Black Sabbath's Master of Reality: 56 (33 1/3) - Softcover

John Darnielle

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0826428991 ISBN 13: 9780826428998

Publisher: Continuum, 2004

Synopsis

Black Sabbath's Master of Reality has maintained remarkable historical status over several generations; it's a touchstone for the directionless, and common coin for young men and women who've felt excluded from the broader cultural economy. John Darnielle hears it through the ears of Roger Painter, a young adult locked in a southern California adolescent psychiatric center in 1985; deprived of his Walkman and hungry for comfort, he explains Black Sabbath as one might describe air to a fish, or love to an android, hoping to convince his captors to give him back his tapes.

About this title

Review:

[T]he focus of Darnielle's fans has always been on his  lyrics and the stories contained within them. Now he's stepped off the stage and sat down at is typewriter to deliver  Master of Reality, his first novel and a stunning piece of rock criticism and  appreciation.    Readers are likely to come to Master of Reality from a  variety of backgrounds. Some will come  as Mountain Goats fans wanting to see Darnielle tackle a novel, others as Black  Sabbath fans wanting to read about a favorite album. Some will simply be fans of the cult-popular  33 1/3 series, which has now grown to dozens of books, yet kept its level of  quality very high. Hopefully, there will  be others who will pick it up as novel first, because it truly is a first-rate  story, full of moments that will pluck at your heartstrings as you're brought  back to the moment you first fell in love with a piece of music, when an album  provided not just the soundtrack to your life but also the meaning behind  it. If, by some strange chance, none of  this happens, well, you're probably going to at least dust off your old Sabbath  vinyl, and there's nothing wrong with that either. --NewPages.com

Synopsis:

John Darnielle describes Master of Reality through a fictional character, a fifteen-year-old boy being held in an adolescent psychiatric centre in southern California in 1985.John Darnielle describes "Master of Reality" in the voice of a fifteen-year-old boy being held in an adolescent psychiatric centre in southern California in 1985. Adolescents in treatment are often required to keep a journal, and they write letters by the dozens: to their parents, to their friends on the outside, to the nurses who confiscate their belongings, to the teachers back at school who've offered them an outlet for their creativity. Our narrator has arrived in treatment with a Walkman and some tapes that are precious to him, only to have them taken away on the ground that their content is part of his greater problem.His various writings, aimed mainly at getting his tapes and Walkman back, will explain how Black Sabbath differs from their Satan-worshipping popular image, and how Master of Reality is an overtly Christian album, which it is. Our narrator will try to explain Black Sabbath like an emissary from an alien race describing his culture to his captors: passionately, patiently, and lovingly.

This album has a genuinely remarkable historical status: as a touchstone for the directionless, and as a common coin for young men and women who felt shut out of the broader cultural economy.It'd be hard to overstate Ozzy Osbourne's totemic status among adolescents in the early eighties. His public image, cobbled together by his audience from occasional mainstream press mentions and niche magazine coverage, made him a nearly perfect sponge for the aggressive feelings of frustrated young men around the world. To this audience, who continue to occupy a an enormous if ghostly position on the margins, the early Black Sabbath albums were accepted classics in a genre whose lack of real status only served to indicate its true value.This, for me, is one of the places where the music does its most interesting work: when it becomes a tool in the hands of its listeners, and when the process of explaining it becomes part of its essence. This was never truer than in the mainstream metal subcultures of the eighties, where album titles served as passwords to a more accepting world.

"Master of Reality", from its Christian heart right down to its ultimately incomprehensible title, is the perfect candidate for illuminating these undersung passageways."33 1/3" is a series of short books about a wide variety of albums, by artists ranging from James Brown to the Beastie Boys. Launched in September 2003, the series now contains over 50 titles and is acclaimed and loved by fans, musicians and scholars alike.

About this edition

• Publisher: Continuum
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0826428991
• ISBN 13: 9780826428998
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 112