Flower Travellin’ Band at Myspace

The Flower Travellin’ Band was one of the first bands that was heavily influenced by Black Sabbath, and who helped established the earliest form of doom metal. Despite that fact, they’re not well known today, which is a shame, because they’re quite good. They were originally a cover band with a female vocalist called the Flowers, but they retooled themselves as the Travellin’ Band after she left. They broke up in 1973, but reunited recently and recorded an album, “We Are Here,” which was released just last month in Japan. I have decided to celebrate this by reviewing their first three albums.

Aside from the minute-long harmonica opener “Anywhere,” all the songs on the first proper Flower Travellin’ Band release are covers. Things start off with a lengthy cover of Muddy Waters’ Louisiana Blues. While the musicianship on display is fine, at nearly sixteen minutes, the jamming goes on too long for its own good. Next up is a cover of Black Sabbath’s self-titled song from their self-titled debut. It lacks the atmospheric lightning, rain and church bells that were at the beginning, but it’s still pretty good; I especially liked vocalist Akira Yamanaka’s delivery of the “OH GOD NO!!!” line, although his pronunciation of the English lyrics is about as poor as you’d expect (as well as in all the other songs). This is followed by a rendition of the traditional song “House of the Rising Sun”; this has an intro that goes on for too long, and the sparse arrangment with just an acoustic guitar and drums makes the song’s eight minutes seem even longer. I felt this was the worst song on the album. The album closes with King Crimson’s “21st Century Schizoid Man.” I have to say I liked the original version better with its screeching saxophone, but the Travellin’ Band’s cover is still quite good.

It was clear that the Flower Travellin’ Band had talent, but they hadn’t quite found their niche yet. Their artistic breakthrough wouldn’t come until their follow-up, Satori, which consisted entirely of original compositions. This album is still a decent effort, though, and it’s historically important because it contains what must be some of the first Black Sabbath and King Crimson covers ever recorded.

Ozzy Osbourne at Myspace

This album’s a guilty pleasure for me. It’s billed as live but clearly heavily overdone in the studio, as the contrast between Ozzy’s drunken rambling and his vocals in the songs themselves is obvious. But still, I enjoy it. Ozzy doesn’t perform any of his solo material, but sticks to songs he performed in Black Sabbath exclusively. Apparently, this album was released in order to compete with the Dio-era Sabbath album “Live Evil”. Randy Rhoads had just died, so he isn’t on this, and he was replaced by Brad Gillis, who would become famous with the AOR band Night Ranger, and he’s really no replacement for either Rhoads or Tony Iommi.

So why do I like this album? For one thing, the bass is awesome. Rudy Sarzo of Quiet Riot and Whitesnake plays on this album, and it makes me wonder why he was wasting his time with those lame pop metal bands, as he’s awesome here with his fuzzy bass tone. But my favorite part of the album is Ozzy’s between-song banter. He is just gloriously drunk, and I kept cracking up over his cries of “LOWDAH! LOWDAH!”, him falsely taking credit for writing the song “Black Sabbath” and yelling “KEEP ON SMOKIN’ IT!” at the end of “Sweet Leaf”. Although I enjoy this album, I can’t really recommend it, but die-hard Sabbath and Ozzy fans might want to check it out.

NOTE: This album is no longer being produced, so check used CD stores or download it on iTunes if you want it. Also, it should be noted that early CD pressings are missing “Sweet Leaf”.