Mad Cat Live! to Perform Black Sabbath Vol. 4 at The Gleason Room
By: A.A. Cristi Sep. 14, 2017
Mad Cat kicks off their 18th season with their popular concert series Mad Cat Live performing Black Sabbath's Vol. 4. Mad Cat Live is a series dedicated to presenting transitional albums by major artists and deconstructing them in order to place them into a current context. Sabbath's Vol.4 is a perfect fit for the series, as it marked a tipping point for the band; pushing their creative limits as well as driving them into a state of drug abuse, paranoia, and violence. Just in time for Halloween, this limited engagement will be a must-see live event for fans of Sabbath; a heavy metal band who began their dramatic 50 year history in Birmingham, England as a jazz-blues quartet called Earth, only to find themselves evolving into one of the most influential bands in the history of hard rock.
Breathing life into today's generation of punks and rockers, Black Sabbath provided a response to the punctured love bubble of the 60s, an angry war cry to all things soft, light, and filled with pretense. The audacity of their rebellion in the face of a changing nation, is all the more relevant today.
Black Sabbath's Vol. 4 is the fourth studio album by the band, released in September 1972. Black Sabbath began work on their fourth album at the Record Plant studios in Los Angeles. The recording process was plagued with problems, due to the level of substance abuse indulged in by the band at the time. Coming from working class homes in rainy Birmingham, the band was not accustomed to the level of comfort and excess provided in Bel Air, and took advantage of what was at their disposal. In the studio, the band regularly had large speaker boxes full of cocaine delivered. Meanwhile, back at The Du Pont mansion where they were staying, there was a constant unholy bacchanal. Band members look back on the process with a mix of nostalgia and chagrin; the time period being a bit of a blur, with moments of creative genius arising out of the chaos. In his autobiography I Am Ozzy, singer Ozzy Osbourne speaks at length about the drugged out atmosphere surrounding the sessions, stating, "In spite of all the arsing around, musically those few weeks in Bel Air were the strongest we'd ever been" but admitted, "Eventually we started to wonder where the fuck all the coke was coming from ...". The effects of the drug informed many aspects of the new album, especially in the lyrics. Many of the album's lyrics seemingly derive from the paranoid delusions of cocaine abuse, while the Sabbath classic "Snowblind" is an open celebration of the drug that the group intended as the title song of the album until their nervous record company intervened.
Vol. 4 sees Black Sabbath beginning to experiment further with the heavy sound they had become known for.
Osbourne delivered some of the standout vocal performances of his career on Vol. 4, singing with a range and clarity throughout that surpassed everything he had previously done. "Supernaut" featured an Iommi riff so classic that artists as diverse as Frank Zappa and Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham would later name it as a favorite.
Although most of the album's songs are in the band's trademark heavy style, others demonstrate a more sensitive approach which the band had never attempted before. Perhaps the best example of this experimentation can be heard in the song "Changes". Iommi taught himself to play the piano after finding one in the ballroom of the Bel-Air mansion they were renting, the Du Pont mansion. It was on this piano that the song "Changes" was composed. "With 'Changes', Tony just sat down at the piano and came up with this beautiful riff", Osbourne writes in his memoir. "I hummed a melody over the top, and Geezer wrote these heartbreaking lyrics about the break-up Bill was going through with his wife. I thought that was brilliant from the moment we recorded it."
For Osbourne, Vol 4 was Sabbath's peak, after which the band fell victim to infighting and financial mismanagement. "We were like a dying star and we should have pulled the plug there and then," he groans.
Vol. 4 was released in September 1972, and while most critics of the era were dismissive of the album, it achieved gold status in less than a month, and was the band's fourth consecutive release to sell one million copies in the United States. It reached number 13 on Billboard's pop album chart and number 8 on the UK Albums Chart. Following an extensive tour of the US, the band toured Australia for the first time in 1973, and later Europe.
Rock critic Lester Bangs, who had derided the band's first two albums, applauded Vol. 4, writing in Creem, "We have seen the Stooges take on the night ferociously and go tumbling into the maw, and Alice Cooper is currently exploiting it for all it's worth, turning it into a circus. But there is only one band that has dealt with it honestly on terms meaningful to vast portions of the audience, not only grappling with it in a mythic structure that's both personal and powerful but actually managing to prosper as well. And that band is Black Sabbath."
Sabbath just finished up their official farewell tour in January 2017. This October 2017, an homage to their music and theatrics comes to life with an extensive live set by Mad Cat Live. The band includes local giants and Mad Cat regulars Steph Taylor and Nabedi Osorio of The State Of, Darren Bruck of The Mystery Tones, Jim Camacho, Fritz Dorigo, and Erik Fabregat of the Jim Camacho band. Only a four show run, expect to see tickets go quickly. Friday's performance will be taking place on Friday the 13th.
Music direction by Paul Tei*
Mad Cat Live! band includes: Darren Bruck, Fritz Dorigo, Erik Fabregat*, Nabedi Osorio, and Steph Taylor*
Tickets available soon online at www.madcattheatre.org or www.livenation.com, $15-25 plus applicable fees. October 12th through October 14th at 8pm, October 15th at 5pm. The Gleason Room, Backstage at The Fillmore, 1700 Washington Avenue, Miami Beach FL 33139
Mad Cat Theatre Company, Inc. is proud resident theatre company of Miami Theater Center.
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