GUS BLACK GIVES OZZY'S 'PARANOID' A PLACE IN HIS SENSITIVE SET.

Byline: Sandra Barrera Staff Writer

When he was a teenager, Gus Black (his wife's surname) went through a ``full-on'' heavy-metal faze.

``Who didn't?'' says the singer-songwriter, who pays homage to,among other influences, his heavy-metal roots in the album ``Uncivilized Love,'' with a melancholy take on Black Sabbath's ``Paranoid.''

The song finds Black vocalizing in a near whisper over a jangly guitar and a depressed beat - proof that his head-banger days still linger.

According to Black, his last cover was Blue Oyster Cult's ``(Don't Fear) the Reaper'' for ``Scream,'' the soundtrack to the 1996 teen horror flick.

``I've always tried to take a heavier song and bring it into this mellow universe,'' he says. ``And, 'Paranoid' was the first song I ever learned how to play on guitar.''

Black (born Gus Penaloza) is a Los Angeles native who's wanted to be a singer-songwriter since the age of 5, although it took some experimenting with other styles of music before he actually became one.

Like many teens, he played in bands, going from metal to punk.

Then, he says, he bought his first acoustic guitar.

``It was really beat up,'' says Black of the 1970s Gibson J-200 that he later refurbished and still plays. ``It brought me back to Cat Stevens and ... Jim Croce, all this great music I listened to when I was a kid. That's when I really started writing songs.''

He was working under the name Gus when, in 1996, he put out the four- song cassette ``C-Sides'' on the AlamoSounds label, followed by his self-titled full-length debut. ``Word of Mouth,'' his 1999 release, was his last for the now-defunct label.

By 2001, he was on the British indie label Wild Abandon and recording under the name Gus Black. He released ``Uncivilized Love'' the following year.

A newer incarnation of the album was put out last month by the U.S.- based Immergent Records. Amazon.com has since praised the release as ``inviting musical simplicity, wed to a complex - and conflicted - world view,'' and KCRW-FM's Nic Harcourt, a longtime supporter of Black's music, included ``Uncivilized Love'' in his picks of this month's top 10 CDs.

It was while he was putting the finishing touches on the album that Black began slowly strumming out the chords to ``Paranoid'' on the guitar. ``It just felt really good,'' he recalls, saying he decided to include it on his haunting, pop-inspired set. ``It's like this beautiful, melancholy, sad singer-songwriter song. Who knew that Ozzy was the sensitive poet?''

Sandra Barrera, [phone]

sandra.barrera(at)dailynews.com

GUS BLACK

Where: Largo, 432 N. Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles.

When: 9:30 tonight.

Information: [phone]; www.largo-la.com.

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