[Boiler]

You wait until Noddy Holder's time comes...

[Killer Whale]

Brum vs Wolverhampton incoming...

[Boiler]

Brum vs Wolverhampton incoming...

Which would be spectacularly missing the point...

[Rosvanian]

The Ozzy grief-fest.

Am I alone in finding it all over-the-top, slightly distasteful, and faintly ridiculous ? It’s the biggest outbreak of performative, vicarious grieving since Princess Diana.

Okay, Osborne was from Birmingham. And he was fairly successful as a popular musician, and kind of well-known because of his TV appearances on “reality” TV - much parodied as a kind of clueless, drug-addled Brummie half-wit by the likes of Jon Culshaw and Rory Bremner. A “celebrity” in contemporary terms.

But that was all. He was not someone whose (not un-anticipated) death I would have anticipated as triggering the mass outpouring of grief that it seemingly has.

Living in Birmingham, I’m acutely aware of today’s public obsequies, centred as they are on the city. It’s on every national and, particularly, local news bulletin.

There have been frankly idiotic online petitions set up, one calling for Osborne to be given a full state funeral (which might have been a piss-take, but I can’t be certain), and one demanding that Birmingham’s airport be re-named Ozzy Osborne Airport (I think that one was deadly serious).

Frankly, it’s a little embarassing. I’ve found myself wondering which, if any, other famous sons or daughters of the city of Birmingham would engender such grief-driven excess by dint of their demise. Jeff Lynne? Bev Bevan? Jasper Carrott ? Can’t think of one.

Complete cringe and utterly baffling. I wonder what Iommi and Butler really think, given they were the creative force behind Black Sabbath's heyday. As for his solo career, the Americans are welcome to it.

[Andy McDandy]

There's a school of thought that the Diana circus essentially created, fuelled, and finally consumed itself.

Her death was announced at a very quiet point in the daily, weekly, and annual news cycles - early hours of a Sunday morning at the end of August. It was in the early days of 24 hour rolling news. Had she died 2 years earlier, or maybe even a few months later, her death would have been announced, and the world would have moved on. Instead, we got round the clock coverage because there was nothing else to report on. And then, the scarcity of information meant that what little was known had to be repeated over and over, and padded out with opinions from anyone available. By that stage, every news outlet was on it, and none dared back out for fear of missing something - any tiny detail that might just let them sneak one past the opposition. Then the one-upmanship starts. Everyone has to grieve a bit louder, reveal a more personal connection, make a more outlandish suggestion for preserving her memory, or demand a harsher punishment for anyone not joining in.

Ten years later, we saw it again with Madeline McCann. Had she disappeared from a damp caravan site outside Workington, the only people remembering her today would be her family.

[Abernathy]

The other day, I thought maybe I should actually listen to some of Black Sabbath's music, to try to see where all this adulation has come from. So I fired up my Tidal account and dialled up the Sab. I listened to about 5 tracks, including "Paranoid", "War Pigs", and something else.

It was fucking awful.

[Killer Whale]

I remember a friend excitedly playing it to me in his bedroom when we were kids. As a 14 year old punk rocker, I recall thinking "A drum solo - on an LP? What is this bollocks?"

[Rosvanian]

The other day, I thought maybe I should actually listen to some of Black Sabbath's music, to try to see where all this adulation has come from. So I fired up my Tidal account and dialled up the Sab. I listened to about 5 tracks, including "Paranoid", "War Pigs", and something else.

It was fucking awful.

Well, either you're a metal head or you're not. I guess you're not. If you are, then you'll know that their DNA is in pretty much in every metal band that ever existed, regardless of whether they were a direct influence. When I first heard Black Sabbath in 1976/77 they were loathed by the NME and Melody Maker which is perhaps why I checked them out.

[kreuzberger]

"Finished with "my" woman because she wouldn't help me with my life."

Was he pining for a therapist or a manager? Frankly, I am pleased that I could bin that mutually-derivative circle jerk on the spot.

In the early 70s, being into the Dolls, Bowie and Lou Reed was a more than satisfying diet. You certainly didn't need Sabbaff, Genesis and all those pointless drum solos. The stuff that allegedly moved all those decrepit 19 ear olds left me utterly bereft.

You can take all that wildly-wilderness bollocks and shove that too.

[davidjay]

It's a bit ridiculous but it's bringing money into the city, and God knows we need it. We've said for decades that Birmingham never bigs itself up so a bit of harmless fun in the silly season is fine by me.

[Youngian]

Well, either you're a metal head or you're not. I guess you're not. If you are, then you'll know that their DNA is in pretty much in every metal band that ever existed, regardless of whether they were a direct influence. When I first heard Black Sabbath in 1976/77 they were loathed by the NME and Melody Maker which is perhaps why I checked them out.

I was lucky as a ten year old first taking notice of Top of the Pops to be absorbing a high point in British pop music in 1978, X Ray Specs, Ian Jury, Clash, Kate Bush, Elvis Costello etc. New style and talent but all familiar three to four minute pop and rock and roll singles. Stumbling upon slightly older Sabbath, Zeppelin and Deep Purple mark II albums a bit later was like something from outer space (by then despised and ignored by the squares and the cool kids). Teenagers are still discovering these albums from this brief snapshot in time 50 odd years ago. Their personnel along with the prog rock groups had moved onto to making very good commercially accessible singles by the early 80s that even made Top of the Pops. Curiously post Ozzy Black Sabbath were an outlier by remaining an album and touring band in the Dio era. And a hugely successful one.