Black Sabbath, Black Sabbath (1970)

All day long, kind of grumpy and glum. Lethargic. Dreading listening to an album because it felt like a chore.

So what's the LP for today? Black Sabbath's 1970 self-titled? Sigh. All right.

Put it on and was hooked from the opening notes. The guitar was doing a creepy walk, like what you'd hear at the opening of a dark musical. And then I heard this spooky voice say, "What is this that stands before me? / Figure in black which points at me."

Hey, that's Ozzy. I had forgotten that Sabbath was Ozzy's band.

I listened some more and looked over the liner notes under the YouTube video (I was playing the album on YouTube). The opening song was called "Black Sabbath." Ah, so they're setting off the album doing that spooky thing rockers like to do, Led Zeppelin and Alice Cooper too. "All right, parents, you say we're the devil's music? We'll show you the devil's music."

The next track was called "The Wizard." I expected more of the same, but then there was a harmonica and blues riffs. And Ozzy's voice didn't come in for a full minute at least. What was going on here was the band was upsetting expectations, scaring off the parents and the wimps with the first track so that they could get to the fun.

This album is all over the place but extremely good. These guys aren't afraid to riff either. Tony Iommi is such a great guitar player that they will just let him go.

Another charming bit here is that the album is messy. It sounds like the first LP by a promising band.

I like this one. I'm going to hold onto it. A plus was it helped knock me from my foul mood. Sort of.