There are certain moments in one’s life that they know exactly where they were and what they were doing when something truly profound has occurred in the world.
I was in the middle of working up a special set of tunes from the band Muse that had been suggested to me by the lovely young lady who often shares the scorer’s booth with me and usually handles the scoring and statistics and I’ll be the one putting the penalties into the scoreboard and occasionally driving it when she’s perched on the back of the scorer’s booth.
Miss Kristina has made settling into the role of playing the incidental music during the Ironclad sessions a true joy and I’ve learnt quite a bit from her in that time, not the least of which would be some insights into the league’s playlist that is largely unfamiliar to me as it’s way out of my usual comfort zone and a lot of bands I’d never heard of much less knew any of their music.
That’s often not quite the problem one might imagine because you can see where the intense parts of the track are on the rainbow coloured ribbon between the track info and the turntable deck. Load up the track, jog the “needle” to somewhere that looks intense in that histogram and I’m ready for the next whistle.
I’ve got over 100 tracks to play with and I’m constantly changing where I start in the track list, what direction I go, and whether I’m dragging the needle to the start, middle, or towards the end of the song.
So I had my ideas on what I was going to play during the Zamboni break between the games and all it took to blow those plans to smithereens was an alert from BBC News that Ozzy had passed away.
I don’t think I’d even describe it as a shocking abuse of the DJ power that I decided right then and there that we were not going to confine ourselves to “Crazy Train” which was the only Ozzy track in the playlist. Oh no…we were going to go for a full-on Ozz Fest complete with the Prince of Darkness himself facing centre ice.
Every track played that night was Ozzy and Black Sabbath whether it was between plays or between games.
Every last one of them!
For me, I’m glad Ozzy got a chance to go out on his own terms with his final concert in Birmingham only a couple of weeks before. He performed his last set from that massive bat-winged throne as if he knew deep down the bell would soon toll for him and this was one last chance to celebrate his legacy with his mates at home.
How could we do less for a true icon who defined and ruled his genre for decades?
