R.I.P. Ronnie James Dio

Like many dudes my age, I grew up with a deep and abiding love for Black Sabbath. They were certainly my introduction to Heavy Metal, and their greatest hits album, We Sold Our Soul For Rock'n'Roll, was probably one of the first half-dozen records I ever bought with my own money, which wasn't from a job (I was too young), but rather from the $2/week allowance I got for taking the garbage out, washing dishes, and keeping my bedroom clean. Adjusting for inflation, it took me about 3 weeks to save enough money to buy that 2-record greatest hits set, and a pack of football cards, at Ben Franklin. (The store, not the long-dead statesmen.) Anyways, I must have been about ten years old at the time, and I seem to recall my mom not being too happy that I liked Sabbath, but still allowing me to listen to 'em. She was cool like that.

But you know what? For all my love for the original Sabbath, with Ozzy on vocals, I have to admit that my favorite album of theirs, to this day, is Heaven And Hell, with Ronnie James Dio on vocals. Simply put, it's one of the greatest Heavy Metal albums ever made, and as iconic and awesome as Ozzy was/is, Ronnie James Dio was always the better singer, and I think most fucking metal fans would agree with me on that count.

I had the great fortune to see Black Sabbath with Dio on vocals, and the even greater fortune of seeing Dio live on the Holy Diver tour. They played the Eagles Club in Milwaukee, a place that held maybe 1000 people, and at this general admission show, my friends and I were lucky enough to get right up to the front of the stage, a mere 10 feet away from the band. After hundreds, if not thousands of shows I've seen over the years, it remains one of the greatest shows I've ever seen.

I'd also note that to the best of my recollection, Ronnie James Dio was the first person I ever saw "throw the horns".

Rest in peace, Ronnie James, you were fucking awesome.

Hotcha! Hank

Covering Covers # 7

So, there's Ozzy, flashing the peace signs on the cover of an album that is a somewhat conceptual song cycle about love gone wrong, isolation, changes, death, cocaine, religions both pagan and organized, and if that sounds kinda heady, keep in mind that Ozzy's lyrics were never much more complicated than what you might find in a 15 year old's secret notebook, especially when they concerned love gone wrong...

But his words don't matter so much when the riffs are so fucking heavy...

On the other hand, Volume 4 has the echo noodlings of "FX", the gentle faux flamenco and synthetic strings of "Laguna Sunrise", and the stately electric piano of "Changes"...

But to get to my point, Black Sabbath got wrongly tagged as some sort of Satan-Worshipping motherfuckers from the very start, when the message Ozzy was mostly peddling is that the world's a cruel cruel place, women aren't much better, God ain't gonna help you (and neither is Satan, chump!), drugs are fun until they're not, and eventually they aren't, and in the end there's death for you and me and all our friends...

The thing is, if you've watched only one episode of The Osbournes, you know that Ozzy is a genuinely good and smart man who found a woman who can be cruel to everybody in the world except Ozzy, a woman who ran his business and took care of his money and helped him sober up and built a small empire outta her man, and built a brand...OZZFEST! THE PREVIOUSLY MENTIONED TELEVISION SHOW!! And now these...

Sharon Osbourne, in cooperation with Converse Shoes, gave her man and the rest of us these "massive kicks" as the kids and one of the dudes on our Tech Support team likes to say...

When I saw the full-page ad for these shoes in the most recent issue of Alternative Press the wad of cinnamon chiclets fell outta my mouth. After the initial shock wore off, I thought, well, if there's gotta be a Sabbath shoe, I suppose this has gotta be it...

Paranoid might be their most popular album, but it's a picture of a goofy pink swordsman, and only fairies would wear boots like these, as Ozzy all but said himself on "Faries Wear Boots"...

Sabbath Bloody Sabbath wouldn't work because it's too busy, and it's a soul-rape scene...

Sabotage is one of the ugliest album covers in rock history because it features a mirrored-image of one of the ugliest bands in rock history...

No, this image from Volume 4 is the best, and only Sabbath cover that (almost) works on the side of a cheaply made tennis shoe...

The question is - is it a truly iconic image? Ancillary question - An image actually worthy of a shoe?

Not really. Sabbath's most iconic cover is probably that goofy pink swordsman on the cover of Paranoid, but only cuz it's so damn goofy, and it is Black Sabbath's most popular longplayer...

If this Volume 4 image is iconic, it's because of its high-contrast simplicity and nothing more...

I mean, the idea of Ozzy flashing the peace sign on the cover of an album full of woefully bleak shit is an indication that this image is meaningless...Maybe it's got something to do with Vietnam, but in the end, it has as much poignancy as Miley Cyrus and her own peace sign waving...

Finally, if this image is accurate, then they flipped the image backwards on the shoe, and as a fetishist of album covers and whatnot, this is a shame, whether it was intentional or not.

But hey, we're living in a post-album culture, so what does it matter?

Hotcha! Hank

Tape Jazz Massacre Introduced Me To My Mind

Ornette Yukahiro, one half of venerated Samplecore practitioners, Tape Jazz Massacre, sent me a short, mostly incoherent, email last night, which included the attached jpg for what I presume is the cover art for an upcoming TJM CD likely entitled Massacre Of Tape, or maybe just Of Tape...Like I said, Ornette's email was a mess, though he did mention some "new hoot pop coming soon", so I'm confident that was the gist of the message - new Tape Jazz shit coming soon, and it's certainly been awhile, hasn't it?

So, anyways, here's the original Black Sabbath cover, just for comparison's sake...

Hotcha! Hank

Making War Just For Fun

Osama Bin Laden is left-handed. So is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Kim Jong Il is not left-handed, but Hugo Chavez definitely is.

John Kerry and John McCain are both left-handed, but Kerry writes right-handed, so he's a goddamned traitor to Thee Sinistral League. They both voted in favor of the War In Iraq.

Barack Obama is a lefty.

As far as I know, none of the main players in the current administration are southpaws, but you know, this schtick's gotta breakdown sometime...

Shout out to Ben Franklin, yo!

Hotcha! Hank