1971 and 1973 newspaper articles about Sabbath

[Sabbabbath]

1971 and 1973 newspaper articles about Sabbath and/or their concerts (JPG scans):

Daily Press Sun, Mar 21 1971 https://i.imgur.com/xFmfNH8.jpg
Daily Press Sun, Jul 18 1971 https://i.imgur.com/zucXexS.jpg
The Philadelphia Inquirer, Thu Jul 22 1971 https://i.imgur.com/2MS4u6O.jpg
Asbury Park Evening Press, Fri Jul 23 1971 https://i.imgur.com/JbFrvxm.jpg
Asbury Park Evening Press, Mon Jul 26 1971 https://i.imgur.com/6fySL8N.jpg
Asbury Park Evening Press, Thu Jul 27 1972 https://i.imgur.com/ZybFiJp.jpg
The Indianapolis News Mon, Aug 16 1971 https://i.imgur.com/jdo0z6U.jpg
The Sydney Morning Herald, Wed Jan 17 1973 https://i.imgur.com/LYEQ6AW.jpg

[Zzzptm]

Love these. First thing I do when I see old newspapers is look at the ads. One that caught my eye was "Tom Jones... Good seats still available!"... back before TicketBastard would buy up all the tickets for an event in seconds after they became available.

[JSTHECONQUEROR]

Michael Symons is a JERK!

[Zzzptm]

Michael Symons is a JERK!

That Sydney Morning Herald review was a right panning, wasn't it?

[Typhon]

Michael Symons is a JERK!

How could that newspaper send someone THAT ignorant of music to cover a rock concert? 

[Sabbabbath]

Michael Symons is a JERK!

How could that newspaper send someone THAT ignorant of music to cover a rock concert? 

Yeah, it is embarassing for everybody involved. I don't know what kind of newspaper that is, but local newspaper reporters here in Germany are often unbelieveably bad too. Hard to read.

[BOGBLAST]

Symons must have been from the BIG BAND era. His downright ridicule of the kids and the music was just incredibly out of touch.

[Zzzptm]

Read the Joan Pakula review from 26 July... like a lot of other critics, she doesn't seem to have gotten it...

[Sabbabbath]

Read the Joan Pakula review from 26 July... like a lot of other critics, she doesn't seem to have gotten it...

The July 26 one is strange. OK, so the vocals were unhearable (at least to her), I get how that can be a problem. She doesn't seem to be into their music - OK. But Ozzy on stage - intimidating? Of course it is hard to judge what an impression he made on others in the early 1970ies - anyway, I am not aware of a single shot if Ozzy on stage where he looked intimidating. For me, his appearance, at least up to 1974, had always something childish and rather naive about him (not in a bad way, but rather sweet). What I don't get at all here is that idea of intimidation.

[Jack the Stripper]

Symons must have been from the BIG BAND era. His downright ridicule of the kids and the music was just incredibly out of touch.

Thats because he was out of touch. If it's the same Michael Symons I'm thinking of he wasn't a music journalists arsehole, he was a news journalist/restauranteur which probably explains a lot.

[Zzzptm]

Read the Joan Pakula review from 26 July... like a lot of other critics, she doesn't seem to have gotten it...

The July 26 one is strange. OK, so the vocals were unhearable (at least to her), I get how that can be a problem. She doesn't seem to be into their music - OK. But Ozzy on stage - intimidating? Of course it is hard to judge what an impression he made on others in the early 1970ies - anyway, I am not aware of a single shot if Ozzy on stage where he looked intimidating. For me, his appearance, at least up to 1974, had always something childish and rather naive about him (not in a bad way, but rather sweet). What I don't get at all here is that idea of intimidation.

Ozzy intimidating the crowd with his brooding, dark, malevolent presence:

[Sabbabbath]

Ozzy intimidating the crowd with his brooding, dark, malevolent presence

  It's like claiming that Rosetta Tharpe didn't have any stage presence.

[Zzzptm]

There were quite a lot of bands that got bad press because, like JTS pointed out, papers would send their restaurant critics and society columnists out to the rock shows.

Found a very interesting list here... https://rateyourmusic.com/list/schmidtt/rolling_stones_500_worst_reviews_of_all_time__work_in_progress_/

What do I mean by the "worst" reviews?


The reviews generally break down into four categories:

(1) Poorly Written Reviews: Self-explanatory. Most of these were written in the magazine's infancy, when no one knew what the hell they were doing.

(2) Curmudgeonly Reviews: Reviews that are unduly harsh or dismissive, or offer a specious critique of a band. In many cases the artist that is the target of the curmudgeon's wrath is inventing a new genre, which confuses the critic, causing him (or her, though as we shall see, this was, by and large, a man's man's man's man's world) to lash out with sarcasm and invective. In other instances, the curmudgeon has a personal ax to grind, and is lambasting an album for reasons that are completely tangential to the music itself. Almost all of Dave Marsh's reviews fall under #2. Many of Christian Hoard's do too (when he is not writing anti-reviews). Jon Landau was a curmudgeon until he stopped caring and became a hack.

(3) Hack Reviews: Terrible albums, generally by established artists (and/or personal friends of Jann Wenner), that were reviewed favorably by RS. In many cases I honestly doubt that the critic genuinely holds the opinions articulated in these reviews. Anthony DeCurtis, David Fricke and Rob Sheffield are clearly the biggest and worst hacks. J.D. Considine really straddles both #2 and #3. Chuck Eddy possibly belongs here as well, but some of his reviews are so bizarre and off-base that I'm tempted to put him in a fifth category all his own.

(4) Anti-Reviews: A review that hedges, describing an album without ever really offering an opinion about it, usually in one hundred words or less. Invariably an anti-review awards an album three stars. Most reviews in today's Rolling Stone by new artists or indie bands fall into this category. Christian Hoard, and virtually every other critic currently working for RS, has embraced this flaccid style.

So, our Australian reviewer and the NJ reviewer I think were both "curmudgeonly", as they totally didn't understand the style or what to look for in it.

[Zzzptm]

Get a load of this review for "Hey Jude":

"'Hey Jude' is the text of a sermon on truelove, delivered to the world at large and more particularly to John Lennon on the occasion of his finally 'making it better.' You see, beatlefans, John has had a kind of un-together scene with women, if one can judge by the songs he's sung about them (& I believe one can)...So what happened next was that John remembered to fall in love with a beautiful Pornographic Priestess and they are at present living happily ever after...And now back to this song which is full of good advice (probably already taken) to break the old pattern...For the pedants among us, I offer this additional fodder for intellection: in the Christian legends there are, besides the two Johns, two Judes. One is supposed to have been a brother of Jesus and the other is the well known Iscariot, betrayor of Our Lord. An Eggman and a Walrus. Libra Lennon, the Duality Magnate, has just been righteously gotten together by the absolute interchangeability of the symbols for Good and Evil. Their name is one, and 'don't you know that it's just you?' Incidentally, the 'praised' (saint) Jude is the Patron of that which is called Impossible, and there is your souvenir copy!" (Catherine Manfredi, 10/12/68 Review)

 

[Billy Underdog]

Get a load of this review for "Hey Jude"

Would love to know what this chick (biased about Lennons relationship with women, are we?) felt like when she learned that "Jude" was actually Julian Lennon...