Back in 2013 I did a post about how I had finally come to see the awesomeness of Ronnie James Dio.
In this post I described a guy I used to work with at Office Max named Shawn.
Shawn was a music guy and we talked endlessly about bands and the virtues of Sabbath and the many variations of Ritchie Blackmore. Eventually I moved to a different Office Max store and we unfortunately lost touch.
The other day I saw a comment on a post I did about Ronnie James Dio. The comment was:
Hi Mike! Glad to see you finally realized the brilliance of RJD. \m/
Could it be? It was! After almost 20 years, in a series of weird left turns on the internet Shawn stumbled upon the above post, saw my shout-out and reached out to me. It was awesome. An immediate torrent of e-mails followed which in retrospect may have made Shawn think to himself, “Oh man, what have I done?”
It was great to catch up and man I wish the world was in a place where a guy could go get a beer/cider with an old friend. I have no doubt that this will happen at some point. Until then I am gathering a collection of stuff for Shawn for a potential social distanced pandemic era package drop off.
The music room is being dismantled slowly in preparation for a upcoming move in the fall/spring. It is sad right now. Everything is down from the walls and things are in piles on a big table in the middle of the room.
I will not be setting up a music room in our new space, so am packing all this.
This dismantling however means extra stuff in Shawn’s pandemic package.
He is hanging on to physical media like vinyl and CD’s, as am I. In our early discussions I mentioned the Ronnie James Dio vinyl I had and he commented on this one.
Ronnie James Dio – Intermission
It’s an EP with some live tracks and one studio cut.
I already told Shawn that this was going in his box. Seems fitting that a vinyl from Dalton would pass on to another friend who loves Dio. I don’t think in fact that I know ANYONE who loves Dio more.
I have already sent Shawn some bootlegs from my collection (he likes Buddy Guy!) and gave some recommendations for other blues artists that he might dig. In turn, today I listened to Alice Cooper’s “Dada” album on his recommendation and some other bands that he mentioned. It’s begun.
So cool to be talking to Shawn again!
In the long and short of it, Dio is partially responsible for Shawn finding me. So once again, the virtues of Ronnie James Dio.
Thanks dude.
The Aural Retentive 
First round is on me. I’m looking forward to it.