Ronnie James Dio

Hard rock vocalist Ronnie James Dio, best known for his stints in Rainbow and Black Sabbath as well as fronting his own band for many years, passed away Sunday after a long battle with stomach cancer. He was 67 years old.

He was born Ronald James Padavona in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on July 10, 1942; his family moved to Cortland, New York when he was a boy. While in his teens, he joined local group The Vegas Kings as their bass player, eventually becoming lead vocalist. He took his stage name from the Mafia figure Johnny Dio. During the 60's, Dio undertook a journey familiar to many other musicians of his era, moving from the rockabilly-oriented Vegas Kings and Ronnie And The Redcaps to the more "progressive" Ronnie Dio And The Prophets and Electric Elves. He honed a powerful vocal style that pushed his bandmates further into hard rock territory. By the early 70's, their name shortened to Elf, they earned a recording contract and a slot opening for Deep Purple. Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore took notice, and when he launched his solo career in 1975 selected Dio and other members of Elf to form Rainbow. Rainbow released four successful albums before Dio and Blackmore parted ways in 1979.

Dio next joined Black Sabbath on the suggestion of Sharon Arden, the daughter of that group's manager. (Sharon would go on to marry original Sabbath vocalist Ozzy Osborne and become something of a celebrity in her own right.) Upon Osborne's departure, many pegged Black Sabbath for a long descent into mediocrity, a relic of a bygone time. But Dio's presence would rejuvenate the veterans of sludge rock, spurring the group to record Heaven And Hell, their finest hour. Dio's vocals seemed to light a fire under guitarist Tony Iommi in particular, while his lyrics, laden with medieval imagery, worked well within Black Sabbath's musical context. Heaven And Hell returned Sabbath to the top of the heavy metal heap, and a series of triumphant live shows cemented the resurgence. Dio would greet the fans at the start of each concert by raising a fist high in the air with the first and fourth finger extended, a gesture he picked up from his grandmother. The corna, or sign of the horns, has many connotations in Italian folk culture, including the power to ward off the evil eye. Although probably not the first to flash the horns on stage, Dio would help popularize the sign into an internationally recognized symbol of rock and roll.

Black Sabbath's followup LP with Dio, Mob Rules, was a huge disappointment, returning the group to the murk of their pre-Heaven And Hell releases. The Sabs rebounded somewhat with a strong tour supporting the album, replacing drummer Bill Ward with veteran Vinny Appice. Dates from that tour were recorded for the Live Evil LP. Tensions flared between Dio, Iommi, and bassist Geezer Butler during the album's production, with Iommi and Butler accusing Dio of tampering with the mix behind their backs to highlight his vocals. Dio claimed that the other band members knew what he was doing, and that Iommi and Butler gave him permission to mix his vocals as he saw fit. Mutual dissatisfaction with Live Evil led Dio to part company with Black Sabbath in November 1982, taking Appice with him.

He would go on to form the band Dio, also featuring Appice and guitarist Vivian Campbell, releasing a credible debut Holy Diver in 1983. By now, Dio's style was well established, and his band would go on to release discs through the 80's and 90's, each successive release digging the creative rut a bit deeper. The group would enjoy a bit of an artistic comeback after 2000, as notable musicians such as Rudy Sarzo and Doug Aldrich would spend time in the lineup. Dio also reunited with his Black Sabbath bandmates from 2007-09, touring and recording under the name Heaven And Hell.

Although not immune to the bombastic excess that plagues the metal genre, Ronnie James Dio possessed one of rock's distinctive voices, and when at his best was capable of electrifying a recording studio or concert stage. The title track of Heaven And Hell became a signature performance, and this vintage clip from his Black Sabbath days captures him in fine form.

I'm the man on the silver mountain

Long story short, I'm sleeping in a new old house tonight, one in which I slept for the first time in '67.

Some readers know my Mom passed away about 1.5 years ago. She had created a Trust to deal with her estate, with my sister named as Trustee. Mom's house became property of the Trust, consisting of the aforementioned sister, my brother & I.

Pam & I decided to buy the house, and co-habit with her daughter & son-in-law and their beautiful child Isabella. So now we have 3 generations living under the same roof (how Traditional Family Values!), and it's a house I lived in from age 17-21. Oh, and we're back in Orange Co. for the first time since '96.

We'll let you know when the housewarming party will be!

On a sadder note, we lost one of the great voices of hard rock today. Hard "metal" rock is often parodied, and rightly so. But done well, it's pretty great. This guy did it exceedingly well. RIP Ronnie:

And Echos with the Sounds of Science

Symphony of Science - The Poetry of Reality
The best use of auto-tune I've ever seen.

I am, I cried

via STFU, Homophobes
(click to enlarge)

The "I am not here anymore" is heart breaking.

Four Dead In Ohio

Forty years later and words still fail me.

Nobody Knows Me

Conservictims

So I'm under the gun to get things done in real life - minor things like making ocarinas out of moose turds pushed up the mountain to buy a new digital thrill that always recedes into the distant future - but this cute little blurb pops out at me and indeed while the Gulf of Mexico burns, why not a little more cheap heat...?

N.Y. Times

Laura Bush also suggests, apparently for the first time, that she, Mr. Bush, and several members of their staff may have been poisoned during a visit to Germany for a G8 Summit.
They all became mysteriously sick, and the president was bedridden for part of the trip. The Secret Service investigated the possibility they were poisoned, she writes, but doctors could only conclude that they all contracted a virus.
After noting several high-profile poisonings, she wrote, “we never learned if any other delegations became ill, or if ours, mysteriously, was the only one.”

And of course it's all bullshit, a bunch of decadently seasoned word salad to tempt eager copy editors into assigning some faux credence to a pre-release tale designed to boost projected meager book sales - as if an Executive branch more paranoid than Nixon at his most diet-pill phlebitten would have allowed any foreign chef-cum-evildoer within a country kilometer of the Great Leader's ketchup-smothered T-bone n' fries.

Why, the Secret Service even bagged Junior's body wastes rather than let one drop of 'golden sunshine' hit the dirt overseas - imagine who the lucky agent who drew that task felt about their career track.
Now tell me again how this blow against the empire was supposed to occur under such circumstances - exactly.

Far more likely that President Drunk Fuck was a little under the sort of weather as might be found in a frosted glass, but a lil' ol' hairy dog had him right as rain and putting the smooth moves on foreign chancellors in no time.

Just like blaming other people's cars and road signs designed with universal standards for one's own utter carelessness in handling a motor vehicle that leads to a death, the conservictim mentality never seeks the answers for its own shame and failures from within - always from without, always the 'other', always someone else to blame.
This state quickly inverts when they are in power of course - enemies to be exterminated as opposed to villains engaged in nefarious bedevilment.

Don't simper to me about 'losing your faith', Laura Bush - "God didn't protect me from myself, I've been forsaken" and all that sort of claptrap - you fucked up and killed somebody.
Whether that was your ex-boyfriend and you were under the influence or not makes no difference to the outcome. Dead is dead, and guilt is guilt.

Rest assured, your physical comfort levels won't change a bit. Marrying into 4 generations of traitors worked out very well for you, hmmm?

;>)

I read the news today, oh boy

What's a Pentecost? If you have to ask you can't afford it:

'Noah's Ark' found atop Mount Ararat in Turkey, evangelical group claims

Oh, so now carbon dating is acceptable science!?
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What's an 'illegal immigrant' cost? FactCheck does the math:

Cost of Illegal Immigrants

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Do you know anything about Iran?

Can You Pass The Iran Quiz

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Laura Bush blames car and ’small’ stop sign for alleged ex-boyfriend’s death

I bet Tell Laura I Love Her were the last words on his lips ... not!

Razing Arizona

Somebody's Watching Me

I try to catch the things that tend to slip under the radar, mostly because the major news stories and their fallacies are already covered better by other bloggers. But this is a minor local news story that I've been monitoring for a bit, and I think it may have larger significance and consequences across the nation.

Timeline:

Fri, Feb. 19, 2010
Student claims school spied on him via computer webcam

Sat, Feb. 20, 2010
Subpoena issued in Lower Merion webcam case

Federal prosecutors have subpoenaed the Lower Merion School District for documents related to the controversial use of remote-control cameras on students' school-issued computers, The Inquirer has learned.

Tue, Apr. 6, 2010
Subpoena stands in L. Merion Web-cam case

A federal judge said Monday that he would not throw out a subpoena for a Lower Merion School District technology coordinator in a laptop Web-cam lawsuit.

U.S. District Judge Jan E. DuBois said Carol Cafiero might have information useful to the case because she was able to activate the cameras on the student-issued computers. Cafiero is trying to block efforts to get her to testify in the case.

Sat, Apr. 10, 2010
Key figure in 'Webcamgate' invokes Fifth

Carol Cafiero, who had previously sought to quash a subpoena ordering her to testify, refused to answer questions pertaining to the district's controversial practice of remotely activating webcams on Apple MacBooks issued to high-school students.


Fri, Apr. 16, 2010
Family: Pa. school snared 1,000s of webcam images

A suburban Philadelphia school district snapped secret webcam pictures of a high school student when he was partially undressed or sleeping in his bed, and captured instant messages he exchanged with friends, the student charged in court papers this week.

Sat, Apr. 17, 2010
L. Merion to let parents see secretly snapped photos

The president of the Lower Merion school board said Friday that investigators had retrieved "a substantial number" of photos secretly snapped by laptops the district gave its high school students, and that officials were arranging for parents whose children were photographed to see the pictures in private.

Mon, Apr. 19, 2010
Lower Merion report: Web cams snapped 56,000 images

Lower Merion School District employees activated the web cameras and tracking software on laptops they gave to high school students about 80 times in the past two school years, snapping nearly 56,000 images that included photos of students, pictures inside their homes and copies of the programs or files running on their screens, district investigators have concluded.

Tue, Apr. 20, 2010
Lower Merion details scope of Web-cam surveillance

Lower Merion School District employees activated the Web cameras and Internet address tracking software on laptops they gave to high school students about 146 times during the last two school years, snapping nearly 56,000 images, district investigators have concluded.

In 48 of those activations, images were recovered; 68 showed only the computer's Internet address. The rest showed nothing or could not be recovered.

Ahh, yes, the old 'we can't recover the files' trick.

And since even their own investigation had to walk back the number of times and images that were accessed, one would think in the midst of a Federal investigation that they would give it up.

But no, not these stalwart protectors of the children school district. They doubled down:

Wed, Apr. 21, 2010
Filing states student broke rules and had no expectation of privacy

Even in his own home, the Harriton High School sophomore had "no legitimate expectation of privacy" from the camera on his school-issued laptop, information systems coordinator Carol Cafiero contended in a court filing on Tuesday.

And the latest news is:

Administrator agrees to surrender [home] computer in Web cam case

56,000 photos of kids!? I bet some members of the Catholic Church wish they'd thought of this sooner.