12/8
24 years after John Lennon: another crazed fan walked onstage and killed Dimebag Darrell, a bodyguard who tried to save him, a club employee, and a fan who came to have a good time. To me it doesn't seem like the shooter walked into the club just to kill Darrell. He knew he wasn't walking out of that club; the killer's target was the killer, himself. But in that way he won and there's nothing anybody could have done to prevent what happened. I know that people are killed senselessly every day in every place, and when you hear it on the news you just think "yeah; it happens all the time. Damn shame." I used to think it would be like that whenever you hear of a stranger's passing on the news. This year there have been a lot of famous people who died , but mostly stars of the past. It was sad when Marlon Brando died. Sad when Christopher Reeves died; Sad when Ronald Regan, Yasser Arafat, and Rick James died. To put it from my perspective: Pantera was the band that got me listening to metal. When I was a kid I didn't listen to the radio. I was raised listening to classical and a few oldies, which didn't appeal to me at the time because it was old and I wasn't. I mostly played computer, watched horror movies, wrote stories, and tried to hunt skunks with my neighborhood friends. We called ourselves 'the skunk partol'. The only cds I got were soundtracks to musicals. One day I picked up the soundtrack for Heavy Metal 2000. I listened to the first three tracks and was happy with this new style of music I discovered. Then track 4 started playing; Pantera's Immortally Insane. The song starts out with this quiet, kind of falling noise. Then all of a sudden BOOM the guitar riff starts blaring through my headphones with the drums and bass. For me, at the time, it was the most exciting thing I had ever heard because I had no idea what was going on. I had no idea what instruments they were using. From what I knew guitars could only sounded two ways: acoustic or twangy electric. I couldn't imagine this strong, booming noise coming out of a string. That was when I first heard Dimebag Darrell. I also liked another song off that soundtrack from a group called Insane Clown Posse, but I'd rather not talk about that. Years later when I had started playing guitar I began paying more attention to the actual music rather than the sound and lyrics I had been focusing on. I was trying to find songs that had great guitar parts that were easy to play. The ones I actually tried to learn were AC/DC's Thunderstruck and then Pantera's Cowboys from Hell. I was so proud when I got the intros down. On the day the Best of Pantera album/dvd came out I walked down to Best Buy and listened to it on the walk back. I liked the first half of it; but their singer started sounding the same on all the later songs (Cat Scratch Fever and Goddamn Electric are awesome though) When I got home I put on the dvd and was just sitting there watching the Cowboys from Hell video. I was just thinking of the times I sat down and tried to play that with the cheap fender I had. I downloaded a live video of the song watching how he played it so easily and charasmatic. When he played the solo there was a real sense of power and control. From then on the electric guitar became a symbol of power and control, and Dimebag Darrell became a modern guitar hero. Pantera was never my favorite band. But it's like Van Halen. I don't like the band, but I can only be wowed by Eddie Van Halen's playing; especially 'Eruption'. As I grew older my taste in music also went older. Right now my favorite bands are The Beatles, Pink Floyd, and The Who. But when I heard about what happened on Wednesday it was so surreal. I could only imagine. I imagine how it was in the club before Damageplan got on stage. The lights were probably off. The crowd was pumped from the opening bands and it should just be minutes away until they're on. There's always that anticipation building up until finally Boom! The lights go on and the music starts. The crowd relieves some anticipation in their screams. I can imagine Darrell with his guitar in his hands. power and control. He's playing the music easily and moving charasmatically, getting the audience moving and excited. power and control. I can imagine one fan walking out towards the stage left and climbing up for a stage dive. I can imagine him pushing the bassist and singer aside and running towards stage right. He's yelling something, but the music is too loud, and security is chasing behind him to throw him off. His left hand is reaching out to touch Darrell's face as if the touch of his face would heal like the messiah. I can only imagine. Dimebag Darrell died with a guitar in his hands. power and control. To me the guitar will always be louder than any gun.

Up until I heard the news (just now) I had a good week. I ditched class Monday and ended up meeting an awesome bus driver who gave this inspirational speech about acting now; not waiting for the future to come to you. It was much more elaborate than that, but bleh. I was doing an essay about the history of PHS and he was able to help me out with that. The semester is about to end. I have two finals and that's it. I recorded some music with David yesterday and we came up with a few more songs. We usually write our music seperately and use the practice time we have to teach each other what music we'd made. Yesterday was the first time we had actually taken the time (8 hours) to sit down and start constructing music together. We were able to point out parts of each others songs that can be improved or changed, which before we didn't feel free to do. It has always been "This is my song. I wrote the music so this is how it is going to be played", but yesterday there was a sense that "this is our music. We are going to be playing these songs together, so we had better work together to make it sound as good to the audience as we can". The band is Corey's drum playing keeps improving and everybody is becoming more serious about the band, even though we don't have a name. If it wasn't already taken we would have called ourselves "The Band".


Cowboy from Hell, ride into Heaven

"Red traffic signals persecute a man on his way to work at night. He wants the city to make them all green."