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Geezer Butler is the bassist/lyricist for Black Sabbath, Birmingham, England’s finest contribution to the music world. Butler’s seismic bass playing figuratively and literally laid the foundation for heavy metal. Try to imagine a world without Black Sabbath – it’s no world I would want to live in. Butler’s a staunch supporter of Aston Villa Football Club, a vegan and a hell of a nice guy in person. Many years ago, I worked in the same neighborhood that Geezer lived in, and he’d occasionally come into the shop for a quick snack. Always polite, always friendly, he put up with a ridiculous amount of stammering and awkward conversation as I and my co-workers tried to figure out a way to say “You fucking rule!” without sounding like total jackasses. We usually opted for the suave, “You fucking rule, Geezer!” Only once did he come in while we had a Black Sabbath album playing – it was The Mob Rules, the band’s second with vocalist Ronnie James Dio, and a personal favorite (I’ve been through two cassettes and one CD since that day). Geezer just smiled and made no mention of the strange coincidence.

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It’s three days later, and I’m still thinking about Hydeware Theatre’s outdoor production of Macbeth. It’s a very good production, a smart and honest production with a few problems – but I don’t know that I did it justice in a short review. A three-actor version of a Shakespearean play is a bold decision – there’s so much that could go wrong, and a poorly-handled production of Shakespeare is excruciating. And there were definitely elements of Richard Strelinger’s direction that gave me pause. Namely, the lackluster fight scenes, and the use of Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name Of” as a soundtrack for the climactic fight between Macduff and Macbeth. RATM is such a cheesy, short-hand version of “angry political band” that the music is actually offensive, and not in an “I’m outraged!” kinda way; it’s more of a “You could cut this suburban angst with a paper knife” kind of eye-rolling outrage.
But that’s such a small, small portion of the evening.

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