Song of the Day – “See You on the Other Side” – by Ozzy Osbourne

Apologies, for this version cuts out most of the guitar solo in the middle.  But you get to watch Ozzy being his wacky self.  But you have to put up with YouTube’s slow and crappy “flash video” drivel.  But it comes with a free frozen yogurt which I call “Frogurt”.  The Frogurt is also cursed.  But it comes with your choice of toppings.  The toppings contain potassium benzoate.


That’s bad.

You know, that green dude has somethings in common with Ozzy.  Long stringy hair.  A physical age that belies years of hard living.  A lit opium pipe.

I don’t know if Ozzy ever smoked opium.  I would bet he has.  I know he has literally snorted a line of ants before.  Just ask Scott Weiland.

But back to the song.  This is a sad song, obviously.  It’s about saying goodbye to someone who has just died.  Also, it’s about dying oneself and saying goodbye to those left behind.  It means a lot if you believe in Heaven, and not much if you don’t.

I was gonna write my first album review for the Ozzy album “The Ultimate Sin”.  But that would require far too much time and patience than I have.  I was even thinking of a rating I could give it from 0 to 10.  3.

I think I’ll break into the full album reviews when I don’t have a full time job.  Because of construction on my way to and from work, I leave the house at 6:45am and get home around 6:45pm.  And I only get paid for 8 of those hours.  Grumble grumble.

Are you liking the song? It’s one of the few decent songs on “Ozzmosis”.  “Perry Mason” is awesome, “I Just Want You” is great, but I don’t remember too much else from this album.  I’ve read that it’s all downhill as far as quality is concerned with Ozzy’s albums after “No More Tears”.  But the same could be said about his albums after “Blizzard of Ozz” too.  If you’re looking to get into some Ozzy, definitely get one of the many “best of” collections he has released.  His albums usually aren’t great all the way through, and the only one that can be described that way, IHMO (In High Mumble Opinion) is the first.

I listened to “Just Say Ozzy” recently.  Wow, what an obvious fakery of a live album.  Listen to the crowd noise in the background while the high-hat part is going on.  You can tell that it’s a messy splice job of different audience recordings.  Puh-lease.  At least Geezer Butler really does play on this.  They’re a fun little set of re-recorded Ozzy and Black Sabbath songs.  The faux-live setting kind of diminishes that experience, but had it not been for that faux-live-album excuse, these tracks probably wouldn’t have been released.

But what of the song I’m ostensibly discussing?  Or should that be ozztensibly?

A friend of a friend had this song playing as music at the funeral of another friend who died in a motorcycle accident.  After that, this song always brought her to tears.  It got played on the radio a lot in 1995 and after… you know, radio stations love to overplay stuff.  But not having heard it for years has given me new ears to listen.  It really is quite a moving song.  The guitar playing is great and the words are really touching.

But the production is too flashy and slick.  I think that’s the case with Ozzy’s later albums and modern music in general.  Compression gets used way too much these days and most recorded popular music is bereft of acoustic dynamics.  The quiet parts are made to sound as loud as the loud parts, and it sounds dull and blunted.  It exhausts the ears.

So let’s see if I can shoehorn some jokes into this.

Uh… no.  The end.