Black Crowes: new album and tour; indefinite hiatus in 2011

Didn't someone sing good things don't ever last? The Black Crowes have announced that they will take an indefinite hiatus at the end of this year. This is sad news for me, The Crowes have, in the last 5 years, become one those bands that, frankly, I just can't seem to get enough of. Its gonna be hard to not have "the next show" to look forward to for a long time. Thankfully, the rest of the year will be full of Black Crowes shows, including a 6 night run at the Fillmore in SF to close out the year.

The band members have put a lot of collective thought into this and have probably been planning it for some while, based on the fact that their soon to be released album and the 2010 tour are being presented as a massive and heartfelt "thank you" to every fan the Black Crowes have ever had. Even better news is that most of the shows in the late summer and fall will be three hour affairs, with an hour and a half acoustic set and then an hour and a half electric set.

Full tour details on cities, dates, on-sale dates as well as news about the soon-to-be-released acoustic greatest hits double album Croweology can be found in this press release.

Black Sabbath doing the heavy in 1970

This video came across my path recently and it reminded me of how great Black Sabbath were in their prime. Not like all us 70s rock fans don't know that already, but its good to be reminded of it, especially with some fantastic live footage. Its amazing to me what could be done with just guitar, bass, drums and vocals. I'm trying to think of something articulate to say about what made Sabbath so killer. Nothing really needs to be said when the music is this good and overpowering. Bill Ward is killing it on drums. With Geezer Butler on bass, its a formidable rhythm section. Iommi and Ozzy doing their thing. Simple, basic, and gloriously heavy! Getting labeled as demonic (not that they didn't project that image themselves) when really they were espousing late 60s hippie values, albeit with dark, plodding, war-hammer heavy music.

It does occur to me that there will probably never be another era in rock music like the early 70s. So much drama coming from the music and the music only. This is how rock is supposed to be and I don't care if I sound like an old curmudgeon if I say that very few rock bands today seem to have any clue about how to do it. How could there possibly have been so many legendary, groundbreaking bands peaking all in the same few years? What insane combination of unlikely variables had to come together perfectly for this serendipity to happen? Its an understatement to say that they don't make rock music like this anymore.