This came out in 2002 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
Five things you need to know about this album:
1) Thanks to their expletive-laced MTV reality show, aging metal icon Ozzy Osbourne and his clan have become American TV’s First F@#*ing Family.
2) If anybody knows how to strike while the iron man is hot, it’s Ozzy’s cagey wife Sharon — hence the simultaneous release of a TV-show tie-in CD and a new Ozzy live disc.
3) Of the two, The Osbourne Family Album is slightly more entertaining, if only because it has many of the show’s funniest bits of dialogue (“I love you more than life itself but you’re all f@#*ing mad!”) and the surprisingly rocking version of Papa Don’t Preach that daughter Kelly recently unveiled at the MTV Movie Awards.
4) By contrast, Live at Budokan is a pretty standard dose of Ozzy in concert, with the “prince of f@#*ing darkness” delivering his six billionth renditions of Crazy Train, I Don’t Know, Bark at the Moon, Paranoid, Believer, Mr. Crowley and No More Tears, along with a handful of tunes from whatever his last album was.
5) Until everybody gets sick of Ozzy and co. again, expect to see more where these came from. All aboard the cash-in train!!
