MERRY MAYHEM TOUR

Ozzy Osbourne/Rob Zombie - Merry Mayhem Tour
Continental Airlines Arena
Sunday, December 23, 2001

OK, I know this review is about a week late, but the holidays consumed most, if not all of my free time (Well, the holidays and my new Playstation...holy shit, it's the new crack)...so without further delay, here's what I can tell you about seeing the Holiday package tour featuring Mr. Ozzy Osbourne and Rob Zombie...

First off, one of the main reasons I wanted to see this show in the first place was that I had never seen Ozzy in concert. Now, if there's one thing you MUST do if you're a fan of hard rock is see Ozzy live before he either A) Stops touring altogether or B) Dies. "B" is more likely than "A" from what I've seen of Ozzy over the past 30 years. Also, Zakk Wylde has rejoined Ozzy on the road, and I've always been a fan of Zakk's playing.

Anyway, the two opening acts were SOIL and MUDVAYNE. Because we spent so much time drinking and bulshitting before we even left my house for the show, myself and my three cronies arrived just in time to catch Mudvayne play their single, "Dig", and also give a five minute-long speech on how grateful they were to be on tour with Ozzy and Rob. These guys sounded genuinely ecstatic to be a young band on the road, living the dream, which is nice, considering they're probably not making a dime on this tour.

I have to give a hand to the crew on this tour. They had Rob Zombie's MASSIVE stage set up in less than twenty minutes. That folks, is a finely tuned, road-savvy, touring machine for you. When I say Zombie's stage was "massive", I mean FUCKING ENORMOUS. Aside from a few KISS shows I've seen, I've never seen so many props on one stage before. If you've ever seen Rob Zombie's illustrations, you'd know that the whole thing was designed by him; a lot of red skulls, pillars of fire above and to the sides, movie screens, go-go dancers, and of course, stage hands in big metallic robot suits wandering all over the stage.

Rob hit the stage with "Superheast" off of his self-titled solo disc, and ripped through about an hour or so of solo material, and a few tunes from his days in WHITE ZOMBIE. He even answered the popular question, "Hey Rob, whatever happened with that fucking movie of yours?"... For those of you who don't know, Rob Zombie directed a feature film for Universal Studios titled House of 1000 Corpses (catchy, huh?). Anyway, the film was never released, and is still sitting on a studio shelf somewhere. During the show, Rob played about 5 minutes of clips from the film for the crowd, while playing the song bearing the same name from his new disc, The Sinster Urge. What I can tell you about the film (from what I saw) is this: It's a compilation of every cheesy, 1960s-era, cheap-o, horror film that ever was, and that I'm sure Rob owns every single one of. This is by no means a Summer blockbuster, but my guess is that it'll wind up on video store shelves one day soon.

After the fires were extinguished from Zombie's show, the crew ripped down the set just as fast as they'd put it up to make way for Ozzy's entrance. After about twenty minutes, the house lights went down, and we all waited for Ozzy to make his appearance during the opening verse of "Carmina Burana" by Carl Orff. From the center of the arena erupted this hot-rodded Santa sleigh, complete with big exhaust pipes, christmas lights, billowing smoke, and a "666" license plate...and of course, Ozzy (a look-alike, actually) in sunglasses, throwing presents to the crowd from 50 feet above the stage. The sleigh flew on wires from center court to the front of the stage, at which point, Ozzy emerged from stage right flanked by Zakk and Robert Trujillo on bass. In the back on drums was Mike Bordin, who you may remember from his days in FAITH NO MORE.

This might as well have been called "The Ozzy and Zakk Show" because Zakk was just as much at the center of attention as Ozzy was. The fans were extremely grateful to see Mr. Wylde back on stage with Ozzy, ripping away on his bullseye Les Paul, complete with Grizzly Adams beard and big-ass chains dangling from his belt loops. Zakk even had a ten to fifteen minute-long guitar solo, duing which he proved that massive amounts of alcohol consumption has not adversely affected his playing...He's as fast as ever, and even ripped into a little bit of Eddie Van Halen's "Eruption"

Ozzy's set covered most of his solo career, as well as a few tunes from the BLACK SABBATH era. I would have liked to hear "Shot in the Dark" or "Miracle Man" instead of some of the newer songs like "Junkie" or "Dreamer"...but he's got a new disc to promote, so I won't beat him up too badly.

Even though he's in his fifties, and recovering from a broken leg, Ozzy Osbourne is still a maniac on stage. He doesn't just command your attention, he beats the shit out of you and takes as much of it as he wants. If you don't scream loud enough, he screams very bluntly, "You ain't fucking loud enough!!!!"... at which point, people scream their voice boxes out.

The folks at Continental stopped serving beer halfway through Zombie's set, so by the time Ozzy's show was in full swing, the crowd of aging metalheads, and balding long-hairs was sobering up...except for these two dopes who beat the shit out of each other in the bathroom because they couldn't agree who was cooler, Ozzy or Zombie...and this one douchebag, who was so drunk, that he stumbled down my row and fell into the seat next to me...and when I picked him up by the collar and threw him into a seat down the row, he pissed all over himself. Note to white trash dirtbags: If you're going to get THAT fucking hammered, stay the fuck home. Wait, then you wouldn't be White Trash Dirtbags. Sorry, my bad.

Thankfully, one of the guys I was with, Ben, was resourceful enough to scour the skyboxes at the Meadowlands until he found enough beers to last us throughout the rest of the show. I swear, he never gets caught.

Toward the end of the show, Oz brought up a bunch of NYC firefighters and cops on stage with him, at which point, he was presented with a cross that was fashioned from one of the I beams from the World Trade Center wreckage. I must say, that was a classy move on both parts.

The show wrapped up around 12:30 am with thunderous explosions erupting all over the stage, and Ozzy wishing everyone a happy holiday. He even went so far as to warn us all about drinking and driving...a far cry from the Ozzy who pissed all over the Alamo and bit the head off a live bat (albeit accidentally) during one of his shows.

I'll end this review by reiterating one of my earlier points: If you haven't seen Ozzy perform live yet, get your ass to an arena as soon as you can, and wait for the next time he shows up. You'll thank me.

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