Ozzy/Rob Zombie 01-10/08 Philadelphia

I'm no pro, but I'll post some thoughts about last night's concert...

I missed the opening band. I don't even know who it was, but from what I heard, they weren't worth mentioning anyway.

Zombie was great. Even if you're not a fan of the music, the stage show is very entertaining. Pyro, video screens with cartoons, old horror films, clips of Russ Meyer movies (boobies galore!!), dancing girls on stage, giant prop robots, stobe lights, the whole deal. The entire band is constantly moving around the stage, runnning back and forth and Rob bounces around, head banging and swinging his hair around the whole time. The man knows how to put on a show. During the guitar solo, Rob jumped off stage and ran around the perimiter of the floor with 2 big spot-lights, waving his arms like a mad-man. The drum riser looked like a giant cartoon devil with the drummer about 20 feet up from the stage. Every song had video to accompany it and he played all the hits. My favorite part is during "Dragula", he's playing clips of Herman Munster drag racing in the Dragula hot rod.

The opening video montage for Ozzy is hysterical. If anyone has seen Ozzy in the last few years, you know what I'm talking about. They digitally put Ozzy into different clips from popular tv shows and movies. It's about a 5-minute montage and it's probably one of the highlights of the concert. Ozzy was ok, but he sounded very strained singing the songs. Also too, I noticed the music sounded different. I'm no musician, but it sounded like the band was playing them in a lower key or something, maybe to compensate for Ozzy not being able to sing the high-range stuff anymore. Bark at the Moon sounded off, as did Crazy Train and most of the other stuff as well. I didn't stay till the end, but I saw a good 45-50 minutes of Oz. I split during Zakk's solo. It was pretty good overall. He still knows how to entertain. It's a shame, because either his age or just the length of the tour (or both, really) was really starting to show. His voice sounded hoarse when he talked to the crowd and cracked quite a few times while singing. Overall though it was a good show, a decent sized crowd (10,000, maybe?) and people seemed to have a good time, judging from the aroma. I had a nice contact high. While I'm sure Sharon will keep him on the road till he drops dead on stage, I'd recommend going to see the Prince of Darkness once more, just for old times sake.

I saw White Zombie a bunch of times back in the 90s. They easily put on the most visually amazing show I've ever seen. And beyond that it was just awesome all around. Definitely in the top 3 of concert experiences for me. Rob Zombie puts on a show just as good.

ah man i always wanted to see ozzy. i had to chance but it was either see ozzy or metallica and metallica won