I love Ronnie James Dio. Do you even remember him? He used to sing with Black Sabbath, and then went off on his own and made an album called Holy Diver. I guess his biggest hit off that album was Rainbow in the Dark. I know it’s one of my favorites. In fact, I learned it on the guitar tonight. I was giving my son a bath - I typically strum and caterwaul for my son while he bathes every evening - and I started thinking in general about heavy metal. It’s not an altogether appealing genre of music for me. Only a select few have broken through and touched something deep within my je ne sais quois.

Dio is one of them. And so leaning there against the sink, watching my son splash and sink boats, I began to strum … first a G-major … then A-minor, and finally F-major. I didn’t realize what I was playing at first, and then I started to jazz it up a bit … suddenly, these lyrics popped into my head:

“When I see lightning / You know it always brings me down / Cuz’ it’s free and I see that it’s me / Who’s lost and never found ….”

It toally worked. That song sounds so good acoustic. Sort of a passionate, antiwar folksyness, only not. And then that reminded me of a show I played at a gallery opening for a friend a few years ago. The show as a whole sucked, but there’s one song which to this day stands out for me: Hell’s Bells by AC/DC. The acoustic version. It was fun.

So anyway, there I was in the bathroom rockin to Dio’s Rainbow in the Dark and midway through I looked down to see Julien staring at me. Not your everyday “what’s happening here?” sorta stares, but an “are you okay?” kinda stare.

I put the guitar away and dried him off, praying that one of these days he will be able to appreciate the beauty that is Dio’s Rainbow in the Dark.

Until then, however, I will refrain from headbanging while he bathes.