How Josh Single-Handedly Destroyed His Band's Reputation As Philly's Least-Tattooed Band: A (single) Photo Essay

It all started in the car on the way home from a gig. Having just played the Pillar Lounge in Reading, PA, we were driving home (or more accurately, Dan was driving) and Dio's 1983 classic Holy Diver was the album of choice. Because you are the driver. You own the road. Somehow, we got into a discussion about the merits of Ronnie James Dio vs. Ozzy Osbourne, and after having the Internet prove that Dio is in fact several years older than Ozzy, I also informed everyone that Dio was suffering from stomach cancer. His website indicated that the chemotherapy was working, the treatments were becoming less frequent, and Dio had plans to return to touring with Heaven & Hell (a reformation of the Dio-era Black Sabbath) as soon as he was better. Offhand, I mentioned that if Dio should for some insane reason NOT survive, that I intended to get a memorial tattoo to commemorate his life, and his impact on mine.

Sure enough, two weeks later, Dan calls me to break the news: Ronnie James Dio had lost his battle with the dragon. He was 67. Right then, I remembered I had a promise to keep.

Over drinks (because Dio was DEAD, dammit!), I told my ladyfriend about my vow, and that I intended to keep it. After some discussion, we settled on ground rules: no colors, and no birth/death dates. I said I'd sleep on it to see if I really wanted to go through with it, and I did a bit of research to find the perfect place. Thanks to the good folks at Yelp, I chose Olde City Tattoo on 2nd and Chestnut. When I woke up this morning, I was still committed. And off I went. But before that, I printed out a graphic of the Dio band logo.

Interesting side note: If you look at the logo upside down and don't mind that some letters run together, it reads "devil".

I drove up to Olde City around 1:30, parked, and went into the shop. I was greeted by a very lovely young woman named Jamie, who took my printout, got all the necessary details, and scheduled me for 6:30 that night. Appropriately enough, I heard Black Sabbath's Heaven And Hell playing on the stereo, which was a good enough omen for me. A little bummed that I'd have to wait, I returned home and did some laundry, assorted household chores, etc. I just hoped I could maintain my excitement until then, although the $40 cash deposit helped to ensure that.

I returned at the appointed time and met Smitty, a large, imposing, and heavily tattooed individual who would also be my artist for the evening. He led me to the chair and gloved up, then sterilized my shoulder and shaved the area. He applied what I can only describe as a temporary tattoo tracing of the design to my shoulder, checked the placement, then had me look at it in the mirror. Satisfied with its location, we began some of the longest minutes of my life.
He removed a fresh fine point needle attachment from a sterile bag, hooked it up to the power supply, and started with the outline of the letters. It was not as painful as I had imagined, mostly like getting a series of very tiny shots again and again. Certain areas were more painful, but overall very bearable. The fine point work took about 25 minutes, at which time he let the work rest and applied some salve which changing to the larger shading needle. I hadn't been watching much, because really, who wants to see themselves getting stabbed repeatedly for any length of time, but I glanced down now. I was so far pleased with the progress. It actually looked good as it was, and I thought about stopping there, but I decided against it. If Dio could handle stomach cancer for six months, I could deal with something poking me for a little while longer.

Smitty began the shading, which was MUCH more painful than the fine work. The process is the same as shading on a piece of paper, except it's your damn arm. This part only took 20 minutes, thankfully. I had been taking Smitty's advice to keep breathing, and it definitely paid off here. After a while, you sort of tune the pain out and focus on the Van Halen record on the radio. The shading completed, Smitty applied a heavy coat of ointment, and let me take a look on the mirror. My first reaction: "DIO!" Second: "This is for real-real now." Smitty put a bandage on it, gave me the care instructions (and a free sample bottle of Lubriderm to keep it moisturized), I gave him $60 more dollars, and said goodbye.

As I headed home, all I could think about was what I had just done to myself, and how the damn thing was starting to burn. Upon arrival, I lifted my shirt to show my ladyfriend and discovered that the tattoo was bleeding much more than I expected. I dutifully left the bandage on the requisite two hours, then washed it off and put some Lubriderm on. At this point 4 hours later, it's just a little itchy, and still bleeding lightly. So how'd it turn out? Was it worth the 45 minutes of Lilliputian spearing? And the possible loss of this T-shirt? Take a look for yourself.

You're damn right it was.

I'll miss you, Dio. But your music will live on in my heart, and your sweet sweet logo on my arm.

RONNIE JAMES DIO
1942-2010

Look Out! Rainbows!

So as I drove home from the musical this evening, Kanako and I were listening to Black Sabbath's Heaven And Hell, and we both laughed out loud whenever Dio screamed "LOOK OUT!" For those of you unfamiliar with Ronnie James Dio, he has two primary lyrical themes: 1) rainbows, and 2) caution. I began to wonder just how often Dio used the words "rainbow(s)" and "look out" in his lyrics, so I decided to find out. Thanks to darklyrics.com and my browser's Search function, I have compiled a list for you.

Black Sabbath songs with the phrase LOOK OUT

1. Children Of The Sea
2. Lady Evil
3. Slipping Away

DIO songs with the phrase LOOK OUT

1. Holy Diver
2. Rainbow In The Dark
3. The King Of Rock And Roll
4. Hide In The Rainbow
5. Why Are They Watching Me
6. The Prisoner Of Paradise

Black Sabbath songs with the word RAINBOW(S)

1. Wishing Well
2. The Sign Of The Southern Cross

DIO songs with the word RAINBOW(S)

1. Rainbow In The Dark
2. Breathless
3. Evil Eyes
4. Egypt (The Chains Are On)
5. Sacred Heart
6. Hide In The Rainbow
7. Dream Evil
8. I Could Have Been A Dreamer
9. Born On The Sun
10. My Eyes
11. Otherworld

If we extrapolate the data, we can see that without Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler looking over his shoulder, Ronnie James Dio will increase his usage of both phrases. We also find that rainbows are far more important than being cautious. We see 9 songs featuring LOOK OUT, but 13 songs featuring RAINBOW(S). Finally, there are two cautionary tales about rainbows in the Dio mythology: "Rainbow In The Dark", and "Hide In The Rainbow".

I have another hilariously metal post in the pipe, so stick around, and until then...LOOK OUT!

- Josh

This Is A Long Drive For Someone With A Lot To Listen To... A Sunday Sermon

Dan here. Been a while for me as well with the blogging and the keeping people informed. As James has already pointed out, we've been busy with prepping the record, the tour dates, and also rehabbing a new practice space with state of the art (read: whatever I can find extremely discounted on the Internet) gear. My standards for the new gear have been "Will not course electricity through my body when turned on." So far, so good.

I recently went on one of my long jaunts up through New York State (where James and I both hail from). Being unemployed until the start of July, I've had some time to kill and have been spending it seeing family and friends who have otherwise gone neglected for the last couple of years. With that said, my preferred method of transport is almost always a car, and preferably be one that I'm driving. I have at times a raging type-A thing going on, and being in control of a vehicle helps.

So during my last trip, I loaded up the fauxPod with a ton of records that I've downloaded and haven't gotten around to listening to yet. Here are a few that I finally got a chance to check out over the last week:

The Wooden Birds' "Magnolia"
- This is Andrew Kenny's new band. Kenny was the frontman for an absolutely superb band called The American Analog Set, one of my personal faves from college. It's a very muted, quiet record, with very sparse arrangement and a ton of close mic-ing on everything. I really love the tight, up-close-and-personal sound on this record, it's hardly treated at all (ie. no walls of reverb, overproduced drums and vocals, ten-layer guitar tracks, etc.). Kenny's voice is hushed and soothing, and the girl he has singing with his is excellent. Fans of AAS, Songs:Ohia and the like would definitely enjoy this.

Heaven and Hell's "The Devil You Know"

- Old rock stars should just sit at home, collect their royalties, and stop embarrassing themselves by creating reality shows that show what dysfunctional lives they lead. Unless you're Ronnie James Dio, Tommy Iommi, Geezer Butler and Vinny Appice and you want to pretty much pick up where "Mob Rules" era Sabbath left off. Heaven and Hell is the post-Ozzy lineup of Black Sabbath, often overlooked by most fans, but glorified by the die-hards. The new record is by no means an earth-shattering reinterpretation of anything. It is a solid album of old metal dudes proving to the rest of the genre that they must never forget the face of their father. Iommi's lead playing has really progressed, and there is not as much of his classic "pentatonic noodling" (that's a Josh term, and I thank him for it). This record came on at a point where I was starting to get a bit car-groggy, and it did the trick better than a 5-Hour Energy Shot.

Grizzly Bear's "Veckatimest"

- I am not very familiar with Grizzly Bear, but this got some insane rating in Pitchfork (who could snark at anything, I swear). What a fresh sounding record! Only gave it a once-through listen, but I was really impressed with the overall tone of this record. I could produce a laundry-list of influences on this , but rather than playing the spot-influence-then-cross-reference game I often play in my head, I just let it happen. That doesn't happen often to me, so it's welcome when it does.

Sonic Youth's "The Eternal"

- SY is one of those bands that has influenced me so hugely, but which you can hear almost no evidence of when I play. Like The Velvet Underground, I think everyone who bought SY albums in their musically formative years went out and formed bands, whether those bands sounded like "Goo" and "Daydream Nation" or not. Mine certainly didn't. My fave from them still continues to be "Murray Street", and "The Eternal" works on me in the same way, which means I enjoy it as a record from a very talented crew of players who have been consistently making records for around 25 years, and I get to accept it as part of a very large body of work, an autobiographical progression of songwriting, if you will. I love a band that just goes out and does what they want, how they want and has a fan base that is (for the most part) willing to give it all a shot and not bitch and moan about artistic vision, major label betrayal and the like. "The Eternal" is incredibly accessible, very melodic in a lot of places and genuinely a great rock record.

Phish's Summer '09 Tour Tapes

- Like James said previously, they're playing better than they've played since coming back from hiatus. I was lucky enough to see them in Camden a couple of weeks ago, and it was like coming home. Proclaiming anything about Phish stirs up a lot of sentiment from both sides of the coin, but they've been one of my favorite bands since high school and will never apologize for that, ever. The Northeast tour tapes have been truly great to listen to because I get to hear four of my musical heroes refind what they love about playing music while they're finding it.

Okay, enough of my gushing. I tend to only post about music that I love, so you'll rarely hear me snark about much of anything musical here. If I don't like it, I tend to just not mention it, as it isn't worth my time to listen to, much less write about.

In Sobriquets news: We've got a date coming up July 1st in Philly at Lickety Split on 4th and South Streets. This place has been hosting a great roster of bands from Philly and beyond, and we hope to see you there. Check out thesobriquets.com as usual for more dates, particularly the CD release shows on July 17th and 18th. The show on the 17th is with a band we recently played with in Baltimore and we just love them. I'll gush about them later in the week, I'm sure.

-Dan