Ozzy Osbourne, Static X, Lamb of God - Tweeter Center - Mansfield, MA - Aug. 20
Posted by Jesse Coy on 08.31.2007
A free summer music festival? How did it go... fiasco or success? Check in with our resident music junkie for an exclusive analysis, and general concert notes.
So I checked on other reviews of Ozzfest concerts, and the consensus was that Ozzy began at about 8. The only band I knew besides Ozzy who I sort of wanted to see was Static X. Sure, I know… I’m a journalist. I should expose myself to all those other bands. Hell with that. I’m so inundated with new music, I need to pick and choose. Knowing this, I called my wife to see when she’d be back with the car, so I wouldn’t have to rent one. She said that she was on her way home then, at 2:30. That’d work fine. I didn’t plan to go until 4:30. Even with rush hour, I figured I’d be safe. The question was, since Shirleen couldn’t go, and mom was here, should I ask my mom if she wanted to see Ozzy?
I did, and she did.
Before I got into this, let me bring up a couple things. First, I’d heard some people complaining about parking prices. Sure, Ozzfest is free, but they’ve jacked up parking costs, and Sharon makes her money that way. In no way am I a Sharon defender, but for the record, I will say that the Tweeter Center in Mansfield never charged for parking before, and they didn’t charge for this free Ozzfest show.
Some complained of the caliber of bands. Hell, I was just there to see Ozzy, so I really didn’t care (never saw him solo before). Buy the new album and be guaranteed two free tickets to see him live? Fuck, yeah.
I’d heard there were a fair number of Nazi skinheads at these shows. I definitely saw skinheads. I also saw drunken metalheads. I saw fights. You think I’ll say something about that when there? Nah. In general, open the floodgates for a free show, and what do you expect? Despite the best of motives of a peacemaker, anyone who interferes with a fight is just as liable to get popped in the head. The drunken dude getting beaten up might be the belligerent one who does it. No… I’ll just step back and watch it all, amused.
So anyway, I took I-93 south, and then linked onto I-95 to circle around Boston instead of going through it. It’s a crapshoot either way, though going around Boston is often the better bet. I guessed we’d get there by 6:30. Stopped at the supermarket off the exit that I knew would be there. Too many coffees… I needed to piss, plus I could get something to eat before we went into the show. We arrived at 6:20.
It would’ve been earlier, but the cops confused me, waving me past parking at first. Circled back and went in, snagging nearly the last row of free parking. So I had my dinner of finger sandwiches, and then pounded down a few strong vodka and diet cola bombs. I even brought one with me as mom and I meandered toward the entrance. It’d been raining, but knowing the venue, and knowing where our seating was, I was pretty sure it was in a covered area. And it was.
For free tickets, we were actually pretty close. Well, I did snag them as soon as I could back in June. It didn’t rain for the show, though. It held off for the rest of the night. Anyhow, we entered as I think Static X had done at least two tunes, though not much more.
(Wayne and Matt… cousins?) (ha)
I have Static X’s first album, and that’s it. That one, I happened to get for review back when I wrote for the Pacific Northwest’s long defunct The Rocket. I rather liked Wisconsin Death Trip. It was a strong industrial metal debut. I just never got any other releases by the band. I’ve seen a few luke warm and even negative reviews of some of their other albums by the critics… so maybe that’ll be a reason to pick up some of their albums.
Basically, though, I’ll tell you that I’m not going to be able to name too many tracks that they played. They announced one song as “Cold,” off the Queen of the Damned Soundtrack, and also said that they were doing two tracks off their Cannibal release. And later, the “dirty song” (as they labeled it), a fan a couple seats down who saw me taking notes, and read a bit of what I wrote, informed me that that song was “Destroyer.”
The fellow directly next to me happened to be a cop. Quite a difference than the cops at the Virgin Music Festival. Well, this one was off duty, and hadn’t seen Ozzy for quite some time. “When I told them why I wanted the night off, my captain replied… ‘for what?’ ”
My only other notes about Static X? First, is it just me, or does the singer look like Matt Hardy with a crazy static electric hairdo? Secondly, musically, I found much of their style to be in that older Ministry mode, the sort of industrial metalized riffs off The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste or Psalm 69. If I recall the criticism right, it’s sort of that they haven’t expanded very much.
There was one more band left before Ozzy, and had I known where the second stage was, maybe I would’ve wandered over there. The band was Lamb of God, as in death metal or grindcore. I’ve got several of those bands in my collection, but honestly, that’s the sort of music you need to have in advance, to listen to a few times, and to read the lyrics and absorb before you can appreciate it live. It’s not the kind of music where you’ll get into the band right off the bat (at least not me).
Well, my mom loved it. Yep… take your mom to see Lamb of God.
Anyway, partway through, I walked off for a couple songs. Bought a cup of wine, leaving a buck tip. I usually don’t tip at venues with high booze prices, but the show and parking were free, so give a little back. “God bless you,” me, the atheist, told the lady selling the booze. Yes, I spotted sporadic fisticuffs, and there was an immensely drunken vibe.
Back in my seat, the cop told me that he remembered when the stadium had first been built, because he saw the show. It was a John Denver show in ’85.
Toward the end of Lamb of God’s set, their vocalist was thanking various people, and he referenced Motorhead as he thanked the road crew, and I almost thought they were going to end with a cover of “We Are the Road Crew.” That would’ve been cool, but it didn’t happen.
(not that Lamb of God!)
It also got me to thinking… you know what would blow people’s minds? What if Ozzy put out an album where the bands that he takes on tour with him via Ozzfest do the music, and he sings? Do a full album like that… sort of like Probot in reverse, where Ozzy sings for some of the most intense death metal and grindcore acts. That’d be interesting. That’d mess with people.
Lamb of God ended, and soon, it’d be time for the main reason why I was there, which was Ozzy doing his solo stuff. First, though, there were the $1,600 seats. Actually, I thought that that was pretty funny. Think about it… they were on stage, behind the band. They got an autographed copy of something or other, but how crummy. The whole show, you only get to see the backs of the band’s heads? But damn, if those onstage seats covered some of the cost of putting on a free show, I’m all for it.
The whole thing started with the funniest montage I’ve ever seen, or at least that I’ve seen in a long time. Ozzy in The Office? Pirates of Caribbean? Entourage? The Queen Elizabeth movie? Lost? The Sopranos? It was quite raunchy, and it was a hoot. Then the band kicked it all off with “Bark at the Moon.”
When that ended, he greeted the fans, mentioning that he had a throat infection, and apparently sometimes you don’t always get to see Ozzy at an Ozzfest. Mom told me of how my younger cousin went to an Ozzfest the year before. He was sick then, and couldn’t play the show. There was another year where Black Sabbath was the headliner, and at a New Jersey show, Rob Halford substituted as the vocalist.
So which old Ozzy tracks were in attendance? There was “Mr. Crowley,” “Suicide Solution,” “I Don’t Know,” and, of course, “Crazy Train,” which was an encore song. Zak was on guitar (doing a solo in between the second and third songs up there), and there was Mike, the very distinctive drummer from the long defunct Faith No More. Rob has moved on to Metallica, so it’s a newer bassist, and there was also a keyboard player.
Two Black Sabbath songs were performed in the form of “War Pigs,” which I could’ve done without, because I saw the original Black Sabbath in ’99, and would’ve much preferred hearing an Ozzy original, especially considering that song’s length, and then “Paranoid.” That was the last song of the night.
Rounding things out, I like “Road to Nowhere,” but “Mama, I’m Coming Home” isn’t a particular favorite, nor is “I Don’t Wanna Change the World.” Finally, off the new album, he did “Not Going Away” (surprisingly that instead of the single, “I Don’t Wanna Stop”) and “Here for You,” which I really didn’t like on the album, but in this live context, it was rather cool, because it was a dedication to the fans rather than Sharon. And that’s about it.
Ozzy was obviously having a good time. I won’t sugarcoat things, though. There were a couple points where Ozzy’s voice was shaky. But here’s the analogy I thought of at the time. Would I rather see a band where the execution is flawless, as in the Police, but where I feel that one of the members, mainly the vocalist, just isn’t fully into it? Or would I rather see a show where there are a few rough edges, but clearly all the musicians want to be there?
Hell, just compare the ticket prices between the two.
Ozzy advertised his loss of hearing, as he usually does (“I can’t hear you!”) (ha), and as for the fans up close, if they didn’t want to get wet, too bad. Many buckets of water were tossed, and there was a spray gun soaker put into play.
What songs would’ve I liked to hear? Well, lots of songs. Newer tunes… I surely missed “No More Tears,” and off the new album, “The Almighty Dollar.” I particularly like the No Rest for the Wicked album, but there was nothing from that. No “Crazy Babies,” “Miracle Man,” or “Fire in the Sky,” the latter of which he’d be just as unlikely to play as he would “Killer of Giants,” “Center of the Universe,” or “So Tired” (all of which are my favorites).
Despite all of this, why would the show get such a good rating from me? Three words… it was FREE. And at least in my case, for this particular show, the plan worked.
Who knows how it’ll go next year.
The 411: It would've been interesting had I not bought the new album, to see if there would still be tickets left. I can't comment on that since I bought the album. All I'll say is that this experiement seems to have worked. $15 for a new Ozzy album with two free concert tickets included, even if you just go to see Ozzy? That's why my rating is what it is...
