Rush "Working Man" - Slowed Down

Source

Very Sabbath-esque!

Dio - Heaven and Hell (LIVE)

Source

Here's the original, in case you wanted to compare. Yes, it's actually a Black Sabbath song, but while Ronnie James Dio was their singer. It was on their first album release with Dio as front man - in 1980, and he wrote the lyrics, although they're usually credited to Sabbath as a band.

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon Black Sabbath

Yep - I'm sure you're aware of the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon thing where you name two actors/actresses/celebrites, and figure out how, in fact, they are connected. Now we have Six Degrees of Black Sabbath, which may or may not include Black Sabbath.

Click the link above or the image header.. then input two artists, musicians, bands, rockers, etc., and hit enter.

Here are some of the more interesting ones I tried:

• Staind & Chevelle
• Mike Portnoy & Neil Peart
• Bruce Dickinson & Barry Manilow
• Sully Erna & Lars Ulrich
• Five Finger Death Punch & Celine Dion

Have fun!

Via - (NSFW)

Bob Daisley vs. The Osbournes

Image Source

Bob Daisley is an Australian musician, bassist, and lyricist who has performed in genres of rock, blues, rhythm and blues, hard rock, and metal. He was a long time member of the band Uriah Heep, but is arguably most famous for his contributions to and collaboration with Ozzy Osbourne and his first five solo albums. As the bass player, lyricist, and songwriter of the band that was supposed to be called Blizzard of Ozz, he was certainly instrumental in the creations of two of the best hard rock albums of all time, Ozzy's Blizzard of Ozz, and Diary of a Madman, yet for whatever reason was denied tons of royalties from these creations - as was drummer Lee Kerslake.







From Daisley's website: Over the years, many people have written in to the website to ask Bob Daisley about his work with Ozzy and the legal action taken against the Osbournes. Bob has kindly agreed to answer some of the most frequently asked questions and a few of my own. It's worth noting that not only does Bob have an amazing memory, he's kept a detailed diary since 1976, these continue to prove useful. The answers in the following interview are an accurate account of what really happened and go some way to setting the record straight until Bob's autobiography reveals the whole story.

Click here to go read the interview.. This is a terrific read that will surely alter your opinion of Ozzy & Sharon Osbourne in some fashion!

Here are a few of the questions and topics:

• Who were the original band members and in what order were they recruited?

• Who managed the band from day one and when did Sharon get involved?

• Why did you go back to work with Ozzy time and time again?

• Given Don Arden's [Sharon's father] statement that Ozzy's "command of the English language is minimal," and Ozzy's own admission that he can't play an instrument, how is it that Ozzy is the only person credited for songwriting on 'Bark At The Moon'?

Enjoy!!

RIP Ronnie James Dio

Wow, it hasn't even been a month since we lost Peter Steele, and now this. Rock 'n' Roll has lost another legend. May he not be the last in line.

































Via

Ronnie James Dio, a singer with the bands Rainbow, Black Sabbath and Dio, whose powerful, semioperatic vocal style and attachment to demonic imagery made him one of the best-loved figures in classic heavy metal, died on Sunday morning, according to an announcement on his Web site by his wife, Wendy. He was 67.

No cause was given in the announcement, but Mr. Dio had been suffering from stomach cancer, and recently his band Heaven and Hell canceled its summer tour because of his health. The Houston Chronicle reported that Mr. Dio was being treated at a hospital in Houston.

Mr. Dio was born Ronald James Padavona in Portsmouth, N.H., and grew up in Cortland, N.Y. He began his career in rockabilly bands in the late 1950s, but by the mid-1970s, when Ritchie Blackmore, the guitarist of the British band Deep Purple, hired him to sing for his new band, Rainbow, Mr. Dio had become a heavy-metal purist, and he became known as much for his vocal prowess as for his Mephistophelean stage persona. He is widely credited with popularizing the “devil horn” hand gesture (see video clip at the end) — index and pinky fingers up, everything else clenched in a fist — as a symbol of metal’s occult-like worship of everything scary and heavy.

Mr. Dio sang about devils, defiance and the glory of rock ‘n’ roll with a strong, mean voice, punctuating his points with gale-force vibrato, a style derived in part from singers like Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan. When Ozzy Osborne was fired from Black Sabbath in 1979, Mr. Dio replaced him, and by 1983 he released the album “Holy Diver” with his own band, Dio. In various lineup configurations, the band Dio continued to release material in the mid-2000s.

In 2006 he began playing with some of his former band mates in Black Sabbath, naming the group Heaven and Hell after the title of the first Black Sabbath album on which Mr. Dio appeared. Heaven and Hell released one album, “The Devil You Know,” in 2009.

Other than his wife, no information about his survivors was immediately available on Sunday afternoon.

A full obituary will follow at NYTimes.com.

Story Via