Ozzy Osbourne - Revelation (Mother Earth)
Well, that's the thing about mortality. Eventually, the ones folks wished could live forever, don't.
It's gonna get shittier too. A day is fast approaching when all of everyone's favorite music icons from the sunsetting Golden Age of 1965-1985 -- I dunno there will ever be a period of a more prolific or sincere outpouring of human creativity in the rapidly-disintegrating future, but we can hope -- will head to bed for a nap and not come back.
There was a time when "Ozzy Osbourne will live to be 76 years old" would have been a statement on par with "people will travel to the stars and meet banana-shaped ETs with raisins for eyes," but luckily he got off the hard stuff and stayed off it long enough to make it to that (for rock stars, sometimes septo-rarified) territory.
I can remember times growing up when you'd hear about him chewing the heads off animals in Big Record Industry offices, or snorting ants off Holiday Inn floors, and you'd have bet the farm he would buy it well before the ripe old age of 40.
He was probably that hard to manage from birth in 1948, but he met his match -- the daughter of Black Sabbath's manager, as it happened -- and I guess that as irritating as she is, she kept him from total self-destruction until he mostly quit the diet of drugs-n-alcohol decades back.
Speaking of Sabbath and self-destruction, there were times in my teens and twenties -- as I'm sure is true for tens of millions of guys, especially -- when those genre-defining cats in my Walkman headphones was all that was keeping me from a swan dive off the Williamsburg Bridge, or whatever high enough suicide solution happened to be available.
I was never big on his solo stuff after a few records in, but I especially liked the first three he did in the early Eighties, fresh outta Black Sabbath and trying to forge a career of his own.
Which he soon did, outshining and -selling his old mates with room to spare.
Not that it matters more than a Baby Boomer's britches anyway, but I think there are only a handful of people inducted into the R&RHoF in Cleveland twice, and he is one. What does matter is that big, globally-streamed finale last week -- where the original Sabbath reunited alongside an all-star cast for one last hurrah -- which seemed to valedictorize the man, and give him his Victory Lap flowers in full abundance before leaving the stage for good.
And, of course, we are all well aware that, 20+ years ago he, inadvertently, helped to create modern Reality TV.
Although, given how things are de-evolving faster than freedom of choice can keep pace with, perhaps that idea -- that he contributed unintentionally to setting the template for television as we know it -- might piss him off.
With all that said, it's obvious that with someone like this there are a ton of ROIOs of both him in Black Sabbath and then on his own, but as is often the case they sound, almost universally, like crap. Even the good ones, which are almost all legitimately issued anyhow as the Holy Barrel of Potential Revenue is scraped to the quick.
There's this guy that posts Ozzy-related shows on YouTube, however -- he's livestreaming a premiere of one right now, as I type this -- and I was somehow able to get one of his most fabulous creations off Soulseek in full, tastily remastered form.
Ozzy Osbourne
Mid-South Coliseum
Memphis, Tennessee USA
4.28.1982
01 FM intro/"Diary of a Madman" tape intro
02 Over the Mountain
03 Mr. Crowley
04 Crazy Train
05 Revelation (Mother Earth)
06 Steal Away (The Night)
07 Suicide Solution/The Man On the Flying Trapeze jam
08 Goodbye to Romance
09 I Don't Know
10 Believer
11 Flying High Again
12 Iron Man
13 Children of the Grave/FM announcement
14 Paranoid/FM outro
Total time: 1:19:11
Ozzy Osbourne - vocals
Brad Gillis - guitar
Rudy Sarzo - bass
Tommy Aldridge - drums
Don Airey - keyboards
Dario Romero's excellent remaster of his master FM cassette
recorded from "The Source" live broadcast in 1982 over "Rock 103" FM in Memphis
retracked -- with volume boosted +2.3 dB throughout -- by EN, July 2025
588 MB FLAC/direct link
588 MB FLAC/direct link
I apologize for slacking somewhat on this page, but there's been construction and crises abundant here at home lately. I shall return in a few days with something completely different, but I wasn't gonna let the passing of Ozzy Osbourne -- as beloved a music personality as any of our lifetimes, and deservedly so -- go without chronicling such unfortunate Changes appropriately.--J.
12.3.1948 - 7.22.2025
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