Sepultura... Indeed.

First of all, Stewart, the correct spelling is Sepultura.

Confession: Not only have I heard of the band Sepultura, I'VE SEEN THEM LIVE!

That's right, it was the summer of 1997 and school was out. This meant a full schedule of social events that included camping at Little River Canyon, long days on the Coosa River and as many concerts in Birmingham at Oak Mountain Ampitheatre that I could afford. Going forward, please keep in mind that this was ten years ago so the details are a little hazy. I'll try to recall as much as I can.

I kicked the summer off strong by catching a DMB show. This was the show that I loosely credit with my ongoing addiction to live music. Say what you want to about modern day Dave Matthews, (and I'll be the first to admit that his most recent efforts have been weak and meaningless) but anyone who saw him perform live in the late 90's and says that it was anything less than Badass, is lying. Period. At the time, it met all of my pre-requisites for damn good music; It was live, it was loud and it was something that I had never heard before.

The next weekend was the "Pink Floyd Laser Light Show", which was absolutely laughable. Not only because it had nothing to do with Pink Floyd or music in general, but also the fact that the "Lasers" were more like moderately powerful flood lights that had been draped with various colors of saran wrap. Add to that the fact that the median age of attendees at this "concert" was 47. More than anything though, I think it was due to the fact that we smoked a joint that was roughly the size of my arm in the car on the drive down, and I spent half of the show sleeping off a "Schwag" buzz on the lawn of the amphitheatre.

After that, I seem to recall taking a couple of weeks off of the concert circuit to clear my head. I spent most of my days on the river, or working at Uncle Sam's Pizza and Submarine Sandwiches. After all, I had to have some sort of income to fund the $22.50 concert tickets, $7.50 half-cases of Bud Light, $1.79 packs of Marlboros and $1.09/Gallon gas (Keep in mind this was 1997) that it took to get me to the shows. But it wasn't long before I had saved up enough money to get back to business.

The next show I attended in my "Summer of Music" was The Allman Brothers. Now obviously this wasn't the original Allman Brothers, but take away the deceased Duane Allman and replace him with a young and exciting Derek Trucks, and you've still got yourself a pretty good band that was pumping out some seriously intense Southern Rock & Roll. This show was exactly what I needed to rebound from the previous debacle that had sidelined me temporarily.

I think there was a Bush concert after that, for their Glycerine tour, but I was on mushrooms for that one so I could be placing it in the wrong spot on the timeline. Regardless, my recollection of that concert is limited, at best, to the first 45 minutes of the drive down. At which point the drugs began to take hold.

Well, the summer was winding down and I was getting ready to start my senior year of High School. But I wasn't going back to school without closing out the summer with a bang. That could mean only one thing..... OZZFEST! For those of you who aren't familiar with the term "OZZFEST", it was a festival in the late 1990's that included modern day heavy metal bands and was built around one major headliner, none other than the (self proclaimed) "Prince of Darkness", Ozzy Osborne. To clarify, I've never been a fan of heavy metal, and I couldn't care less about the music that any of these bands put out, with the exception of a few of Ozzy's earlier songs. I did, however, have a strong feeling that this might be my one and only chance to see one of the legendary rockers of our time, so I bought the ticket.

As I recall, there were four of us that met up one afternoon to make the hour long drive from Gadsden to Birmingham. We had a fifth of Segram's Extra Dry Gin and about two cases of beer that would last us through the show and well into the evening afterwards. We arrived at Oak Mountain and made our way to a spot in the rear of a parking lot that was electrified by a crowd of drunk, redneck, metal-heads that seemed to have reached the Mecca of heavy metal after a long and strenuous pilgrimage that no doubt included several ex-wives, a handful of legal battles, at least a dozen minimum wage jobs and countless failed attempts at a crystal methamphetamine empire.

The first act to take the stage was a band by the name of Type-O Negative. Anyone out there who's never heard this band play, congratulations. It's something that I will never forget. While most of my time was spent in the bathroom, taking shot's of Gin and chasing it with Dr. Pepper, I do have brief memories of some of the set, and it wasn't pretty. It was so bad that I just gagged a little bit while recalling it....seriously.

It only got worse from there. A few other low rate acts followed until the two headliners had done enough drugs back stage to come out and perform. Again I can't tell you much about these bands because most of this time was spent dodging "Fight Pits" on my way to the concession stand where I would try and convince some thirty-something redneck with a sleeveless Ozzfest shirt, jeans shorts and a power-mullet to buy me a 64 oz. guitar shaped Budweiser.

The warm up act for Ozzy was the aforementioned Sepultura. I honestly don't remember any of their music. I certainly don't remember the "Orgasmatron" that Stewart mentioned seeing in their video. I vaguely remember the lead singer wearing this hideous mask that made him look like an evil character from a comic book and it made me laugh out loud. I also remember looking at the people around me (the few that weren't involved in a huge fight) and thinking to myself, "There is no way these people are really enjoying this crap!". But, they honestly did seem to be having a good time and most people by this point were really into the music. They would even cheer really loud for certain songs as soon as they struck the first note, like bama fans do at the first indication of Sweet Home Alabama.

Just to give you an idea of what I'm talking about, this is Sepultura.

WARNING: You will not be able to listen to more than ten seconds of this video.



Finally, all of the warm up acts were finished and it was time for the main event... Ozzy. After about an hour of stage preparations, and chants from the crowd of OZZY...OZZY...OZZY, he took the stage. The place went nuts, including me. I was genuinely excited to see him perform. There weren't any outrageous antics. He didn't kill a bird on stage or anything like that, he just stumbled out and stood there in front of the microphone. First, he played about 1:33 of "Ironman" until he forgot the words, at which point he simply staggered around the stage until it was over. All in all, Ozzy played about five songs, gave his trademark "I love you all" to the crowd and then left the stage. Given his age, and the fact that Oak Mountain isn't exactly the type of venue that gets performers pumped up to blow out an amazing show, I guess I should have seen that coming. Regardless, I felt good about being able to put him on my list of famous acts that I have seen live.

Moral of the story:

You don't have to travel half way around the world to experience really bad music. You can do that right here in Sweet Home Alabama..... and the bammers go crazy.