Pantera - This Love
OK, so if you're wondering where I am, I ain't dead yet. But my husband and I bought part of a restaurant downtown, and I've been hard at the task of constructing a whole series of playlists for the music in the place. I'll share them all here when they are all done in a couple of weeks, but there's a Roxy Music one, a 10cc one and a The Who one so far, and they are all around 4 hours long each.
That aside, I'm back here today for a milestone berfday of someone who, to state the obvious, should still be with us, wailing away.
He's gone decades now, and the idea that he only lived to be 38 years old will never be anything but one of the most unspeakable tragedies in the history of all music.
We all know what happened, and the 22 years since haven't made it any easier to swallow.
Assassinated live onstage because the gunman was upset the guy broke up his original band and started another one. I'm combing my brain for a less justified reason to kill anyone, and I'm coming up total zeroes, folks.
The way he was killed sometimes obscures what he accomplished whilst alive, as is often the case where If It Bleeds, It Ledes. But let's focus on his life, which still has a resonant impact today, OK?
He came into music at a distinct advantage, with a dad who'd produced Country artists in his native Texas, and by the time he was 16, he had his first record out with the band for which he'd become most beloved.
It took the rest of the Eighties, but by 1990 Pantera had really started to ascend. First on that year's Cowboys from Hell and then on their 1992 masterpiece, A Vulgar Display of Power, their sound quickly coalesced and they became huge.
In no small way a disciple of Eddie Van Halen, if I had to describe what he did that distinguished him from the trillion or so other Metal players of our lifetimes, it'd be the propensity to shift from the pyrotechnic to the melodic, often within the same few bars and the same solo.
If I had to pin it down, I'd say that somewhere between EVH and Deep Purple/Rainbow axemaster Ritchie Blackmore resides "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott, who was born 60 years ago today.
Ranked #92 on Rolling Stone's Greatest Guitarists list, and #5 on the all-time Metal list, he's one of those players whose playing is always totally recognizable as his own, even amidst the aforementioned ten trillion other dudes who've attempted that style since Tony Iommi accidentally severed his fingertips and decided to tune down a half step.
To celebrate Dimebag Darrell and ensure us 1966ers stick together, I've cobbled together a complete version of a 1992 Pantera concert from the Hollywood Palladium that circulates in three different, not-complete forms, and documents their arguable apex, before internal tensions with their singer turned things sour.
Pantera
Palladium
Hollywood, California USA
6.27.1992
01 Heresy
02 Mouth for War
03 Domination
04 Hollow
05 Fucking Hostile
06 This Love
07 A New Level
08 Walk
09 By Demons Be Driven
10 Psycho Holiday
11 Primal Concrete Sledge
12 Cemetery Gates
13 Cowboys from Hell incl. Purple Haze
Total time: 1:00:22
“Dimebag” Darrell Abbott - guitars
Vinnie Paul - drums
Rex Brown - bass
Phillip H. Anselmo - vocals
preFM master CD from the Westwood One network, sourced from the bootleg CD "High Voltage" on the Massive Attack label
Tracks 05 & 07 inserted from a speed corrected master FM cassette of indeterminate origin
edited, retracked, repaired & remastered for unity by EN, August 2026
439 MB FLAC/direct link
439 MB FLAC/direct link
This one was a trip, because there were a couple of instances where the cursing was edited out of the pre-broadcast CD, yet somehow made it out on air for the original broadcast. I did my best to restore the thing as best I could, including reconstituting a couple of those omissions.
I've got a few things lined up for the rest of August, and I apologize for my absence. But I'm doing that other project and there's only so many hours I can spend in front of Sound Forge, you know? Making 750 songs all the same volume by hand is not something I'd wish on anyone. OK, maybe on people who walk into clubs and murder the band onstage with automatic weapons, let's just say.
Anyway, I get that this kind of music isn't the usual fare on here, but I've wanted to cover the very deserving Darrell Abbott for years, and felt today was the day to drop the Dime on just such a display of the power still implicit in his playing.--J.
8.20.1966 - 12.8.2004