Dallas Strip Club Mourns Loss Of DIMEBAG DARRELL

Sarah Hepola of the East Bay Express reports:

It's nearly 6 p.m. outside the Clubhouse — Dallas' premier all-nude strip joint — and just in time for their nightly broadcast, two newscasters face the cameras: "Tonight a community gathers outside a local club to mourn the loss of metal legend 'Dimebag' Darrell Abbott ..."

It's an odd solemnity for a character known for songs such as "Slaughtered" and "Fucking Hostile". That isn't lost on fans at the memorial, who drop to their knees in front of his photo, take off their caps, and shoot him the finger. That part isn't on the news.

A makeshift memorial is growing outside the club — pictures of Dimebag, a spray of gladioli, a full liter bottle of Seagram's 7. Laid out across the ground is a concert banner for DAMAGEPLAN, the band Dimebag and his older brother Vinnie Paul formed out of the ashes of PANTERA. It's hard not to cringe at the tour's slogan: Devastation is on the way.

The night before, Wednesday, December 8, Dimebag was shot at least five times in the head onstage at the Alrosa Villa in Columbus, Ohio, in front of the audience, his bandmates, and his brother. Four others were murdered, including Jeff Thompson, aka Mayhem, a forty-year-old bodyguard for the band. Killed by a crazed fan whose delusional behavior reportedly included passing off PANTERA lyrics as his own, Dimebag is already taking on a Selena-like mythos. This Sunday, a local artist will paint a PANTERA mural on the side of Dallas' Universal Rehearsal studio. Cars around town sport shoe-polish tributes on their windows: "We'll miss you, Dimebag."

The crowd at the memorial looks exactly as you would expect: Baggy jeans and black hoodies, concert T-shirts and shoulder slumps. In the song "25 Years", from PANTERA's best-selling 1994 album "Far Beyond Driven", singer Phil Anselmo referred to his fans as the thousands of the ugly, the criticized, the unwanted. There isn't a cheerleader or a spirit-squad member among them. For them, PANTERA's chugging guitar and hateful lyrics were like a scream of consciousness. And Dimebag was the heart of it all, the innovator, taking classic metal riffs and pulverizing them into a straight shot of hundred-proof adolescent id.

"Dimebag is my god," one kid tells me. He's seventeen with shaggy hair. "That's why I play the guitar. He's the only one who inspired me. When I found out he died, I was like, 'Shit.'" Read more.