Art via Evan SolanoÂ
People think Copper Green is insane because heâs frowning all the time.Â
The great and powerful Ozz is dead. Iâd wager you donât have to squint to see our Ozz clutching cruciform, hunchbacked with shit-your-pants madness, a fanged mouthful of strawberry jam, framed by runes real as horse feathers. There was the Madman and his Diary. Lording over troupes of gunslingers who made songs for kids to fuck to. To get fucked up to. To fuck their heads up enough into thinking said songs meant more than pussy or potables. That they hinted at something beyond Beyond. Or bore standards for Black Arts need not be fucked with.
Not easy to forget Ozz at his apex, especially now, in memory mucking about like blind, post-menopausal granny on MTV or curtain-called whilst open-casketed in his black leather high-back chair. Easier to forget Heavy Metal like this could be so âdangerousâ and suggestiveâa bona fides ride off the hot rails to hell, scaring mom into burglar barring rooms as black-eyed youth gobbled blotter acid and turned that cross upside fuckinâ down.
Coke squalls and vodka baths that defined the run with Black Sabbath gave way to Blizzard, which Priestâs Rob Halford celebrated as âgreatâ for âsaying so much.â Like nothing else, it means more than it means; says less that it says. One of those amp wall monoliths for armchair semioticians to clean their taints off on. Lest ye forget the bird ânâ bat, remember all too easily the aforementioned turned Ozz into white Americaâs bad boy boogeyman overnight, momâs aghast at the bloke wildly unmoored from the tyranny of decorum. And still he endured. Surviving reality TVâs farce, âSo Tired,â and Sharonâs power of attorney.
Always the soggiest donut in the box, Ozz slipped into the frontman role without ever having to be one. Either standing stoically still, or running to ânâ fro asking audience members if they were high, Ozz was the Gong Show crasher judges couldnât bring themselves to send packing as his fingers-in-the-ears recitation induced some strange, gummy indifference. Unequal parts pity and punch-drunkenness. And, still, whatâs left to wax continues to work for personal Magellan pothead, circumnavigating sure stations of stonedness.
Even at his worst, waddling offstage to stick his schnoz in the mirror, and returning, eventually, to the duct-taped X marks the spot, to speak-sing, thumbs jammed knuckle-deep into his ears, that voice at once dry and shrill, then wet and dull, stretched like hot plastic and shaped into a blobby, flaccid cock of ignominy, what could go wrong? âGeezahâ may have writ them lyrics, but Ozz believed âem, screaming about war machines and witches as if heâd mucked about with âem, gazing forever forward to the time when heâd succumb to Parkinsonâs and simply transubstantiate, fall into feedback, fog machine mist, back behind the wall of Spock for some mass social media sĂ©ance. Too late, folks. Lightning flashes. Candles lit. Whistle sounds. All aboard. â Copper Green, St. Simons Island, GA