Look at this picture:
These two guys are brothers who are both professional drummers.
The guy on the left is Carmine, the guy on the right is Vinny.
I first heard Carmine play with Jeff Beck in a band called Beck, Bogart, & Appice. Not long after that I heard him play in an older band called Vanilla Fudge. He also played in Rod Stewart's band, I think that was during the embarrassing "do you think I'm sexy" disco years. I think he's been in a couple of thousand other bands too. The only one popping into my head now is a session appearance on Tommy Bolin's last album.
Click to listen to Carmine with Vanilla Fudge on You Keep Me Hanging On.
Either during high school or my first, first year in college (yes you read that correctly) my friend Larry told me that Carmine had a brother who was also a drummer. Vinny. I only know of two gigs Vinny has had. He was in Black Sabbath and played on the Mob Rules record, then when Ronnie Dio left to start his own band Vinny went with him. I know he played with Dio for a long time and he went back to Sabbath at least once too.
Click to listen to Vinnie with a reunited Dio-era Black Sabbath on TV Crimes.
(Side note: I saw Vinny play with Dio at the Club Casino Ballroom in Hampton Beach, NH on the Strange Highways tour. Late 90's, I think. I was never a Dio fan, but I was definitely a fan of the stuff Ronnie Dio did with Rainbow. The Rising/On Stage lineup was a fantastic band. I had heard Dio with Sabbath and liked what I heard, but I was never that big a Sabbath fan. Dio's solo band didn't do anything for me. I don't know why. I consented to see them in Hampton Beach though in the hopes that I might hear a Rainbow song or two. The crowd that night was nuts. There were actually stage divers. At one point some guy jumped up on stage and took the dive and Ronnie Dio looked terrified. I could almost hear him thinking, "we're old... what the hell are you people doing?" It was seriously funny. Late in the show we saw a guy get pushed up onto the stage. He had no interest in diving off but didn't know what to do. He stood up there next to Dio for a second, smiled at him... he may even have waved at him even though they were about 2 feet apart, and then was escorted out of the building. Years later I was playing with Break Even. We were discussing how cool Rainbow's song "Stargazer" is to play when I mentioned that Dio show. Turns out the smiling waving guy was Break Even's other guitar player, Steve. It really is a small world. End side note)
The confusion, pain, and suffering (for Larry and me at least) stems from their last name:
Appice.
Forgive my poor phonetic spelling attempts here, but when I first heard of Carmine I guessed his name was pronounced something like AH-piss-ee. Larry, after actually looking at their faces, thought it was probably much more Italian and pronounced it ah-PEACH-ee. I caved in quickly and thought that he was probably right and adopted his pronunciation as my own.
Then at that Dio show in Hampton Beach Ronnie Dio said his name to the audience. I couldn't make out what he said, but I knew without question it was not ah-PEACH-ee. We didn't know what the hell he said. So we remained confused for years upon years upon years.
Until this week.
During the dying days of Napster I went completely overboard with downloading, thinking incorrectly that the mother lode was about to be taken away from me. I downloaded mountains of stuff and then never listened to it. Last Christmas Jen bought me an 80 gig iPod Classic. I have since taken it upon myself to fill that sucker as close to capacity as possible. This brought me to all of those Napster files I had never touched. Included in the mountain was just about the entire Black Sabbath catelog. Over the last week or so I have been in a weird place musically, just jonzing for 70's metal bands. I put all Ozzy, Dio, and Ian Gillan Sabbath records onto my iPod and have been listening to them while driving to and from work. The other day I had reached the very forgetable Live Evil album. On that record Vinny does a drum solo. Upon completion, Ronnie Dio yells out his name.
Vinny AH-piss-ee!
At last! Thought I, the great question is answered irrefutably! My original attempt at pronouncing Appice was correct! I got to work and immediately sent Larry and email telling him of this great news. There was much rejoycing. Happiness for all!
I told you this one was going to be lamer than usual.
Good day
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