"Die, Dimebag Darrell, Die!"
Holy shit. I can't say I was ever a Pantera fan, but if I wasn't, it was perhaps because they rocked too hard. So I had a grudging respect for them, or at least, I never wished for a gunman to storm onstage during a concert and murder them. Sadly, this happened to former Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrell last night. No word on whether this was the long-delayed revenge of the guy getting punched in the face on the Pantera album Vulgar Display of Power.
4 Comments:
I used to be a huge Pantera fan in high school. I also played guitar and bought most of those boutique magazines devoted to it, like Guitar Player and Guitar World. They featured Dimebag pretty heavily, because -- well, because he was one of the most versatile guitarists on the planet. He was amazing. I had a poster of him in my room at one point.
Haven't listened to Pantera in ages, of course. Still, I was as shocked and saddened as it's possible to be towards the death of someone you respect but don't actually know personally. I tend to poke fun of celebrity deaths a lot -- but's not so funny when one of the home team kicks it.
Anyway, I don't know if the guy was an asshole or a saint or what. But he played amazing guitar and he got shot four times by a psychotic. So I join the metal and guitar-playing community in mourning Dimebag Darrell, one of the giants of the genre.
Yeah, this is shocking. And I can understand how shattered the metal community is. I remember when Owen Hart (who was also one of the very best at what he did) died, it was like a punch in the stomach for me and other wrestling fans, and this seems similar.
One guy was quoted as saying this is like losing a president, and I can understand it. Not only was Dimebag Darrell a giant in his genre, but the public nature of the crime reminds me of John Wilkes Booth murdering Lincoln in Ford's Theatre. The murder or attempted murder of a US president is almost always carried out in public, so I think that guy hit the nail on the head: Dimebag Darrell was assassinated.
http://www.angelfire.com/band2/wolvie/images/ShowLetter.jpg
I can't decide whether that's touching or preposterous.
-j
Well of course he's not forgotten. He's gotten more press today than he has in years.
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