Decided to stay in my hometown of Bury, Lancashire from 18th-29th December, flying from Warsaw to Liverpool early in the morning on the 18th so I could catch Black Sabbath at Manchester Arena in the evening.
With my small, limited mobile phone, I tried to capture some of the pure ethnography of the event, starting with the crowd gathered round the merchandise stall above, and ending with a shot of one of the (it must be said) rather expensive bars inside Manchester Arena below:
I just took the shot above randomly, but it was very nice of the couple in the middle, who I didn't know from Adam, to strike such a nice pose for it (a magical piece of ethnography, I think).
About the concert itself: Sabbath, with three-quarters of the classic line-up (Ozzy; Tony Iommi; and Geezer Butler, of course), were much better than I'd expected (my main reason for going was pure nostalgia). For me, the two tunes of the night were 'NIB' and rather surprisingly 'Children of the Grave' (far from being my favourite Sabbath song, this was magic on the night so to say):
Of course, well done to the great people who've put the videos of the Manchester Arena gig on Youtube so that we can all relive the great gig.
From the '13' album, the two tracks that stood out for me were 'God Is Dead?' and 'Into the Void':
Yes, the Sabbath show was a nice balance of tracks from the '13' album and older classical stuff.
Also thought that Ozzy's voice was nicely on form, although it would've been nice to see if he could've pulled off more up-tempo tracks like 'Symptom of the Universe' or 'Never Say Die!'. Regarding this, I think it may've said something when the band did a few chords of 'Sabbath Bloody Sabbath' and then directly ran into 'Paranoid'. Still, this is just my own nitpicking, and doesn't in any way detract from a great evening of entertainment. Seen Sabbath twice before, once with Ronnie James Dio (RIP) on the 'Mob Rules' tour, but never with Ozzy, so it was an honour to finally catch the latter experience.
My nostalgia for Black Sabbath, where does it come from? Well, as a 12-year-old schoolboy, I remember getting the 'Never Say Die!' album on tape when it came out in 1978 and just thinking 'WOW!!!'. Still think that 'Never Say Die!' is a great and heavily underrated album that competes with 'Sabbath Bloody Sabbath' and 'Sabotage' for being the best Sabbath album with Ozzy.
My favourite tune off 'Never Say Die!'? Well, maybe it's the title track or maybe it's the incredibly melodic and underrated 'Junior's Eyes' below:
Me and my BF were there too, was fantastic night, hope to see them again.Fingers crossed theyll do another tour sometime.
ReplyDelete