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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Stick with Ozzy's 95' remasters and other studio work., March 10, 2006
I am a longtime Ozzy and Black Sabbath fan, and I think we'll all agree that Ozzy is one of only a handful of musicians who brought heavy metal to us. I had been looking forward to the prospect of a box set from either of them, loaded with rarities and other gems that had been concealed. So when this came about I was excited about discovering its contents. But the Oz (and SHaron) left me quite disappointed with these 4 discs.
Firstly, the Blizzard of Ozz & Diary of a Madman tracks are those hideous butchered ones with the Bob Daisley bass and Lee Kerslake drumming re-recorded. Anyone who has closely followed Ozzy's career knows he had just been ousted from Black Sabbath, and was in career purgatory and fading fast before teaming up with the original BLIZZARD OF OZZ musicians. That band is very largely responsible for helping Ozzy get back into the game, and for Ozzy and Sharon to deny Daisley and Kerslake their well earned and deserved royalties by removing their work from those albums is TOTALLY reprehensible.
(Incidentally, the new recordings on those CD's sound like $h!+ and are disgraceful to both Ozzy's and Randy Rhoades legacies. Just read the majority of the reviews about them on the amazon.com website.)
As for the covers - well, Zakk Wylde is an incredible guitarist and his work is good to his credit. But the covers mostly sound like "fillers" for just that purpose. I also found the majority of the live recordings to be inferior to the studio versions (not to mention that most of that stuff is previously released material that is readily available. Why not release live stuff previously unreleased - especially the Rhoades and Lee years?).
And the rarities - I guess if you're a hardcore Ozzy fanatic, this might serve Ozzy completists who really want that stuff for their collection. I could not get into them much. If Ozzy and Sharon had really wanted to serve their fans well, give us all of the original B-sides of Ozzy's single releases in one collection - INCLUDING the Randy Rhoades years with Bob Daisley and Lee Kerslake on them.
It was good to see Ozzy with the original Black Sabbath on tour last summer. But releases of this hodgepodge collection of butchered songs and substandard covers is not a good sign of things to come with Ozzy's solo career. I generously gave this 2 stars in the event that the rarities and covers will generate some interest to longtime Ozzy completist fans, although I myself could not get into them. Check this out this boxset online first if possible and spend you money wisely.
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
$CASH GRAB$, April 14, 2005
Leave it to the Osbourne corprate machine to pull this one over on the fans(if Ozzy has any real fans anymore that is).
The sole fact that this 4 disc box set uses the "Sharon" rerecored versions of the Blizzard and Diary songs instead of the original ones is reason enough not to buy this waste of precious metals and plastics. Osbournes, you are wasting valuable earth resources!
On top of that you get crap live versions of songs no one could give a (...) about. You think they would put better quality live material here, you know, for the fans that have made them millionares?...nope.
But wait,thats not all folks! we also get material from Ozzy's exellent 90's albums(insert sarcasm here)! Oh, even better, we get a disc full of the former Black Sabbath frontman(even madman?) making a complete (...) out of himself which includes a duet with Miss Piggy(the effing Muppet) and other frankly retarded songs!
This box set has cash grab written all over it. It's just the next product in a line of crap that Ozzy and Sharon have been pushing to get even richer off of. And you think with being a millionaire you could atleast pay royalties to the musicians who helped you get there in the first place. Sharons eyes must look like this $ $ now becuse of her manipulative ability to market Ozzy who has now become nothing more then a puppet. Ozzy's musical ability died once the original line up for his solo band disolved in 82 or 83.After that it was all down hill because Ozzy can't write songs, plain and simple, it is just imposible for him technicaly. All of his lyrics were/are written for him, from the earliest days in Sabbath up till now.Don't support this corprate greed machine known as the Osbournes, i was horrifed when two of my favorite albums (Blizzard and Diary) were discontieud and replaced with (...) versions. I effing hate you Ozzy, you are the biggest (...) in the music buisness and i hope Bob and Lee reopen the court case some how and sue your greedy @ss so you,your money loving wife and your two ignoramus kids for every penny you have.Ifthe guy below me is right ( and i have a feeling he is) about Ozzy useing recorded backing vocals for his shows now because he is too effing lazy to sing for his fans, this is truely the end. I was also P.O.ed about the comment he made about Ronnie James Dio (who has one million times the talent), he has no right mainly because Dio is a MUSICIAN and WRITES HIS OWN SONGS!
Peace out
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
OK, I guess. I'm just tired of Oz releasing complations, July 9, 2005
Oh look, another compilation from Ozzy. This one according to the liner notes was an idea from the record company; it wasn't Ozzy's original idea. His liner notes on the matter are somewhat interesting, as he talks about having too many compilations as it is. And he's right. Of the 16 unique releases Ozzy's had over his solo career (not counting remasters and reissues), he's had 8 studio albums, 5 live albums, and 3 greatest hits albums (of which this release is one). If you count live albums as compilations as well, that's half of his releases being stuff that has already appeared elsewhere. What's my point in bringing this up? Some folks keep hoping, keep wishing that we'll get the "Real Ozzy" back. The one that was around in the early 80's. I don't think that's ever coming back. That train sailed when he replaced Bob Daisley & Lee Kerslake on the reissues of his first two albums. That's the kind of thing a media star does. Make Money. That's what this set really seems to reek of to me. A cash grab. But let's talk about the actual content here..
Disc 1 has various studio tracks and live tracks (no studio with Daisley/Kerslake, though) on it. There's nothing new here, this is all reissued material that's been released somewhere before. Spiders is somewhat a rarity to the US audience, as it appeared on the European version of Bark at the Moon, and the 2002 reissue of said album in the US. I suspect most casual Ozzy fans don't know that one. The songs covered here run his first three studio releases (Blizzard, Diary, & Bark).
Disc 2 has more of the same, but has some songs in demo form on here. A couple of them are quite interesting, actually. Of particular note is the Bang Bang song, which is a demo of Facing Hell from the Down to Earth album. The demos make this disc worthwhile to me, unlike Disc 1 which is mostly useless if you've been buying all of Oz's output since 1981 like I've been doing.
Disc 3 is fairly odd. This is a collection of some (but not all) of the duets Ozzy has done. Some are more serious attempts at songs (Purple Haze, I Ain't No Nice Guy). Some are goofy (Born to be Wild with Miss Piggy & the Bee Gee's Stavin Alive with Dweezil Zappa), and some are really odd (Wu Tang Clan). The studio song Psycho Man by Black Sabbath is on here (from the 98 Reunion album by Sabbath). This disc is an attempt to cull together these oddball appearances by Ozzy. But they're not all here. His most successful such song was "Close My Eyes Forever" with Lita Ford. That was technically a Lita Ford song with Oz on it, so there might be a rights issue, or they might be saving it for Prince of Darkness II. Anyway, I have a hard time saying this disc is bad, because it's not, but it definitely has a weird feeling I can't quite describe. And for the record, I've always loved the Miss Piggy duet. I saw it for what it was, a goof.
Disc 4 is the "new" disc. It's a collection of newly recorded covers by Ozzy. I think your enjoyment of this disc will be dependant on whether or not you like the original songs here. Some of them I do. Most I never much cared for even in their original form. Some of the stuff that works for me is 21st Century Schizoid Man, Mississippi Queen, Fire, & my favorite of the disc, "All the Young Dudes". Sympathy for the Devil doesn't really work here, and the absolutely nauseating cover of the old Sabbath chestnut, "Changes" is here - in it's vomit inducing glory. OK, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but this cover of a Sabbath song he does with his daughter Kelly is really not that great at all. So there's some bright points here, but most of this disc is just "Eh" to me.
For me, the strongest point of this entire package is the packaging itself. The hardcover booklet seems pretty well put together - some of these things feel like they're going to fly apart when you pick them up. Also, some of these multi disc sets feature some really odd CD holders (like ones where you have to remove one disc if you want to get at the one below it). Nothing like that here. All presented nice and neatly. The booklet itself I really like too. Has the self deprecating intro (Not another compilation bit from Oz), as well as a boatload of photographs and pics of memorabilia. My favorite part is the couple of pages where Oz has a few paragraphs about each track that appears on the set. I wish more artists would do that, it does make it feel a little more personal when they write something about everything on there. Finally, there was a pass in the box set for a free ticket to Ozzfest 2005 if you validated it by a certain date. I thought it was a nice value added thing, assuming you were interested in going to Ozzfest.
To sum up, I can't really recommend the set to those fans of Ozzy's who have been following him for a long time. There's nothing inherently wrong with the music on here. The music on the first two discs is good, it's just the entire thing seems like another attempt to get more $ from the fans than an attempt at a heartfelt compilation with lots of odd songs collected in one place. The packaging is good, the music is good, yet I never really find myself wanting to reach for this to listen to it.
If you don't have any of Ozzy's previous greatest hits packages, then this is probably worth it for you, as the production value on the set is high - the quality is there, but long time fans will be bored I think as the majority of the stuff on here they've heard many times before.
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by Ozzy Osbourne 
