This day in history: What did S-R reviewer think about Black Sabbath concert at Spokane Coliseum?

From 1975: Ozzie Osbourne and Black Sabbath played the Spokane Coliseum, but The Spokesman-Review critic didn’t quite get it.

“Black Sabbath is a part of a phenomenon that anyone over 18 can’t appreciate,” he wrote. “They brought their brand of ‘heavy metal’ music, a metal that will never be found in the periodic table.”

He said that “there’s something a little evil about them.”

“To the uninitiated, ‘heavy metal’ is the loudest form of electrical music possible,” he wrote. “There is a certain tension waiting for guitars to blow up or amplifiers to go berserk. It’s not rock and roll and it’s not really music. It’s just ear-shattering sound with a mean, down and dirty beat. Mostly the sound comes in waves of raw energy pulsating through the audience.”

He did mention one salient fact. More than 5,000 teenagers were in the audience.

From 1925: An Odessa farmer was “near collapse” after being swindled out of $2,500 by confidence men in a fake horse-race scheme.

The farmer was at the Interstate Fair when he met some “friendly” men who said they had a foolproof horse -betting scheme. They placed a few bets for him, which earned him $400. But to make the big money, they said, he had to put up a $2,500 bond.

He went back to Odessa, and sold wheat to come up with $2,500. He returned to Spokane and gave the money to a “clerk” at a hotel.

“His wife kept warning her husband to look carefully into the transaction before he put is money in it, but he wouldn’t listen,” said police.

The confidence men then disappeared, along with his $2,500.