A Short History of Sabbath and Myself.

This week, my pal from Nebraska (also a former teen metalhead, hailed from the Northeast), scored two pre-sale Heaven & Hell - a.k.a. Black Sabbath - concert tix. Reuniting with Dio, the band's 1980-83 Ozzy replacement, to promote their new CD box set, "Black Sabbath: The Dio Years," Heaven & Hell recently announced the first leg of their 2007 tour. Before heading off to the heavy metal hot spots of Eastern Europe, such as Bulgaria, H&H will offer an exclusive one-night-only solo performance at NYC's Radio City Music Hall. My pal and I have secured orchestra row seats for this March 30th show! (I know, at first I thought playing to a classic fixed seat venue seemed weird for a famous metal band... but Ronnie Dio himself is pushing 65.)

This event will mark another reunion. A Dan Bummer - Black Sabbath reunion... So, I started digging through some old boxes to trace this history...


Hand-Me-Downs: I think my path to bad music started when I was about 13. An older cousin had given me the vinyl of his youth, including Zeppelin, Judas Priest, Deep Purple and Sabbath records. By 14, this lead me to '80s metal bands like Scorpions, Iron Maiden and Dio. When I realized that Ronnie James Dio had once been the frontman for Rainbow and Black Sabbath, I quickly consumed this discography, too. At first, I recall pouring over the strange (now embarrassing) lyrics of songs like "Sign of the Southern Cross," "Children of the Sea," or "Voo-Doo." Rather than focus on my homework at night, I'd spend hours illustrating each track in pen and ink (as a student I failed miserably at math, but excelled in art - see above drawing from age 15). Looking back at these bizarre renditions, I question why my parents or art teachers never sent me to a therapist.

True Love Always: It was in this period that I left my dark little room and discovered girls... particularly girls who shared a love for loud hair bands. That seemed to be the main prerequisite for both parties. In the image above, one of my first girlfriends thanks me for purchasing her a Dio concert T in celebration of her birthday. (Notice we also share the same haircut, known as the pre-headbanger mullet.)

Blackout: By 16, habitual use of select depressants and hallucinogenics took hold and made concert-going a forgetful experience, but I did manage to save most of the ticket stubs as proof. This time around, I hope to soak up the full experience missed in my hazy youth: the big hair of my fellow music lovers (of course, all those headbanger's manes have probably thinned out significantly by now), the thick, cloudy mixture of smoke in the air (wait - there's no smoking permitted in concerts anymore), and Geezer Butler's thundering bass (Oh, I have to remember to bring earplugs this time - it gets really loud in those rock shows). In any case, it is meant to be. Above, notice that my last Black Sabbath show date was on "March 30, 1986." Is it chance that the reunion concert is March 30, 2007? 21 years to the day later? I think not. The stars (or rainbows, or whatever) must be aligned for a grand night.

Reunited: How I managed to survive my teen years, I'll never really know. Did Sabbath's silly lyrics and ominous music corrode my adolescent mind or help me see through the fog of rural teendom? The photo above is the last remaining artifact of my former life as a metalhead. Shortly after this picture was taken, I cut off my mop and slowly replaced my Slayer and Motorhead albums with Throwing Muses and The Smiths CDs (the '80s were coming to a close, so I had a lot of musical catching up to do). Even my subject matter for art evolved from overly literal Satanic metaphors on paper. As stated in an earlier entry, it's only recently that I've begun to un-earth (even embrace) my own heavy metal history. I think this process of mining one's past for clues to the present is healthy. Who you were then made you who you are now, right? Otherwise, wasn't it all just a waste of time?