I am always excited when I see a new Pigs On The Groove release pop up. I have some of their earlier releases and the quality is hit and miss, but over the last couple of years, everything they’ve put out has been excellent. It was a real surprise to see an Ozzy release from them, since I normally associate this label with bands like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. So, when Goodbye To Romance became available for pre-order, I knew I had to get one or two copies.
First of all, I believe this is the nicest jacket I’ve ever seen on a bootleg. It’s really not a surprise that POTG would come up with something cool and different, since they normally produce unique and odd shaped packaging. This Led Zeppelin release with an octagonal box is a good example. Goodbye To Romance has a gatefold, high gloss sleeve with excellent artwork and crisp, clear imagery. The standard full color version is embossed, which adds an extra dimension to the already luxury level packaging. Foldout liner notes are included, which cover a bit of the making of the album Diary Of A Madman as well as some notable quotes from Ozzy and the band at this moment in time. The print quality on these is also great, and they are a good but brief read. If a bootleg comes with an insert, it’s usually just filler and an excuse to charge more money. This one is definitely an exception.
Goodbye To Romance is available in five different color combinations. It’s a 2 LP set, and each record is a different color. You can get sets in Red/Green Smoke, Red/Orange Smoke, Green/Yellow Smoke, and Orange/Yellow Smoke. The back of each jacket is numbered out of 320 copies, and I have to imagine that number is the total between all colors. There is no way each color combination has 320 copies, since that would be a crazy high number for an unofficial record. There is also a Test Pressing or “Promotional” version that has a non-embossed, glossy black and white sleeve with matching black and white liner notes. The records themselves have special promotion style labels and are pressed on Yellow/Orange Smoke wax. This one is quite rare, with only 30 copies in total. If you add everything up, that means 350 total copies across all colorways, which sounds about right to me.
As usual with POTG, you can tell which color combination you’re getting from the sticker in the upper left corner on the back of the jacket. The individual numbering is also done by sticker and can be found in the lower right corner. I decided to pick up the Green/Yellow smoke version and was lucky enough to get a test pressing as well. I also have a Red/Green Smoke version coming from a friend of mine, so that’ll give me 3/5 of the sets. Normally with Ozzy, I try to get all the colors, but these are quite expensive and colors are very similar and even have some overlap. For most serious collectors, I think a standard color copy and a test press will suffice.
As far as the recording itself, the audio comes from “The Legendary Kalamazoo ’82 Tapes”. This is an audience recording, but it’s a very good one. As with most audience recordings, they can sound a bit bad when you start listening, but after a song or two your expectations adjust and it becomes a pretty similar experience to hearing the show as the audience must have heard it. The lineup for this show was Randy Rhoads on guitar, Rudy Sarzo on bass, Tommy Aldridge on drums, and Don Airey on keyboards. Credits wise, Diary Of A Madman was of course a weird album to begin with. The bass and drum parts were written by Bob Daisley and Lee Kerslake respectively, but they were both replaced on the tour by Sarzo and Aldridge. Much of the confusion comes from the fact that photos of Sarzo and Aldridge, rather than the guys who actually played on the album, are included in the official album release.
This performance in Kalamazoo was indeed an incredible one. It was just a little over a month before the tragic airplane crash that took Randy’s life, and the band was firing on all cylinders. The front of Goodbye To Romance has a graphic that indicates that the record is “Featuring Randy Rhoads”, and there is a good reason for this. The whole band, including Ozzy on vocals, is great… but it’s Randy who steals the show. As you can see, the set-list was incredible. While I deeply wish that we would have been able to hear songs like “S.A.T.O.” or “Little Dolls” during this tour (or ever since they were never played live), this is probably the best we could have asked for.
Audience Recording – Wings Event Center, Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA – 9th February, 1982
A1 Diary Of A Madman (Introduction)
A2 Over The Mountain
A3 Mr. Crowley
A4 Crazy Train
A5 Revelation (Mother Earth)
B1 Steal Away (The Night)
B2 Suicide Solution
B3 Guitar Solo (Randy Rhoads)
B4 Drum Solo (Tommy Aldridge)
B5 Goodbye To Romance
C1 I Don’t Know / No Bone Movies
C2 Believer
C3 Flying High Again
C4 Iron Man
C5 Children Of The Grave
D1 Paranoid
D2 Crazy Train*
D3 Suicide Solution*
D4 You Looking At Me*
*Bonus Tracks
The show starts out with a tiny bit cut out of the “Diary Of A Madman” intro, but this was a recorded piece and not that big of a deal. The fade-in is nice, as are all the fade-ins and fade-outs, which is one of the first things I listen for. I’ve discussed this issue many times on this site, but there is nothing that disrupts my listening to a show more than spaces in between tracks and sudden cuts in audio. POTG has done a great job here making sure that there are no issues like that present here. Once “Over The Mountain” kicks in, things sound great. The keyboards are little more prominent than I’m used to hearing, but I think they add a lot to the songs.
“Mr. Crowley” has an even more Clockwork Orange sounding keyboard/organ intro than usual which creates a very ominous atmosphere. Randy’s guitar work can be heard very clearly, and the volume seems to be boosted during the solo. The jacket says the audio has been digitally remastered, so I would imagine this is something that POTG has added. I have several other versions of this show on CD, and I don’t recall the solo sections being so clear. They definitely did a nice job making them pop without it being a distraction. There is a bit of audible tape noise, but this is from the original source material rather than anything wrong with the pressing. Throughout the whole show, I was unable to detect any vinyl surface noise at all.
Ozzy asks the crowd to “say hello to Ronnie”, who was, of course, the dwarf who was hired to mock Ronnie James Dio on account of his diminutive size. Having your own dwarf was apparently all the rage in rock at this point, and Black Sabbath had one of their own for the Born Again tour. By all accounts, Ozzy was very kind to “Ronnie”, Who helped Oz catapult rotten meat onto the crowd every night. This was in great contrast to how Sabbath treated their dwarf. This unfortunate soul ended up locked in a cage overnight, strung from the rafters, and dropped off the top of the Stonehenge set with no padding on the floor.. Eventually, Tony and Geezer decided they had to let the guy go before he really got hurt.
“Crazy Train” is the next number, and of course Randy nails the solo. It’s a little unusual to hear this song so early in the set, but it probably hadn’t achieved its legendary status yet. With all the great guitarists who have played with Ozzy since, I think it’s safe to say that no one has ever nailed this particular solo quite like the man who wrote it. The same goes for Jake with “Bark At The Moon” and Zakk with “No More Tears”. Ozzy’s vocals really shine on “Revelation (Mother Earth)”, and we get a nice fadeout from Side A.
Ozzy introduces the band, and they go into “Suicide Solution”. The guitar work is certainly the highlight of this song, and the audio is very clear. I’m not sure if it’s a result of a new mix or it’s just because it’s a solo so everyone else stops playing, but it sounds great. All the effects on the guitar are audible, and they’re properly panned between the speakers, which is pretty amazing for a bootleg. After Randy finishes, Tommy goes into a drum solo which is also very clear sounding. It’s a good one, but mercifully short since I’m not a huge fan of drum solos.
The band goes right into “Goodbye To Romance”, which I think was a good title track for this show. This version has some extra keyboard which adds some depth, and Ozzy’s vocals are perfect. It’s a slow song, but he still takes the time to fire up the crowd. It seems a bit strange to hear “I Don’t Know” so close to the end of the set, but the band finishes extra strong with “Believer” and “Flying High Again” before closing out with three Black Sabbath numbers. Just like on the Tribute album, they run “Iron Man” and “Children Of The Grave” together and finish up with “Paranoid” as the encore.
This is when things get a little strange. When I picked this up, I was intrigued to find that the last three songs were listed as Bob Daisley/ Randy Rhoads demo tracks. This sounded a bit strange to me, but I was excited to hear what they had. Obviously, there was a lot of room left over on Side D, so it was nice that POTG added some extra content. The jacket lists “Crazy Train”, “Suicide Solution” and “You Looking At Me” as the bonus tracks, but “Goodbye To Romance” is also there, but is unlisted. So, what’s the story on these?
I can’t be 100% sure since the audio is a little scrambled, but I’m quite certain these are just the standard album cuts. They have been edited with AI to raise and lower the volume for certain instruments, but they are definitely not demo tracks. Ozzy’s voice is still present, but it sounds like it was separated using an AI stem and lowered as much as possible. Even with current technology, it’s difficult to get rid of every trace of a stem, and some artifacts will still remain. As a result, Ozzy’s singing is there, but it sounds like he’s underwater.
I’m not sure if they were trying to fully remove the vocals or just highlight Randy’s guitar parts. The good news is that if you want to hear an almost isolated Randy solo, I guess these tracks would be interesting. I plan on listening to the show again, but I don’t see myself going back and listening to these song edits any time soon. This set is excellent and certainly worth getting for the live material, but I would avoid it if you just wanted the demo tracks. As far as I’m concerned, it’s bonus material, so it doesn’t really reflect on the overall quality of the set.
All in all, I’d say that packaging for Goodbye To Romance is an easy 10/10. The embossed covers on the color version are beautiful, and the black and white really pops on the test pressings. Both of my copies sounded excellent with no defects or surface noise, so the pressing itself also deserves 10/10. The audio quality is excellent for an audience recording, and I consider it to be right at 8/10. The “bonus tracks” are kind of bizarre and don’t have any value as far as I’m concerned. I wouldn’t let them dissuade you from picking this up though. I liked it enough to buy two copies and then an extra one on top of that, so that should tell you that I still enjoyed it quite a bit.
I’m sure these won’t be around forever, so if you think this one’s for you, now is the time to pick one up. As always, good luck in the hunt!
You Can’t Kill Rock and Roll.