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In the days leading up to the Ozzy Osbourne concert I wondered which Ozzy I would see - the hapless old man you seem to see everywhere or the dynamic frontman I grew up with.  Turns out I got to see both during his recent show.  The majority of the time he was the Ozzy of old, using the same lines that he’s relied on for the past 30+ years, telling the crowd to go crazy and how much he loved everyone.  There were a few times though where he showed his age and it looked like someone’s grandfather up on stage, bent over and tired.

The set list relied heavily on earlier material with a large selection of songs from Blizzard of Ozz and his days with Black Sabbath.  There were a few suprises like “Shot in the Dark” and “Faries Wear Boots” which were a nice departure from his usual setlist.  Overall the vocals sounded good and Ozzy seemed really into performing.  I’ve admittedly lost my interest in Ozzy since his reality show hit but seeing this show reminded me of why I was a fan in the first place.

The backing back was solid but didn’t blow me away as I had hoped.  I keep hearing a lot of good things about guitarist Gus G but I keep getting the feeling that between his playing on Scream and in concert that he’s being held back and not given a chance to show his talent.  The low point of the show was the guitar solo and drum solo, both of which were way too long.  While both musicans proved their ability with their respective instruments, I got bored with each less than a minute into it.

Slash’s solo band opened the show.  Having Slash on the bill was the deciding factor in my going to the concert but for some reason their performance didn’t connect with me.  I’ve heard so many good things about their show at Harrah’s Voodoo Lounge earlier this year and I’m wondering if their show isn’t better suited for smaller venues instead of large arenas.  They hit the stage ten minutes before the posted show time and played for an hour with a nice setlist with a mix of songs from his solo album, Velvet Revolver, and Guns ‘n’ Roses.  I would definately like to see them again in a more intimate venue to see if there’s any difference.

The past couple of weeks I’ve been listening to the Christmas episodes of one of my favorite podcasts The Quiet Village.  There was one last year and two the year before, and they’re wonderful.  They feature Christmas songs in a Hawaiian/Exotica vein and the selections are pretty much perfect.  One of the things that I love about it is that I hear songs I never hear anywhere else unless I bust out my Ultralounge Christmas albums.

This of course gets me going on the local Christmas stations - why won’t they play any of this stuff?  It’s not like the songs are unfamiliar to people.  They’re traditional songs and no one’s going to shut off the station is they hear Les Baxter’s version of Sleigh Ride instead of Debbie Gibson’s.

One other thing, when did Dean Martin’s “Marshmallow World” get taken off the Christmas playlist at these stations?  Did someone decide that Bob Segar’s horrible version of “The Little Drummer Boy” needed to get more play?

So this year the plan of posting every day of November for NaBloPoMo worked out and went a lot smoother than it did last year.  That shouldn’t have been the case since things are a lot crazier around my house this year but I think the realization of how things were made me more focused on writing posts every day.

Anyway, I feel less burned out than I did last year so hopefully I’ll keep posting at a regular clip but based on the last ten days it doesn’t look promising.

I’ve given some thought to what my favorite albums of 2010 and what a pain in the ass it is.  As usual, my favorite albums that I bought in the past year weren’t actually released in 2010.  I need to check dates but so far I like the new Girl Talk a lot, along with the Black Keys and Slash’s solo album.

Honestly, I don’t really see anything being released today that interests me. The lists I’ve seen are short in general compared to other weeks. Sure, the Black Eyed Peas are releasing something, there’s a couple of greatest hits coming out, a Glee album and a three disc Heaven 17 reissue are coming out, but nothing’s really catching my fancy.

It seems to me that this is still prime time to be churning out stuff in preparation for Christmas.  I expected to see more greatest hits collections or box sets coming out.  Traditionally as the end of December draws nearer you see less and less coming out but it seems to me like this has come up faster than it has in previous years.  Has the recording industry shot its wad for the year?  Once Black Friday’s over, is it not even worth bothering with until next year?  I’m not sure.

Something a little curious did come out today though - the Lambchop Box Set.  It’s an eight CD collection that Amazon has for $107.00.  Allmusic describes it as “chamber pop” which I find incredibly interesting, just not $107.00 interesting.

So for Black Friday I ended up just getting this and the Jimi Hendrix Christmas EP.  Love Garden didn’t have any copies of the Sinatra album and the Black Keys 2-LP set was $40, but I still might end up going back and picking it up.

I’m still not 100% sure why I got this.  Metallica’s a great live band, sure, but I’ve got a buttload of live material from them and this didn’t really have any songs I couldn’t find elsewhere.  I suppose I was hoping playing for the small crowd (~150) would result in a looser performance with some suprises.  To a certain extent I suppose it is but not as much as I had hoped.  There’s a lot of chatter in between songs where the band tries to act like an up and coming act, but they go back to the well too often for that and it becomes tedious.

The album has the following songs:

- No Remorse

- Fuel

- Havester of Sorrow

- Welcome Home (Sanitarium)

- For Whom the Bell Tolls

- Master of Puppets

- Sad But True

- Motorbreath

- Seek and Destroy

At the end of “For Whom the Bell Tolls” there is an impromptu version of “The Frayed Ends of Sanity” with what sounds like an audience member singing.

Metallica’s another band who has a pretty tight sound based on lots of touring and that’s on display here.  Despite the size of the crowd, they don’t half-ass it and play just as hard as they would for an arena.  With the exception of “Fuel”, every song on here is a favorite of mine and I like that they left out overplayed songs like “One” and “Enter Sandman”.

Overall a pretty solid effort and since most of the recent live stuff I have is digital, it’s nice to have Metallica live material in a physical format.  It’s definately cool of the band to offer something like this to independent record stores, I feel like they went above and beyond on this one.