At 9:30 this morning they're installing a new mayor and the new city council at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, and until he was booted off the ballot in March, our old pal Zac Crain hoped to be among their lot. Instead he's having to defend himself against the Pantera and Damageplan fans who think he's a "money hungry, penny pinching, fear inflicting, double crossing, back stabbing, promising eternity for a price, sucking, brain washing, mind raping, salvation reaching, lowest form of human fucking life" for penning the biography of slain guitarist "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott. Titled Black Tooth Grin: The High Life, Good Times, and Tragic End of "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott, the book's due in November from DeCapo Press.
As we mentioned at the end of last week, Abbott family publicist Jane Hoffman sent out a press release Friday slagging Zac's book as unauthorized and the work of a Dimebag hatuh, as evidenced by a single paragraph in the Dallas Observer seven years ago in which he criticized the one album Pantera fans don't much like anyway. That prompted some nasty comments on Blabbermouth.net, which Zac felt compelled to respond to with a statement on Saturday in which he wrote, "The idea for the book wasn't to cash in on a tragedy, but to do what I could, given my assignment, to let people outside of the metal/hard rock community know about him." He actually got more negative comments the second time around, and while some of the folks on the site do come to his defense, I think this bit of positive feedback sums it up best: "He's an idiot for trying to use Blabbermouth as a forum to defend himself." --Robert Wilonsky
