Mac Sabbath brings your fast-food nightmares to life tonight at Jackpot Music Hall

UPDATE: This is a bummer. We’re hearing word that tonight’s show has been canceled.

Mac Sabbath is the world’s only clown-fronted, fast-food themed, Black Sabbath act. There are costumes, a light show and songs, which don’t so much glorify fast food as warn of its dangers. It’s a strange cross between “Weird Al” Yankovic and Michael Pollan, but it works. The band doesn’t do interviews, so we spoke by phone with Mac Sabbath’s manager, Mike Odd, about the whole strange affair ahead of Wednesday’s show at the Jackpot.

The Pitch: What’s it like, operating as the manager of this band that keeps getting bigger and bigger, yet still manages to keep a level of mystery about them?

Mike Odd: Horrifying! [laughs] It’s very complicated to be this conduit between fantasy and reality, because [frontman Ronald Osbourne] seems to have made it his life’s work to complicate it for me. I realize that he’s in this other timezone, to say the least, but you’d think that at some point, it would give, and we could get a little more realistic, here – but that’s not happening. That’s just how I live now. It’s a wonderful, weird experience. When weirdness envelopes your life and becomes a regular, day-to-day occurrence, it really brings to light the struggle of constant oddities trying to blend with regular society. Does that make sense?

Absolutely! I would imagine that, as like attracts like, the longer this goes on, you get even more oddities being attracted by the strangeness of Mac Sabbath?

Absolutely. Ian from Spinal Tap has nothing on me. A cricket bat is not going to do it.

Does it ever feel like a cosmic game of telephone, being the mouthpiece for the band?

That’s a really good description. May I use that?

Does Mac Sabbath prefer that they let their music be the means by which they speak directly to the world?

Yeah. In this modern age of reality TV and stuff, where things are overexposed, I think we’re all in agreement that this thing we have is special, and should be treated more carefully and let it maintain its mystery and simplicity, rather than putting in a whole bunch of personal drama that we consider to be worthless. Take it at face value. It’s different than what everyone is dishing out right now. It’s very much of the ’70s in the way that it maintains its authenticity and wonderment.

It seems like letting the band do interviews would just take away from the spectacle.

Yeah! [cackles] And that’s why interviews are always so interesting for me – I’m like, “Oh: another thing I don’t want to talk about! Great!” [laughs] But you don’t seem like the kind of guy who would want to humanize these wonderful creatures, so we shouldn’t have that problem.

Oh, no. The only way I’d want to humanize the band would be to see if the band – being as how they’re preaching against the dangers of fast food – is into the likes of ***Supersize Me and the like, or if there’s not enough fantasy there?

Well, that’s the thing: When you go to see it, it is so fun. You are watching a clown entertain the audience, and he does a fantastic job of doing so, but when you dig into the lyrics, there’s some very serious matters that they cover. I think that there’s a wide range of fans that like them on different levels. There are levels of fans that don’t delve heavily into the lyrics, necessarily, nor are affected by them, and are just super into the fun. Then, there are fans that are into what [Mac Sabbath] are trying to say, and believe it, and learn from it, and are influenced by it. Art is subjective: You take what you can get from it.

It seems like the spectacle will be matched rather nicely by Clownvis Presley on this upcoming tour.

Oh, yes. Putting the clown Elvis and the clown Ozzy together in the same room is exciting, to say nothing of putting them on the same bill. I have no idea what that’s gonna yield. [laughs]

I would imagine that for some, it’s their dream come true, and for others, it’s a living nightmare?

For me, personally, it’s definitely both.

Mac Sabbbath with Clownvis Presley
Jackpot Music Hall
Wednesday, September 14