great if you loved that album, otherwise so-so.

 Ozzy vs. Dio.  I had always assumed that Ozzy wrote the lyrics back when he was in the band.  Only much later did I read that Geezer was the principal lyricist for the band until Dio showed up and took over completely.  For some reason I never really liked Dio’s lyrics compared to Geezer’s, but until now I hadn’t been able to focus my thoughts on the issue sharply enough to articulate why.  If there is some subtle, barely articulable difference, it’s that Dio strikes me as pretentious, whereas Geezer and Ozzy are not.  Pretentious works for the Moody Blues, King Crimson, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd – the usual crop of “progressive” bands – but does not work so well for a blues-based hard rock band like Black Sabbath.  In the latter context we wind up with the spectacle of the black trenchcoated, “food court druids” waxing poetic about the occult.  I know we want to steer light years away from the Beavis & Butt-head, “Heavy Metal Parking Lot” crowd of idiots who unfortunately make up a sizable portion of the heavy metal audience, but this goes too far.  Plenty of us are neither pretentious nor idiots. 

 One last piece of anti-Dio heresy: I do like Born Again, even if Ian Gillan can’t stand it and no other Sabbath fan seems to be willing to admit it. 

School Bus Memories

The other day I was stuck behind a school bus on a two-lane road.  It brought back memories of my own experiences on school buses.  No, no Ottos or crazy woman who can’t hear right, but I recall an African school bus monitor who told us kids to "shut your mouse!"  Here were my adventures.

 St. Martin’s.  This is a private, Catholic school in Gaithersburg, Maryland.   I went here from first grade (1975) until Fall semester of 5^th grade (late 1978).  The school bus – those big orange (or is it yellow?) things - really didn’t directly connect us to the school.  The bus stop was on Montgomery Village Avenue, at the entrance to the subdivision, Lakeside of Whetstone, which is a 5-10 minute walk from our house.  To make matters worse, the bus didn’t go to St. Martin’s itself, which is on 355 at the corner with Summit Ave.  We had to walk 10 minutes over to Gaithersburg High School.  You can’t really mess up getting ON the bus in the morning, as only one school bus will come to your stop.  But in the afternoon, I can remember what seemed like an infinite amount of buses, and having to wait for the right one, with a specific three digit number, while being surrounded by dozens of high school kids and having no one from my school living in my neighborhood and being on my bus.  Eventually my mom decided it was better to drive us to school.

 Marymount – Rue Van Loo.  We moved to Paris, France in January 1979, and started going to Marymount, which was a Catholic school in Neuilly, which is a suburb of Paris to the northwest, immediately next to Paris itself.  Our sea shipment took about a month to arrive from the US, in the meantime we were in temporary quarters in the 16^th Arrondisement (far western part of Paris).   The bus stop was at the Michel-Ange Molitor metro stop, and the way to the bus stop from the apartment was extremely convoluted, though I believe if you put me there today I could probably find my way.  This was also the last stop on the route.  It was a 30 minute walk.  Fortunately the school bus went directly to Marymount, so on that end there wasn’t a problem.

 Marymount – Neuilly Compound.  In February 1979, our shipment came in, so we could move into our apartment in the Neuilly compound for US Embassy employees.  Although both the school and the compound were in “Neuilly”, they were very far apart.  In fact, one day we missed the bus, so our dad made us walk the entire distance, something like a full hour.  But at least the bus did come to the compound – and this time we were not the only kids at the stop.  I remember having disputes with the other kids as we lined up for the bus, since whoever got on the bus first had a better choice of seats, but there were enough other kids to fight about this issue.  The buses were commercial buses (not the classic American school buses) which had some provision to convert the seats into beds, but we never had occasion to use them for that (no overnight trips by bus – all such trips at Marymount were by train).

 ASP – Neuilly Compound.  From Fall 1982 onward, I went to the American School of Paris, for high school.  Instead of Neuilly, this was located in St. Cloud, which is a suburb a bit further out, about southwest of Paris.  The private buses were nice, very similar to tour buses. 

            Now that I was in high school, the issue of extracurricular activities arose – how to get home from school after rugby practice.  Fortunately ASP had two “late” buses which actually did come to the Neuilly compound, so it wasn’t a problem.  However, I’d have had NO idea how to get from the compound to ASP by public transportation.

 ASP – Malesherbes.   In spring of 1984 (my sophomore year) my family moved from Neuilly to Paris itself, the 8^th Arrondisement on Blvd. Malesherbes, which is northwest Paris.  The school bus picked us up a few blocks away, on Blvd Courcelles.  Unfortunately, this was the end of the line, and the school bus company had hired some incompetent clowns to drive that route.  Often the bus was late or didn’t come at all.  Around exam time of 1985 (junior year), we discovered the local train station was a better option.

            Moreover, the “late” buses didn’t come all the way to our neighborhood.  They’d stop at the Etoile, which was 4 Metro stops away.  However, I didn’t mind walking, as I walked past the huge record store, FNAC, on Wagram, and spent my excess lunch money on vinyl and cassettes (the latter I could listen to on my Walkman on the walk home).

 ASP – Malesherbes – Train.  The train station, Gare St. Lazare, was 10 minutes away.  Near the high school, there were two train stations:  St. Cloud, which was too far to walk (take a bus the rest of the way), and Garches-Marne-La-Coquette, which was a 5 minute walk down the road.  Much better.  Back at St. Lazare, there were three morning trains, all commuter/suburban trains.  The 8:00 a.m. train only went as far as St. Cloud, meaning you’d have to still take a bus.  No good.  The 8:15 train went to Garches, and got there around 8:45.  With the 5 minute walk, you’d get to school at 8:50, just in time for the first period which started at 8:55.  The 8:28 train would put you in the classroom no earlier than 9, so you’d be late for class.  If you missed the 8:15 train, you could at least try to catch the 8:28 train.  If you missed the 8:28 train, the next train was 9:15 or so, VERY late.  So I’d shoot for the 8:15 train.  Matt…well, he preferred to sleep later and take the 8:28 train.

            There were other advantages of the train.  In the afternoon, there was no “3:30” or “late train”, you’d just take whichever train left Garches when you got to the station.  No hurry to “make the bus” and no issue about a late bus which left you off 4 metro stops away from home. 

            The other (huge) advantage was that to pay for the train, you’d buy a “Carte Orange”, an orange ticket good for an entire month of travel, on every form of public transportation: Metro (RATP), RER, bus, and SNCF (train).  The same carte orange we’d use for the train to get to school would get us around Paris on the weekends on the Metro, without having to buy the individual yellow tickets. 

             By the way.  The bus route from Neuilly to ASP had to pick up two kids who lived in a neighborhood at the bottom of a hill where the streets were extremely narrow.  This was a major detour and caused the bus driver a ton of grief and inconvenience.  This was easily 30 minutes extra just to pick up and drop off these kids. If, for whatever reason, the two kids were not on the bus going home, everyone on the bus (not just the poor bus driver) cheered as we could completely bypass their damn neighborhood and get home 30 minutes earlier.   Anyhow.  When I started taking the train to school, I noticed the train went right through their neighborhood, and the local station was a block from their house.  D’oh!!  These idiot kids could have taken the train and made everyone’s lives (including their own) much easier.  We ALL could have slept another 30 minutes each morning.

 Headphones.  Nowadays, I’m driving in a car, not a school bus.  But I always listen to music in the car, which is why I make sure both the Neon and the Formula have good stereos.  Back in high school, I would listen to music on my Walkman – unlike Otto (above) I wasn’t actually driving the school bus (actually, I’ve never driven a school bus).  On one occasion I was listening to Speak of the Devil, the live album by Ozzy Osbourne in which he plays nothing but Black Sabbath songs.  Oblivious to the distinction, I thought these Ozzy songs were great!  One of the older students asked if he could listen to what I was listening to, and I said sure.  His reaction: “Hey, these are BLACK SABBATH songs!”  Clued in, I later checked out the Black Sabbath records at FNAC.  Hmm, this guy Ozzy Osbourne is on these albums.  And those songs are there!  Wow!  So after that, we asked for Black Sabbath albums for Christmas.  And we got:  The Mob Rules (with Ronnie James Dio) and Born Again (with Ian Gillan).  D’oh!  But I ended up buying the Ozzy/Sabbath albums at FNAC, on my way home from school.  It all worked out.

 Specifications.  Aside from “short buses” and larger transit-style buses, what we think of as the classic American school bus is the “class C”, or conventional.  It seats up to around 77-80 kids.  One of the major manufacturers, and among the few surviving ones, is Blue Bird.  Its current standard model, the Vision, seats 77 and has a Cummins diesel engine, inline 6, 5.9L, running anywhere from 200-260 HP.  The “yellow” color was established in 1939 as the standard color.