If you’ve been listening to the station for long, and even if you haven’t, chances are you have at some point seen this photo:
This is the Bobs and Shiley Acres staff with HellYeah. I’m in the back row next to Vinnie Paul. This was, if my memory serves, the band’s third appearance at Shiley Acres and it was the first time I actually got to see them play. HellYeah was one of those bands I discovered through the station. I’d been a Pantera fan in high school, and kept up with the Abbott brother in Damageplan, but I didn’t know anything about HellYeah until I started working here. When Bob Rocks first began, one of the songs that played on the station’s very first day was “Alcohaulin’ Ass.” I loved it immediately, and I looked into the band. It was a metal supergroup, with Chad from Mudvayne, whose distinctive voice I recognized at once. The drummer, of course, was Vinnie Paul, a man whose playing I obsessed over as a young teenaged drummer. I played along with “Cowboys From Hell,” which was released shortly after I got my first drum kit. I spent many hours trying to emulate Vinnie’s power, swing, and intensity, an unusual combination in a metal drummer. A lot of metal drummers can manage the power and intensity, but don’t have the swing. But Vinnie was the total package.
At the show that day I really had only one goal: to see HellYeah, not from the Bob tent, but from as near to the center of the crowd as I could get, the better to watch Vinnie. I knew there was a meet and greet and that a number of listeners to our station would be there. I did not know that the station staff would be ushered in as well. So there we were, about an hour before the band went onstage, standing in the backstage area beneath the Shiley Acres stage. Once all the fans met the band and got their autographs, we went up to the table where the band was seated. I went through, shook hands with the guys, each of whom was kind enough to autograph my show poster, which hangs framed in my living room to this day. When I met Vinnie, I told him he was one of my main inspirations as a drummer. He chuckled and said, “Come on man…” we both laughed, and he thanked me. It was a blip; just a twenty-second exchange, but it was awesome.
And then someone suggested everyone gather up for a photo. It was Lou Brutus’s idea for everyone to flip off the camera. I made sure I was standing beside Vinnie. This was, without question, the greatest rock star moment I ever had in radio.
Afterwards I went back out to the tent as the opening bands played. Someone bought me a beer; I gulped it in a daze. When HellYeah hit the stage, I was standing deep in the audience. I watched the whole set, rapt. I may have consumed another three or four beers. When it was over, I helped pack up the station gear, said goodbyes, and drove home. It was an amazing day, and I was just glad to have been there.
The picture surfaces every few months like clockwork. Each time I see it I think of that day and remember Vinnie as well as Greg Shiley, who are no longer with us. Vinnie, as mentioned, was an idol of mine. Greg was a good friend to me and to Bob Rocks. But that’s another blog post.
