h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm impressed my friend! You've put some time into this entry! Good to know that appreciation of good music isn't dead.

Later...

aye
tis a bloody good article

Thanks to both of you for your kind compliments. As you may have noticed, I have submitted the article, so hopefully it'll be one of the five-a-day articles some day...

sound article. i know a couple of people who were there - i myself was skint, something i now regret. it was supposed to be the best gig in human history, but this may just be my freinds hyping the fact that they saw it and i didn't. sod.

did you hear about the amount of bitching barry phelps endured after his comments? apparently about 500 more letters of abuse appeared on his doorstep shortly afterwards. plus a string of i'm-a-Black-Sabbath fan-with-a-master's-degree-in-english letters in various magazines all over the place. and Ozzy threatened legal, or, failing that, pugilistic action against him.

I've read (and mostly forgotten) the relevant points of the conversation, but I have to say, Black Sabbath rules!. Every morning I wake up I put on something like Symptom of the Universe or Snowblind to get my spirits up ( I pity my neighbors...). I am an indescribably stupid person, as I sat in my lab working on experiments (for rent money, not interest in science) within earshot of an (Oz-fest?) concert where Sabbath and Slayer were playing (in Vancouver -British Columbia (1999)). I could have gone for $60 Cdn, and I could have afforded it.

Everyone seems to think that Sabbath was crap without Ozzy (John?), but with Dio, it wasn't bad at all. Tony Iommi was the god, with Bill Ward being at least equal on the earlier recordings. Iommi's guitaring is unbelievable. Watching the Sabbath documentary was something else though, 'cause it showed the drumming. Unless you listened for it, you would never guess it was so complex (crap recordings).

Either way, it is a shame that there is no incentive for the creation of Heavy Metal in G. Britain anymore -no more heavy industry.

Yes, the state of the heavy metal scene in Britain isn't what it used to be. There are still some fine British bands out there - Pitchshifter for example - but because the British charts are dominated by substanceless pop, all clones of one formula that was successful, record companies are reluctant to sign anyone heavier than Oasis. I don't know what the chart situation is in America and Canada, but from what I can gather, the US chart at least tends to have a better variation of music in it, not just bubblegum pop. And because the big names are now American bands, like Slipknot and Korn, it's much harder for fans in Britain to see them in concert, since they tend to play one or two gigs, usually in London, and then go to mainland Europe. Korn, for example, played two gigs here recently, one in London and the other in Manchester. This was after a couple of years of absence from British shores. Having said that, though, there are some American bands that deserve praise for having fairly lengthy British tours, such as Fear Factory and Machine Head last year, both of whom played the Newport Centre, which is fairly close to Cardiff, which is where my university is.

Dio is certainly much better than people give him credit for. I bought Heaven and Hell on vinyl recently (£4 - bargain!), and was absolutely astounded by it.

Heaven and Hell was good. Some tracks off of Mob Rules were great too -The title track is absolutely up to standard, even if the recording is muddy.

With regards to british industry, something should be done to improve it. The world can't live on tourism, and Britain has no major economic resources other than oil and labour.

If the British Pound were devalued, the economics of manufacturing there would probably improve.

The mentality of the people seems to need a little work as well -as a tourist I noticed most workers seemed lazy primarily. Why this is wasn't apparent. Maybe job security, or low pay was getting everyone down.

There certainly is a need for Britain to start doing industrial things again. It all basically stopped, as far as I know, with Margaret Thatcher in the eighties, when she closed loads of coal mines, which also meant that the miners, many of whom lived in small communities who'd relied upon to local coal mine to provide employment, suddenly found themselves wothout jobs. This could well have been a factor in the recession in Britain in the early nineties. Had the pits been kept open, it wouldn't have had such a large effect, since more people would be in work. There's still a large amount of coal in the mines, so why they were closed is beyond me. All we can hope for is that they are reopened.

Recently, there's been another threat to a few thousand jobs at Rover's Longbridge plant, when BMW were conidering closing it. Luckily they haven't (yet), but if they do, other companies might try the same tactic. Hopefully this won't happen.

I must say, this entry seems very familiar, like out of the liner notes of the current CD versions of the Sabbath discography. Ho hum...

Ronnie James Dio rules, 'nuff said. Heaven & Hell is by far one of Sabbath's best albums, Mob Rules not far behind.