Tuesday, July 02, 2019

Tuesday Tuneage
Black Sabbath - “Never Say Die”
1978

I’m not going to let the heat and humidity beat me this year, I got two AC units in my apartment, summer beer like Sierra Nevada Kellerweis, a go-to cocktail in the paloma (hell yeah Hornitos plus Fresca on the rocks with a slice of lime) and I’ve found my summer rally song.

I need a song of triumph — I’m putting Motörhead’s “Live to Win” on the b-side —
because my psycho downstairs neighbor has moved out, she of “you’re walking too loud” infamy, she of yelling and cursing at me from below. It started with me putting on my pajamas and her yelling “f**k you!” some nights, escalated to me making breakfast and my hand holding the milk carton shaking because she was right below me yelling f-bombs and screaming “bleephole!” I debated getting into a Volume War with her every time she started yelling or starting blasting crappy folk music from what sounded like a chintzy boombox. I could have retaliated with the Stooges, AC/DC, Funkadelic, Blue Cheer, Run-DMC out of my living room JBL speakers ... “yeah TAKE THAT Kingston Trio!!” But I didn’t use volume, I simply took my concerns to the landlord like a good citizen (ending each email with a variation on “I don’t think I should be yelled at for living my life”) and I think they told her they wouldn’t renew her lease if she continued to be a menace. (A menace, seriously. I saw her in her car blow through a neighborhood stop sign that is both across the street from a playground and is located at an intersection where kids catch the school bus in the morning. South Minneapolis boomer self-entitlement or what? Stop signs are optional for these people?)

So the psycho is gone. And I’m thinking with coffee and a new Mead five-star notebook and my iPad and a new writing app and listening to this tune — I have never heard Black Sabbath this glorious or be so Dare To Be Great in sound and lyrics, sounding like part of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal even — I might even embrace my newfound peace of mind and get something written by Labor Day.

(Artwork on the Sabbath album cover by the masters at Hipgnosis.)