Ozzy Osbourne - Live & Loud
Performance 
Production 
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Ozzy Osbourne - Live & Loud
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Live & Loud certainly started off well enough - although upon loading the DVD you are instantly taken to the Program Start track instead of a main menu. That was forgivable, since the main menu only consisted of Chapter Selections and Audio Mix options anyways. The program start track was about four minutes long and consisted of various stills and film footage, which gave an interesting peak into Ozzy's long and turbulent career. This led right into the opening song, "I Don't Want To Change The World", from "one" of the tour's shows. I say "one" of the tour's shows, because footage from several different shows is haphazardly spliced together - throughout the same song even! This was the first hint that all was not going to be well in the land of Oz. "I Don't Want To Change The World" kicked things off admirably. The curtain covering the front of the stage had just dropped and the band had launched into the song. You get some great shots from behind Randy Castillo's massive drum kit looking out over the frenzied crowd, along with close-ups of Zakk Wylde and Mike Inez pounding away on their respective axes. Then we get to Ozzy. One second its shirtless Ozzy, next second its vested Ozzy, then its soaking wet Ozzy, then its dry Ozzy, then its pony-tailed Ozzy, then its hair-in-his-face Ozzy - all within about twenty seconds. You also get to see Zakk playing three different guitars during a single guitar solo! - not because he has the world's quickest roadie, but because the director felt it was a good idea to splice multiple concerts together in the worst manner possible. This is easily one of the worst produced "concert" videos I have ever seen. Don't count on this being a true concert video either, because it is essentially a long music video with a lot of concert footage mixed in. This is a shame because the straight concert footage you do occasionally get to see truly kicks some ass. You get to see a young, pre-lumberjack-bearded, Zakk Wylde abusing the hell out of his Les Paul and doing all of the phenomenal Randy Rhoads' solos justice. Unfortunately you don't get to see much of him because the director must not have thought that anybody would want to see more than two-second snippets of Zakk's guitar solos, or a single close-up of his fretwork. Of course not! Live & Loud could have been a great one. The song selection was fantastic, touching every Ozzy era, including Black Sabbath. You get Rhoads' classics ("Mr. Crowley", "Crazy Train", "Suicide Solution"), Jake E. Lee classics ("Shot In The Dark", "Bark At The Moon"), on up to Wylde's "No More Tears" and "Miracle Man". Wylde nails "Paranoid" and "War Pigs", but the highlight of the disk is when Ozzy calls out his old bandmates Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward for an encore performance of "Black Sabbath", the song that started it all, from the self-titled album that truly gave birth to HEAVY Metal. This was supposed to be their farewell performance, as well as Ozzy's farewell tour. During "Goodbye To Romance" Ozzy brings his kids Jack and Kelly, who were both about seven or eight years old at the time, onstage to wave to the crowd. It was amazing to see them as cute, innocent little children, after being drowned with their homely, teenage mugs plastered all over the TV the past few years. The best piece of backstage footage was of Ozzy, while sitting in an empty amphitheater, somberly telling his son Jack that this was going to be his last tour. That was pretty amusing to hear in 2004, since I do recall that Ozzfest rolled through my neck of the woods just this summer, and will probably return next year too! The editing was not the only problem with this production. The audio and video were both basically VHS quality at best. Although a Dolby 5.1 surround track was included along with the PCM stereo track, it was not crisp sounding, and the bottom end mix was terribly muddy. I actually preferred the PCM track, as the instrument separation was better and the overall sound was bolder. The hurried camera angle changes and relentless editing was just too much for me to stomach at times. This disk is also two-sided, which means you have to flip it over half-way through the DVD, just like an old laser disk This was a historic tour for Ozzy, and was significant because he was just creeping up on the end of his prime. I would love to see a re-edit of the great concert footage that was captured during this tour, and have it presented as the true live concert video that Ozzy's fans deserve. Reviewed by Paul M. Roy - October 2004 |
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Set List |
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Running Time: 111 Minutes |
DVD Release Date - October 1997 |