It was on this day, December 8, four years ago that guitar legend Dimebag Darrell was shot and killed onstage performing for fans at a club in Columbus, Ohio. If you feel like remembering a real metal champion, check out the new photo book "Dimebag Darrell: He Came to Rock!" and its accompany DVD "Dimevision," both of which celebrate the funloving spirit and superhuman guitar exploits of one of metal's most colorful characters.

If you haven't already heard it, click "more" to check out the podcast we posted Friday with Dime's brother Vinnie Paul, as well as some other links from sites paying tribute to the fallen hero.
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In his autobiography White Line Fever (written with journalist Janiss Garza), Motorhead kingpin Lemmy Kilmister writes about his fondness for Ozzy Osbourne's late guitarist Randy Rhoads and how terrible he was at the videogame Asteroids. Lemmy also brings up the idea that death deified Rhoads, turning him into something greater than he once was.

"I have to say, he wasn't the guitar player he became after his death," Kilmister writes. "As with [performance artist] Bob Calvert, [who opened for Motorhead in the early days], a guy who was more or less ignored during his lifetime suddenly becomes a huge genius. Randy was a good guitar player, to be sure, but he wasn't the great innovator he was later made out to be. When you die, you become more briliant by about 58 percent. You sell more records and you become absolutely wonderful." Read more...

Various members of heavy metal's elite will perform an all-star tribute to the late Dimebag Darrell August 9 in Dallas Texas at Ozzfest 2008 at Pizza Hut Park. Participants will include Dime's brother and longtime bandmate Vinnie Paul, Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett, Slayer guitarist Kerry King, Alice in Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell and bassist Mike Inez, King Diamond, Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian and drummer Charlie Benante, Hatebreed frontman Jamey Jasta, Hellyeah and Mudvayne singer Chad Gray and Hellyeah and ex-Damageplan bassist Bob Zilla. Read more...

Back in the day -- before "CSI: Miami" or "American Idol," before iPods and the Internet -- bands used to scribble up their own fliers to promote themselves when they were putting out an album or playing a show.

In cities across the country, dozens of groups every week would post these ads on walls, poles, windows and any other surface on which they could be read, hoping their promotional efforts would draw new fans in a competitive music market. Then, groups, advertising weekend shows would cruise around town and pull down the fliers of their rivals, and, as the members of Pantera would say, "It was on!" Sometimes these acts of rudeness resulted in bouts of scratching, hair pulling and bitch slapping. Occasionally nails would get chipped. It was ugly business.

Of course, Pantera never pulled anyone's hair, and not just because they weren't threatened musically by any other bands in the scene. Everyone else was just too scared to mess with 'em. Pantera were tough dudes with a psychotic singer who knew how to box and would happily take on anyone twice his size, and usually leveled them with one punch.

This record release party for the band's 1990 album Cowboys From Hell was clearly the best thing that happening that night in July, three days before the release of the disc. Scrawled in capital letters and circled with drawn barbed wire, the flier promoting the bash was typical of the era, but created with more care than most. Check out the little drawing of Dimebag Darrell in a guitar God pose next to a $20 bill with an image of drummer Vinnie Paul.

And while the flier featured the official logo of their record label, Atco, it was nonetheless an example of truth in advertising. Pantera were indeed about to take over this, and every other town.

Here's Pantera at their finest with "Five Minutes Alone."