Tag: Black Sabbath
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Fashion Special: How To Dress Like A Seventies Rock Star.
As we have seen recently, a lot of bad things happened in the seventies, and all too often people say “it’s just how it was then”. They try to excuse some appalling behaviour. “Don’t judge people by today’s standards” they say. I am of course talking about the fashion sense of the world’s rock stars.…
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Every Record Tells A Story Photos of 2014
As the year draws to a close, it is nice to look back and reflect on the last twelve months. Did I really meet Johnny Rotten and was the one not wearing a tie? Was that really Metallica headlining Glastonbury, yet Dolly Parton was the one who drew the biggest crowd of the weekend? And…
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Black Sabbath at Hyde Park: Review
London may have its faults: There are too many people, too many drugs, loud parties, late night revellers… It also has its faults. It’s expensive: The Connaught bar sells beer at £65. Per glass. Yes, that isn’t a typo. It is busy, the average life expectancy of a cyclist is roughly equivalent to that of…
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Ray Gillen and Badlands: When Rock Bands Split Up In Front Of An Audience
Twenty years ago today rock lost one of its finest singers: Ray Gillen. In his all too short career Gillen had the distinction of recording an album with Black Sabbath – only for his vocals to be wiped and replaced by someone else’s, * and to sing with musical collective Phenomena II. In 1988 he…
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Heavy Rockers: Misunderstood Originators Or Blatant Lazy Rip-off Cliché Merchants? Part 2
Whatever Happened To My Rock n Roll Part 5 I’m putting heavy rock on trial! Have Your Say! Twenty five years on from the peak of heavy rock’s commercial popularity in 1988, this series asks why heavy rockers no longer dominate the charts and seeks to highlight the crimes that Heavy Rock is accused of,…
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Call The Fashion Police: Why Do Rockers All Dress So Badly?
I’m Putting Rock On Trial! Have Your Say! Twenty five years on from the peak of heavy rock‘s commercial popularity in 1988, this series asks why heavy rockers no longer dominate the charts and seeks to highlight the crimes that Heavy Rock is accused of, and give you the cases for and against. At the…
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Is Heavy Rock Guilty Of The Worst Lyrics Ever…? The Case For The Prosecution
I’m Putting Rock On Trial! Have Your Say! It is the 25th anniversary of Bon Jovi’s first UK number one album, “New Jersey” – a moment when heavy rock had confirmed its place in the mainstream, capping the momentum built by the likes of Bon Jovi, Def Leppard (number 1 in the US with “Love…
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Black Sabbath: 13 Review and The Post-It Note-gate Controversy
With Black Sabbath’s album out tomorrow, it is time to dust off your black cloak, wizard’s hat and faded copy of Alistair Crowley‘s Big Book of Magic (Vol. 1: Card Tricks), throw them in the bin, and make some space for some new Sabbath vinyl in your collection. Sabbath have always courted controversy, from the…
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Things You Don’t See Anymore #4: The Flexi Disc
Many hundreds of years ago (well, in the 1960’s and ’70s) and in the days before the Internet, if you can imagine such a thing, record companies tried many ways to get music heard. They tried bribing DJs. This was frowned upon. They tried fixing the charts by bulk buying or giving away records to…
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Rock On! Annual 1980. Definitely Not Sexist. Even If You’re A Bird.
One of my favourite Christmas presents this year was a book from 1979, confusingly titled the Rock On! Annual 1980 which looked back at 1978. Still following me? Good. Rock On! was a short-lived UK magazine launched in June 1978. As with the Look-In Annual that I looked at a few months ago, it is…
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Remember The First Time You Heard…Black Sabbath?
Black Sabbath’s Seventh Star is not the most obvious starting point for a rock fan to be introduced to heavy metal’s most iconic band. Growing up in a religious household presented the odd challenge for a young heavy metal fan not necessarily seeking ways to aggravate his parents. I had a number of damage limitation…
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Is This The Hard Rock Cafe’s Greatest Treasure?
The Hard Rock Cafe in London’s Piccadilly contains some most amazing treasures. As the silver-cross-wearing and black-nail-varnish sporting readers amongst you may know, Black Sabbath got back together in 2012 to perform a few shows. Regrettably, original Sabbath drummer Bill Ward did not participate due to a dispute over that root of all evil, Sharon…
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First Gig – Dio and Denzil the Dragon at The Hammersmith Odeon: May 1986
I’m sure we all have memories of our first time…the butterflies in your stomach, the nervous feeling as you wondered what it would be like, would it go well, would it be fun? Would you be “safe”… First gigs are A Big Thing in your life after all. My first gig was to see Dio…
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Why Deep Purple have not been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame…
To know why Deep Purple matter, you just have to listen to the blistering, gonzoid opening of Speed King. If you can, do it now. This was 1970 – when people still thought Roger Whittaker was edgy. Nearly 42 years later, it’s still as joyful an explosion of noise as you will ever hear. Released…
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The Top Ten Worst Dressed Rock Bands of All Time
Which is the worst dressed Rock Band? After my post querying whether Rush’s Kimonos were a nadir in the relationship between Rock and Fashion, I thought about a few other bands that I knew who perhaps ran Rush pretty close. I read every copy of Kerrang! for several years: so here is my cut-out-and-keep guide of…
Every record tells a story 