By Cthulhu’s slimy tentacles! Can Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” really be 50 years old today?
This was one of the albums I used to drive my parents insane, along with Iron Butterfly’s “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida” and Led Zeppelin’s and Steppenwolf’s respective self-titled debuts. I’m surprised the family Telefunken stereo hi-fi console survived the prolonged and vicious beating I gave it.
Later, of course, I mellowed into the quiet flower child you’ve all come to know and love.
Ozzy Osbourne turns 666 today (OK, so he’s only 66; sue me) and I expect that this surprises him nearly as much as it does the rest of us.
Now, you all know me as a discerning connoisseur of the arts, whether culinary, graphic or sonic, but there was a time in my misspent youth when I was something of a headbanger.
In those dark days all I required to drive everyone over 16 in the neighborhood completely witless was my parents’ Telefunken console stereo and any one of three albums: “Led Zeppelin,” the band’s debut LP; “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” by Iron Butterfly; and “Paranoid,” by Black Sabbath.
By laughing Satan’s spreading wings, ’tis a wonder my family was not chased from the ‘hood by angry villagers brandishing crucifixes, pitchforks and torches when I spun the volume knob all the way to the right for “War Pigs,” quite the anthem to hear thundering from the home of a WWII veteran.
You could actually see the picture window thrumming like the drums out of which Bill Ward was beating the shit, and Tony Iommi’s guitar licks killed all the flowers from Constitution to Maizeland. A neighbor’s canary almost chewed through the bars of its cage before exploding like a feathered M-80.
Today, of course, my tastes have become a good deal more refined. Either that or I’ve gone stone deaf. What?
Patrick O'Grady has been making stuff up since, well, forever. He started doing it for money in high school and didn't quit until he retired in 2022. (To be honest, if you waved enough Dead President Trading Cards at him, he might do it for money again.) Until then, this blog is his pro-bonehead work. For more on Your Humble Narrator, click the comic.
The Radio Free Dogpatch podcast, which just sorta drifted right off the Infobahn and into the ditch, is up on blocks in the back yard until further notice. The archives remain available.
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Hal Walter ranches burros, a teenage son, and words from his rancheroo high in the mountains of south-central Colorado. Click the pic to sign up for his Substack newsletter, which goes out to subscribers whenever he's in the mood.
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