Location: Piazzola sul Brenta / Padua / Italy
Concert date: 04.07.2010
Attendance: 10000
Ticket price: 50 €
At the start of the week, none other than Ozzy Osbourne dropped by the charming Italian town of Piazzola sul Brenta. The trip to Padua undoubtedly promised a memorable gig, even though with practically every album he’s put out in recent years Ozzy has been steadily sliding into musical mediocrity, never mind the reality shows and the rest of the junk patented under the brand Sharon Ltd. The days when Osbourne set the standards for hard rock are sadly long gone, but still, on Monday hordes of his devotees were pouring en masse behind the walls of Anfiteatra Camerini a good two hours before showtime. No question, the mere presence of Ozzy Osbourne works like a magnet on a crowd, even though it’ll soon be 20 years since the peak of his solo career.
First off, we have to admit up front that we stepped into the embrace of Anfiteatra Camerini armed with a baroque bouquet of mixed feelings, because nobody knew what was in store for us. On one hand, we had a gig by a hard rock icon, a man who at the start of a prolific musical career first sweated over laying the foundations of metal, and later, with the arrival of the ’80s, strode to unimaginable heights of commercial success as a heavy metal misfit, a fallen angel or, if you like, the “Prince of Darkness”. On the other hand, damn it, memory kept stubbornly summoning images of those well-known “television feats” that had mercilessly kneaded the music legend into a bizarre, parodic and easily steered media caricature. The fear of an Osbourne stage reprise didn’t fade until the moment Ozzy first shuffled absently around the stage and, after the crowd’s delighted response, let “Bark at the Moon” off the leash.
After a long time, Ozzy Osbourne decided this year on a more substantial shake-up of his backing band. Not long ago the loudest news was that after a good two decades good old Zakk Wylde had said goodbye, the guitarist whose brilliant playing kept the blood pumping through the veins of some of Ozzy’s best studio works, like “No Rest For The Wicked” or “No More Tears”. The freshly minted backing cavalry wasn’t capable of delivering any big surprises, which was to be expected. The whole Ozzy Osbourne machine simply grinds along a pre-drawn plan. Most of the pre-show questions and speculation about Ozzy’s band surely revolved around Firewind string-slinger Kostas Karamitroudis, who prefers to go by Gus G. The guy did his duty with distinction, though in his own way he nested a bit too routinely among the pillars of his predecessors’ legacy. We got no particular sonic discoveries amid the wheezing ironwork of “Crazy Train”, “I Don’t Want to Change the World” or “I Don’t Know”, since Gus as a rule put together replicas of the originals that were, sure, technically polished. And although Ozzy’s sound has for decades rested mainly on two key elements, namely that recognizable voice and bravura guitar flights, these days the fuss over picking an Ozzy Osbourne guitarist seems completely superfluous, provided of course that the candidates for walking in the footsteps of masters like Randy Rhoads, Jake E Lee or Zakk Wylde have enough technical chops. In other words, it makes no difference today if instead of those guys it’s Ljudmila Novak standing next to Ozzy on stage, as long as her fingers fly well.
In a good hour and a half, Ozzy delivered most of the highlights of his solo career, though surprisingly little attention went to promoting the latest album “Scream”, which suggests he’s well aware of how flawed his current output is. Flirting with Black Sabbath is of course an obligation at every one of his shows, and besides the standard gems from the godfathers of metal, “Fairies Wear Boots” brought back memories of the romance with Iommi and company, and we even got a few outlines of the “Rat Salad” motif, from which the “filler” drum and guitar solos sprouted. Ozzy played the role of first-rate live attraction with an excellent grade. A little flame of that untameable wildness still smolders in him, the thing that made him a constant thorn in the side of self-appointed guardians of morality throughout his whole career. Sadly, today that wildness is more than ever a prisoner of a permanently fossilized little body, whose motor skills give the impression of a slightly absent-minded man with chronic inflammatory bowel disease. Still, it was a pleasure to watch him on stage. He was exactly that slightly bewildered but admirable specimen we’ve heard so many stories and anecdotes about. Osbourne quickly adopted the crowd with heart and body. He put his maximum into the evening, both musically and as a performer (within his abilities, of course). In doing so he leaned on the old entertainer’s tricks, his trademark flinging of buckets of water, and even upgraded the whole thing technologically with a mini water cannon. At one point he received a rubber bat “as a gift” from the audience, and robbed of its promised magic of low-flying dental decapitation, it flew back disappointed toward the rowdy crowd.
The energy-charged show was delivered with confidence, in a spirit of professionalism where everyone’s roles are clearly assigned and where, with the exception of the night’s main attraction, there’s no room for off-script maneuvering. John Michael Osbourne is still a feast for the eyes, and an above-average vocal form paired with memorable showman moves and a perfectly well-oiled serving of Ozzy hit-ology is a guarantee of genuine live-music bliss.
Setlist
1. Bark at the Moon 2. Let Me Hear You Scream 3. Mr. Crowley 4. I Don’t Know 5. Fairies Wear Boots 6. Suicide Solution 7. Road To Nowhere 8. Shot In The Dark 9. Rat Salad 10. Iron Man 11. Killer Of Giants 12. I Don’t Want to Change the World 13. War Pigs 14. Crazy Train —encore— 15. Paranoid
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