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THE BAND
SET LIST
CONCERT PHOTO GALLERY You can view the photo gallery for this concert here. TOUR REVIEWS & REMARKS From: "Joe Siegler" <siegler@black-sabbath.com> Well, last night in the heat of Dallas I saw Black Sabbath. Again. I've seen them now a total of 10 times (once each with Ian Gillan, Ray Gillen, Ronnie Dio, three times with Tony Martin, and now four with Ozzy (all in 97 onwards, none from the 70's). To be honest, going into this show, I have to admit the only reason I attended Ozzfest 2004 was for two reasons. First was Judas Priest. I've seen Priest with Halford twice already (back in 1984 and 1986). However, seeing Priest again was definitely the attraction for me, as I haven't seen 'em in awhile. The second reason was that I got my tickets comped because of my connection running this site. Would I have gone if I had to pay? I don't know, but I think part of that comes from the fact that I've seen them several times before. Running this website, and seeing them as many times as I have, I've seen them play Iron Man / War Pigs / Paranoid numerous times, and to be honest, I don't need to see that anymore. I did skip Ozzfest 2001 for that reason (of course they go and play a NEW song during Ozzfest 2001, so I got burnt on that one). However, that's not to say Sabbath wasn't great. They were. But more on that in a bit. I went with a long time friend (who makes home brew beer, and had an odd but good Chipotle Pepper Beer with him to sample), and we got there around 6:20 or so. After sitting in my truck and drinking some of his beer, we headed in. First thing we did was peruse the outer area, checked out the insane prices for concert shirts ($35 for a T-Shirt? Pass), as well as the offerings and other concert goers. I'll be 39 in two weeks. I have to say this. As I've gotten older, and the bands I've followed for a long time have also gotten older, so have the audiences in general. There were some kids there, but for the most part, this Ozzfest seemed to generally be older. And therein lies the rub. Folks who have been going to concerts who are around my age should dress like their age. I probably was the most normally dressed person there - just sneakers, blue jeans, and a green T-shirt with nothing printed on it. There's nothing sadder than an older concert goer still dressing like they did when they were 20. Particularly if they're female. It's not that older women can't look good, it's just that your average concert going metal female who is dressing the same way they did when they were 18 don't look that way. I mean, there were a few I saw that were positively revolting. The worst example was a women who looked like she weighed about 275 pounds wearing what amounted to a French bikini. Positively nasty. These kind of people need a mind reboot. My friend who was with me was saying "Uh, I did NOT need to see that". However, on the more positive side, there seemed to be more boobs on display than in years gone by. There's always been a willing supply of females willing to let the world see what their tits look like at these shows, and this one was no different. In fact, the display of breasts seemed more organized, with a "Body Painting" booth. Apparently, women could go in there, get topless, and get their fronts painted, and walk around that way. As a guy, it's always nice to see boobs on display - in fact, I don't think there was any female with this body painting that I could describe as bad, so that was good. However, I wonder about the legality of this. Not that I mind the display, but given that Ozzfest is sponsoring a body painting booth (at least it appeared to me they were, as it was inside the concert area), is it legal for women to walk around essentially topless? Again, I don't care, more boobs on display is a GOOD thing. Just curious. Anyway, about the show. As I said earlier, my friend and I got there in the middle of Slayer's set, neither of us had any particular interest in seeing. I only know one Slayer song anyway (Seasons in the Abyss), so we just people watched for a bit more. Decided against drinking the beer on sale (upwards of $10.50 for one 24oz can). As you see here (if you're reading this on the web, and not in the newsletter), I was given a backstage pass by my contact who hooked me up with tickets. We headed on over to where we believed the area was, and found an usher who told us to hang out where we were standing. We were told to look for a guy in a black shirt that had "Supervisor" on his back. So we found him, and asked him about it. We then got all kinds of badass looks and remarks from the first guy, who appeared to be one of those people who wanted to be a cop, and couldn't, so he can push people around in concerts. I decided I didn't want to deal with that crap, so we headed to the stage to watch Judas Priest. If I was 20, I might have stayed, and waited, or at least made myself more noticeable so I'd actually get to use the pass, but I'm not 20, and I don't care to fight that battle, so I just went and watched the shows. Which is what this is all supposed to be about, anyway. By the time we got back to the stage, Judas Priest came on within a few minutes. As I said above, I'd seen Priest twice before with Halford (in 84 & 86), and the 2004 rendition was just as great as I remembered it back then. I longer set list would have been greater, but what we got friggin kicked ass. Here's the Judas Priest set list (pretty much what's been played elsewhere):
Rob Halford is now 53, and I have to say, he can still wail. That's always been Rob's strong point, and I wasn't sure how well his voice would hold up. I shouldn't have been worried. He missed a note here and there, but then again no one's perfect, that didn't seem to be because of his vocal strength. Apologies to Tim Owens, but Judas Priest is back. It's as if they were still on the Painkiller tour from 1990. Priest has always been one of those bands for me where the band was always "there". I know the members names, but I think for most people, the fixation with Priest is the sound and Rob Halford. KK Downing, Glenn Tipton, Ian Hill, and Scott Travis make one hell of a noise, but Priest for me has always been about the vocals. Having said that, the band was really tight and powerful. Halford wore his traditional full leather outfit (shown here in a pic on judaspriest.com), and I cannot imagine it was very comfortable for him. It was a typical Texas summer night - about 95 degrees - probably warmer up by the stage because of all the people in the place. But he never showed it, he performed without giving up any indication that he was hot or uncomfortable. He had to have lost 10 pounds in this show with that outfit. :) One moment I did like was during the opening of Breaking the Law, Rob along with KK, Glenn, & Ian all stood next to each other, and from where I was, it looked like they were playing each other's guitars. It appeared that Rob was strumming KK's, and KK was on Glenn's, etc. I don't know if that was really the case, but when the song hit vocals, they played their own stuff - a cool little moment. I wished we could have had a longer set, but that's a negative to festival gigs like this. As it is, Priest played longer than Black Sabbath anyway, and Sabbath was the headliner. Judas Priest's new album comes out on December 28th - I was hoping for one song from the new one here, but we didn't get that. Anyway, the word is that Judas Priest will be back out in 2005 to support that album on their own, so hopefully we'll get a full length show from Priest. If they do that, bet your ass I'll be there. After Priest played, I decided to just sit in my chair, as my body doesn't take long periods of standing up as well as it used to. What did surprise me is how quickly the sets got changed out. Usually, it's longer than that, but the changeout from Judas Priest (who had a stage set) to Black Sabbath was less than 20 minutes. Wish it could be that quick on standard concerts - it always seems to be longer that way. So I'm sitting there saying to my friend "I wonder how long it will take into the gig before Ozzy goes "I can't fuckin' hear you". Well, I got my wish before the gig even started! During the set breakdown of Priest, they pulled a large curtain in front of the stage. Couldn't see anything directly, but at the angle I was at over the left I could see behind the curtain, and saw a little of it, them moving Bill's drum kit into position, but in the Dallas show, there was no intro video. We did have the intro audio montage of Sabbath clips. There just was no video with it, as was reported as being there in some of the earlier gigs. We got to listen to the montage, and then at the end of the montage, we got the usual Sabbath intro song, Supertzar. During that, the curtain was backlighted, and we saw the guys standing there behind the curtain. We then got the intro to War Pigs started, and a roadie pulled the curtain away, so we could see the Sabs. Here's the full set list from Dallas:
One other thing I have a reputation for is that I prefer the non Ozzy Sabbath years to the Ozzy stuff. I've seen Sabbath with Ozzy four times now since they got back together, and some of the past performances from Ozzy have been dodgy. Not this time. Ozzfest 2004 was by far the best shape I've seen Ozzy in, both physically and vocally. His voice was strong, it didn't break, and he didn't seem as worn down as I'd seen him before. As much as I've taken shots at him over the years for this, I have to give Ozzy props - this was by far the best I'd ever seen him. Especially right after his accident on the bike (I know it's not a bike, but I can't think of the proper name at the moment). Thumbs up to him. Of all the guys who have handled the microphone for Black Sabbath (there's been 8 official ones), none of them could work a crowd like Ozzy Osbourne. He is a perfect showman. He's not the best technical singer the band's had, but dammit - he knows how to work a room, and that's what a frontman should do. Get the crowd going, and dammit, Oz knows how. The rest of the band was spectacular as usual. Tony, Bill, & Geezer make one hell of a noise. And it sounds great. In fact, it was so great, I almost don't know what justice I can do to it by writing about it here. Just take my word for it. It sounded perfect. Tony even added a lick to Paranoid that I hadn't heard before. Given I've heard these songs more times than I can count, I recognize any change, and that was a nice changeup, hearing a different lick. If you haven't seen Black Sabbath before, you're in for a treat! The band is awesome, Ozzy doesn't appear to have any health problems, and you get all of Black Sabbath's biggest hits. If you're reading this and haven't yet seen Ozzfest, and you're able to go - go. You'll love it. From: gerald.b.labarrere From: "Rogelio Matamoros" |
As
has been said by a lot of other reviews I've already posted for this tour,
the set list is well.. boring. At least for me. Is there
anything "wrong" with it? No - the songs are awesome. There's
no dissing Sabbath's songs. However, I've seen Black Sabbath ten
times, and I have to say, there really needs to be variety in the set
list. I suppose if you've never seen Black Sabbath before, this is
OK, but I"d say the majority of the people attending a Black Sabbath
concert have seen them before. It's for these people that the set
list needs to be changed. Outside of Ozzy's time in the band, there
have been 10 other studio albums. But OK, I'm resigned to the fact
that Sabbath with Ozzy won't do those. But there's still a total of
8 studio albums with Ozzy, and they didn't play anything past the first
four. In fact, a breakdown shows they had two from the first album,
four from the second, two from the third, and one from the fourth.
Now again, I know in a festival setting, it's a short set list, but
there's got to be a way to break it up a bit. I mean, you could
replace Snowblind with Symptom of the Universe. They could actually
PLAY Sabbath Bloody Sabbath instead of teasing the crowd with the intro.
Hell, they did Dirty Women in the 1999 Ozzfest shows. For some
reason, they choose to totally ignore the Never Say Die album, which is a
shame (I'd absolutely love it if I could hear Johnny Blade live).
But enough about the set list. It needs to be changed. Go do a
proper tour, where you're the actual headliner, not a festival, that way
we could get a properly expanded set list.