Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Wicked World




In 1969, 4 men in an unknown, British, working-class Blues band saw a long line of people outside the cinema, waiting to see a Boris Karloff horror film entitled Black Sabbath. Realization struck their stoned-out minds that people were lining up to pay to get the crap scared out of them.

They changed their band name to the aforementioned movie title, and started writing horror-movie inspired lyrics set to dark, scarier sounding music. Thus, heavy metal music was born.


When I was 13 years old, I found an old, discarded cassette tape of Black Sabbath's second album, Paranoid. From the moment I heard the sirens wailing along with the opening chords to War Pigs, I've become a Sabbath fan for the rest of my life.

One of the highlights of my young adult life was flying to the West Coast to attend the Black Sabbath reunion tour in 2000 with all of the original band members...with Pantera as the opening act. They weren't scheduled to come to Hawaii, and I knew it was a once in a lifetime chance to see one of my favorite bands, and I wasn't disappointed one bit, despite what essentially added up to the most expensive concert I've ever paid to attend when you add in airfare, accommodation and transportation...all while still attending college and money was not easy to come by.

But please excuse my pleasant reminisces.

What inspired this blog post was listening to one of my favorite songs while driving to work the other day. It was a song from their first album, entitled Wicked World.


This young band that deliberately set out to make horror music, wrote a song featuring aspects of life that they thought made it a "wicked world." The first verse mentioned the juxtaposition of blue collar workers trudging off to work just to survive, while people in other countries were counting their dead. The second verse refers to politicians who decide who gets to go and die in wars, and how they use tax money to fund things like space travel to the moon while people are dying of diseases.

These were things young 19-20 year old British men in 1969 thought made up a "wicked world"

But the third verse?


A woman goes to work every day after day
She just goes to work just to earn her pay
Child sitting crying by a life that's harder
He doesn't even know who is his father

In 1969, a fatherless child neglected at home because the mother had to work to support herself and her child was "wicked."

My, my how the times have changed.

What was once universally considered a social tragedy has now been normalized and accepted. A world that considers working single mom's neglecting their Fatherless children as normal, or even desirable, is a wicked world indeed.



*Hat tip to Christian J's Saving the boys raised by single mothers blog for the preceding image.

9 comments:

Hughman said...

Cool comment.

Incidentally, I'm going to the Barton Arms tonight, Ozzy's old drinking haunt and where he got his first gigs in Aston. It's a brilliant place

*** ******** said...

that image is priceless. it's the secret no one wants to talk about.
women act like they're being independent by seeking divorce. women are FAR more likely to initiate divorce than men (esp. in no fault states). but men are expected to go to work, 60 hrs a week, have a heart attack and just leave the checkbook on the counter. a man who wants to abandon his family/responsibilities it a piece of shit.....which reminds me of the original "feminist work" in this line of thinking - The Awakening.

djc said...

Well call me a piece of shit then. I'm actually happier not having to put up with the day to day drama of family life. Thanks feminism, for liberating ME.

greenlander said...

It's funny how women have a choice to be a single mother or not.

Men don't have a choice. They just get to pay taxes to support all the socialist infrastructure to make womens' choices viable.

If the government actually wasted all of the money I give them it wouldn't make me as mad. What the government actually does is spend money on things that undermine my standing as a man... and that really pisses me off.

Anonymous said...

My take on no-fault divorce in that it has benefited men. Because the women now hold the cards in the marriage (because if a man gets 'bored' he will likely be on the hook for years of alimony, booted out of the house etc etc) then the ONUS is on women to prove their worth.

This idea will be slow in evolving in the MRM, but it is true. Men are still obligated to hold down a good job, be grounded and reliable etc, but marriage 2.0 (which feminists and their sharklawyers foisted on us) means women must prove their worth/reliability/accountability. They've had a free pass for too long with the results we see today.

LordSomber said...

The only thing more shameful than the man who won't come forth and be a father to his child is the mother who thinks he's not necessary in the first place.

RealityForever said...

ha-HA!! I'm actually the one who made that single mother poster a little while back! My how my creations have gotten around.. and yes, I've made it quite clear they are public domain - feel free to use more! Most of them are here http://americanfemaleposters.blogspot.com/
Good tidings.

Anonymous said...

Re: Black Sabbath... There's also After Forever, which might be the first Christian metal song!

http://www.lyrics007.com/Black%20Sabbath%20Lyrics/After%20Forever%20Lyrics.html

Anonymous said...

I heard Sabbath the first time in the mid seventies, but did not get hooked until the metal revival in the early eighties and I saw the for the first and only time in 1983 or 1984 when they were having Ian Gillan as the Ozzy replacement. Good times.