My Experience Travelling.

I wanted to get away as far as I could for as long as I could. I didn’t mind where, so I searched until I found the best sounding alternative. I know this has started off like the excerpt of a thrilling novel, but for me, life had become the opposite. You see, I had seen life as a mundane entity, and I started internally seeing myself as the Narrator from Fight Club (minus the insomnia, underground fighting, sociopathic cult and terrorism etc.) and whereas the Narrator found escape through starting the Fight Club, I wanted to find my escape through… travelling (which, as I type this out sounds ironically mundane in comparison). I have a degree in Music Journalism, and quite an important aspect of that- or any journalism I suppose- is communication. You have to be somewhat good at communication to succeed in that field of work and I’m not calling myself successful, but communication is one of my strengths. I value the transaction of communication between one person to another as such an integral part of personal development and I try to get better at it by building rapports with as many people as I can in as little time as possible. Like a little internal challenge I set for myself to make my life a bit more interesting.

So, I decided to stop working after the Christmas break (I worked in a school) and to start working in hostels in Central Europe: Vienna and Ljubljana (thus far). Not that I *really* like hostels, or anything- don’t get me wrong, I think they are great, but I really wanted to stretch out my communication skills on people other than the children I’ve been having to teach. There’s only so many conversations about Minecraft and Fortnite that a grown man can handle before the words ‘creeper’ and ‘floss’ begin to ‘spawn’ a migraine. One thing I didn’t anticipate to come from working in a hostel, however, is both extremely obvious (and left me feeling quite stupid) and extremely bittersweet: it’s that people who you talk to and genuinely have a connection to end up leaving after a couple of days. How I didn’t foresee this being a thing I would have to deal with, I have no idea. Looking back, it seems so naive and I like to humour myself by thinking that I was like an Annie Wilkes figure off of Misery, not having any plans to let the guests leave. Like previously mentioned, it is an extremely bittersweet feeling. After a while, it becomes a mental exercise to not try and view each conversation with guests as nothing more than a meaningless exchange of vocal vibrations and air, but to think of it as an experience instead. Without social media, it would be even harder too. I have been here for over a week and must have spoken close to 100 people and, without the exchanging of social media usernames, it would be so difficult to keep track of most of their names (even though for them they can remember your name with ease because you’re only one of a few people they talk to). It’s like going to the barbers and asking for the usual, expecting the barber to remember what the fuck they did to your hair before, after seeing hundreds of people in between then and now.

It has also put into perspective how disconnected the UK is from the rest of Europe. I’m thinking of writing a separate piece for this whole topic because it covers so much ground, but I noticed a whole different level of inclusivity from those in mainland Europe. A huge factor in me choosing Austria as a place to visit is that I wanted to improve on my German as a language, and I’ve not had to exercise it as much as I would have liked to because everybody speaks English. Not that this is a bad thing by any means, it’s helped me out of many situations in which I need to communicate with somebody- but it has highlighted a deeper sense of isolationism from myself and the country that I am from. I have spoken to people who don't have English as a first language who bounce from one language to another effortlessly, because they were taught from an early age how to, whereas I can’t even speak a language other than English because it’s not compulsory or even prioritised in British education. And even then I come from Burnley so it could be convincingly argued that I can’t even speak English fluently. I believe (and will go into more in another post) that this subconsciously perpetuates an underlying sense of colonialism and self importance among British people, which is something I actively try to distance myself from. If anything, working abroad and hearing other people’s life experiences has helped me realise that the UK is by no means the worst country to live, and I do recognise and appreciate all the opportunities and privileges that coming from the UK has given me. But that contrast only emphasises what I knew to be wrong with the UK to begin with and what made me want to leave in the first place.

The cultural significance of Black Sabbath's song 'Black Sabbath' (University Re-upload)

Many refer to Black Sabbath as the ‘godfathers’ of heavy metal; they have influenced generations of musicians. With the release of their self-titled song, Black Sabbath, they introduced the world to a whole new perspective on music. Culturally and socially, I will assess the topics of media, class, world events and religion.

The origin of ‘heavy metal’ is an amalgamation of different musical aspects. In 2006, Ozzy is quoted saying the band “never used to write a structured song. There’d be a long intro that goes into a jazz piece, then goes all folky” (Stolz, 2017). The term “heavy metal” is still a term they refute today. The origin can be traced to a review in Creem in May 1971’s of Sir Lord Baltimore’s debut, Kingdom Come (Mercury) (Saunders, 1971, and Weinstein, 2014), over a year after the album release. The first time Ozzy heard the words ‘heavy’ and ‘metal’ used together was in the song ‘Born to be Wild’. “The press just latched on to it after that. We certainly didn’t come up with it ourselves. As far as we were concerned, we were just a blues band that had decided to write some scary music.” (Osbourne, 2010). With lyrics like “Satan's sitting there, he's smiling, watches those flames get higher and higher”, it’s clear to see what separated them from conventional blues bands, although they kept many of the same themes.

The “Heavy Metal” inclusion in George-Warren et al. (1983) read: it “was introduced into the pop vocabulary by Steppenwolf in their 1969 hit ‘Born to be Wild’ (with the lyrics ‘heavy metal thunder’) and subsequently redefined by critic Lester Bangs in the ‘rock-n-roll’ magazine Creem”. Although it’s disputed whether the origin lies with him, Bangs is also noted for critiquing Black Sabbath’s first album, where he relates well-known blues and psych rock artists: Cream and Vanilla Fudge (Bangs, 1970).

Black Sabbath’s musical inspiration could be the late 1960’s counterculture of the time. In Ozzy’s autobiography (2010) he recalls “The hippy-dippy shit that was all over the radio was also winding me up, big time. All these polo-necked wankers from grammar schools were going out and buying songs like ‘San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)’. On the bus back home the next day I remember humming the tune to ‘San Francisco’ and thinking, I should write my own fucking anti-hippy song. I even came up with a title: ‘Aston (Be Sure to Wear Some Glass in Your Face)’.” This distancing from popular culture may be attributed to one of the deciding factors in the band’s future direction, aesthetically and lyrically.

Black Sabbath can also be considered as ‘working-class idols’, with their unique sound being partly attributed to Tony Iommi’s hand injury coming from factory work like many working-class people at the time. The unique changing of his guitar strings to accommodate his injury detuned the guitar, loosening them so they were easier to play, which also invested a unique depth to the sound (Raul, 2009). The sound distorted, making it deeper and darker in resonance- the result of which became the melodical foundations for Black Sabbath’s unique style. For the song ‘Black Sabbath’ there were also anti-Christian messages woven into the melody. “I’ve since been told that Tony’s riff is based on what’s known as the ‘Devil’s interval’, or the ‘tritone’” (Osbourne, 2010). The tritone, which was played scarcely outside of classical music before 1970 (with examples like Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze being exempt) (Wiederhorn, n.d.), is a collection of notes that, when played together, create an unnerving atmospheric tune.

The melody was based on the ‘Devil’s interval’, however the lyrics of Black Sabbath are very pro-God/anti-Devil. The line “Oh no, no, please God help me” (Black Sabbath, 1970) shows the negative feelings the unnamed character felt when being taken by the Devil. However, the sleeve for their album vinyl boasted an inverted cross, representing satanic rituals (Ogechukwu, 2009), so although they stray from anti-Christian messages lyrically, visually this artwork implies otherwise.

In Sound of the Beast (Christe, 2003), Black Sabbath is linked to the then-current counterculture. In an extract taken in the first chapter, he states:

“Heavy Metal came into being just as rock and roll was in the midst of a disintegration. In April 1970, while Black Sabbath were marking the pop charts, Paul McCartney announced the breakup of The Beatles. Instead of comforting their audience in the uncertain world, rock giants Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison were all dead within the year from drug overdoses.”

He uses this to signify the end of the era of ‘hippy’ culture, and alludes to introducing a culture of violence and anger.

“As the nonviolent flower children gave way to the Black Panther party, Kent State campus massacres and increasingly violent street revolts by students in Paris ... it was out with the old hopes and in with new pragmatism.”

This counterculture meant that Black Sabbath gave an escape to the people at the time, with their anti-religious messages and dark, gothic themes. Although, it may be argued this ‘escapism’ wasn’t intended, as the band had openly avoided going to America at the time as to not appear as though they were in support of the Manson Family, who were notorious at the time.

In Not Abba: The Real Story of the 1970s, which was an autopsy of the decade’s societal values, Haslam (2005) notes the blandness and repetitiveness of media popularity at the time. This could push the idea that Black Sabbath were part of a counterculture, being it wasn’t a secret mainstream media didn’t ‘get them’, which may support the notion that they provided that sense of escapism from the world.

In conclusion, Black Sabbath were a band in the right place at the right time. Tony Iommi’s hand injury uniquely shaped the band’s sound and shaped an entirely new genre of music. Political, cultural and social movements at the time made the band’s appeal all that more appetising, with people finding refuge in the macabre lyrics and gothic aesthetics. The fall of hippy culture and the death of rock-and-roll pushed new alternatives in musical style and the infamy that came with anti-Christian messages and imagery made Black Sabbath one of the most talked about artists at the time- and made their song, Black Sabbath, one of the most important milestones in music.