After my American Aquarium post earlier today, I spent the next half dozen or so hours continuing with home renovations and redecorating at the property I’ll soon be renting out as corporate housing.  (Painting!  Redoing the bathrooms!  Hanging new art!  Never a dull moment in this kid’s life.)

Listening to my Pantera collection straight through played a heavy roll in keeping my energy high.  But it seemed an insufficient tribute.  So I returned to Starbucks, where I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time going through YouTube videos of Dimebag Darrell solos, dating back to the mid-80s, trying to decide which would be the best to post.  Do a search; whatever you pull up will be worth your time.

Ultimately, though, I’m going with this one, which combines clips of him absolutely killing it on stage, and also him dickin’ around backstage like the true rock machine he was.

Dimebag was killed in December 2004 while performing with his other band, Damageplan.  His wiki article does a far better job summarizing his life, death, and accomplishments far better than I could here.

Happy birthday, Dimebag.  May you Rest in Peace… or in Rock, as the case may be.