“There’s a fire extinguisher strapped to that guy’s drum set. WHY? His sticks are on fire and I can clearly see smoke…is he going to be ok? Is he going to use the fire extinguisher? As a kid, this is what I would repeatedly think to myself as I stared at the back cover of my older brother’s copy of Van Halen 2.“

“I would fixate on the photo of David Lee Roth and try to comprehend how the split he’s doing is as high as the mic stand. Was there a springboard or something that they pulled away right before the photo was taken? I didn’t have the answers but I knew what I was looking at and listening to was AMAZING.

Downstairs in the den was my parents’ record collection. I had been having dance parties there with my mom courtesy of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. The coffee table would be removed to make room and then I would go to town. That record is now sitting in the basement next to a Sergio Franchi album.

I didn’t own my own piece of vinyl until “Start Me Up” was released a few years later. I had it on 45. Having my own record was definitely a big deal. Otherwise, if I liked a song, I had to tape it when it came on the radio.

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With 13, three-fourths of the original Black Sabbath has reunited under the guidance of career-savior-as-producer Rick Rubin. The result isn’t a masterpiece, but it is the best record of new material to bear the Black Sabbath name in decades. Ultimately, its biggest limitation is the one element that’s missing.

In a manner similar to the 1963 Mario Bava-directed film that provided them with their name, it took Black Sabbath a while to gain some critical respect. And when the belated praise started popping up in print, some welcomed it as validation of a truly important band while others dismissed it all as unnecessary.

Those of the latter opinion populated a camp that listened to hard rock/heavy metal enthusiastically and accepted it on its own terms, and they frequently adopted an intensely autodidactic approach, learning how to quickly recognize the good-to-great stuff from the mediocre or worse and largely dismissing the rumblings of the rock music press as antithetical to their interests.

And that was mainly because the scribes populating the rock critic game were in general quite dismissive of hard rock/heavy metal as a whole, with vocalist Ozzy Osbourne, guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler, and drummer Bill Ward often getting lambasted as cartoonish, unsubtle purveyors of a stylistic cul-de-sac that’s stereotypical main audience was a bunch of dead-end teenagers and twenty-something alcohol-swilling and illicit substance-riddled degenerates. Adding to the problem; as critical esteem for the group rose, their stock with fans started to wane.

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We’ve extended the deadline to enter given downtime from last week’s server switch. —Ed.

While there’s been no shortage of commentary and critique as to The Rolling Stones’ current “50 and Counting” trek through the States and beyond, we for one couldn’t be happier to see the band out on the road, exorcising classics from a catalog with very few peers.

In tandem with the band’s 50th anniversary and tour, ABKCO Records has seen fit to delve into their own archives to remaster and rerelease a trio of the band’s classic LPs on clear vinyl—and we’ve got the set of 3 “Clearly Classic” releases to award one of you.

First, some official background:

“Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, and Hot Rocks 1964-1971, the most celebrated albums in ABKCO’s catalog of Rolling Stones releases, will debut later this month as 180-gram LPs, pressed on clear vinyl, in celebration of the band’s 50th anniversary and ’50 and Counting’ tour.

The launch of a projected series titled “The Rolling Stones Clearly Classic,” featuring these three initial releases out May 28th, focus on the three Rolling Stones albums that reflect the group’s formative years and transformation into “The World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band” at the end of the 1960′s and into the early 70′s.

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