This 25-minute U.S. television performance is currently the only pro-shot footage in circulation from the SABOTAGE era. It was Sabbath’s first appearance on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, a late night music showcase that ran from 1973 to 1981.

For quite a while, we have been led to believe that this show was filmed at Long Beach Arena in Long Beach, CA, USA, due mainly to the claims of a few Sabbath collectors. In March 2004, Dave Tangye set the record straight in his book HOW BLACK WAS MY SABBATH. We were in the right state and off by a few days, but the Don Kirshner film is actually from a show at Santa Monica Civic Center in Santa Monica, CA. I'm still looking for confirmation on the exact date, but my best guess would be September 3rd or 4th, 1975.

The performance itself is excellent! The band are enjoying themselves and Ozzy has his voice under control. The film allows us to see the 'snowflakes' the band used during their 1975 performances of "Snowblind". It's kind of funny to see these flakes covering the band as they played. You can see the white stuff all over the stage for the remainder of their set! For "Black Sabbath, a large silver cross was raised above Bill's drum set. Also, note the carnations that adorned Bill's drum kit. This was a decoration he had adopted for that particular tour.

The arrangement of "War Pigs" is a bit skewed, as though the band went into the wrong section at one point. They are able to recover the song without noticably screwing up.

Pristine copies used to be hard to come by, since Sabbath’s Don Kirshner ’75 performance had only been rebroadcast a handful of times since the show went off the air. However, some excellent quality copies have recently been circulated on DVD-R by fans and bootleggers. Most appear to originate from the MUSIQUE program that aired on French TV's Canal Jimmy. The best copy I've seen had beautiful image quality, but was the motion was quite jerky. This problem could be a combination of PAL video standards (which has have a lower frame rate) and dropped frames from the original capture. (Note: I have yet to find any copies of the 1980 show on video)

One company that resells old TV footage to the media recently bought the rights to the Don Kirshner catalog and there was talk of “extra footage” and restoration work, but nothing has materialized as of yet. At least there is hope that we will eventually see nicer copies of this show, maybe even with extra songs!

Ever notice how so many TV and radio programs from the 70’s would artificially dub in crowd sounds or boost the levels of the applause between songs? Often, this sounds quite cheesy and obviously fake. This is done throughout Sabbath’s Don Kirshner appearance and it seems quite unnecessary given that the crowd seemed genuinely enthusiastic to begin with. Because they didn’t mix the overdubs in very smoothly, the opening notes of “Snowblind” and “War Pigs” are cut off. There even appears to be a small edit during the solo sections in “War Pigs”, as the song seems to change unnaturally at one point. I’d have to review this again to hear whether it was a band mistake or an intentional edit. If it were an edit, it wasn’t one that made a great deal of sense to me.

The performance itself is a good one and it’s a real treat to be able to see video of the footage of Sabbath from 1975! With only a handful of pro-shot clips of the band in the 70’s, the Don Kirshner TV appearance is highly recommended to both collectors and casual fans. It should have been included on the BLACK SABBATH STORY, VOLUME 1, but probably wasn’t for licensing reasons.

1 TV Announcer-French TV MUSIQUE SHOW
2 Don Kirschner's intro
3 Killing Yourself To Live
4 Hole In The Sky
5 Snowblind
6 War Pigs
7 Paranoid

PAL (4:3, All), 1,62 gb