Paranoid (via Discogs)
There are events in popular culture that are described in ‘before’ and ‘after’ terms, like Star Wars or The X-Files. Music is full of them, Sgt. Pepper, Dark Side of the Moon, Rumours, Brothers in Arms, for example. Whether or not you like them, they shape culture in ways that transcend their surface appeal; they become something other than just three ounces of black plastic with a hole in the middle.
Melody Maker
This is all a long way of saying that 50 years ago Black Sabbath released Paranoid, an album that captured the promise of their debut and improved upon it. It’s brillliant, and a million miles away from the bludgeoning inflicted by other ‘heavy’ bands of the era, because of an inherent musicality that many of their followers and imitators missed. You’d think that, after fifty years of those followers and imitators, the album might sound dated. Not a bit of it; I just put it on headphones and it sounds, if anything, better than ever.
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Jimi Hendrix died fifty years ago today. His last interview indicated he was looking to move in other directions, perhaps with Miles Davis, perhaps with Rahsaan Roland Kirk whom he admired. I think certainly he was moving with black music and away from the box he’d had built for him in his initial rise to fame. We’ll never know, but we have the best of what he left us.
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