After the curtain closed on the famously addictive MTV series, “The Osbournes”, Ozzy Osbourne seemed to have lost his place as American pop culture’s flavor of the month. Fortunately for his fans, he still provides entertainment by going back to doing what he does best: delivering a fantastic live show.

                As the room darkened at the DCU Center in Worcester MA, the screens cut to several lurid but mostly hilarious spoofs of popular movies and TV shows featuring Ozzy as Captain Jack Sparrow, Dwight Schrute from “The Office”, Borat, and an especially raunchy scene from “The Queen” in which the madman paid his respects to Queen Elizabeth. As the band took the stage behind a giant white screen enveloping the stage (rock show cliché, anyone?) they opened with the first single from the “Black Rain” album, “I Don’t Wanna Stop”. The band sounded tight despite Ozzy obviously using a backing track for the vocals. Fortunately, it seemed that this was the only song that utilized the backing tracks.

                Older songs such as “Suicide Solution”, “Crazy Train”, and “Bark at the Moon” seemed to be energized by Ozzy’s band, especially guitarist Zakk Wylde. After the obligatory band introductions, Wylde wowed the crowd with a lengthy guitar solo that included his own version of the “Star Spangled Banner”. Even though Ozzy told the audience that he wasn’t feeling well, his voice seemed to be in fine form for the whole show. One was almost torn between feeling envious and sorry for the fans in the first few rows of seats that Ozzy threw buckets of water at and sprayed down with a high pressure foam gun, covering the fans from head to toe with white foam.

                While there were a couple of slower songs such as “Road to Nowhere” and “Mama, I’m Coming Home”, the only song that seemed to slow down the performance was a ballad from his new album,” Here For You.” Even after a long night of music from opening bands In This Moment and Rob Zombie, Ozzy was still able to bring the crowd to its feet with an encore of “Paranoid” from the old days with Black Sabbath. After a deafening fireworks display that caused the whole band to fall down all over the stage, the lights came up and it was obvious to the audience that the Prince of Darkness isn’t quite ready to stop after all.