Metal man shows a light side

FORMER Black Sabbath frontman and heavy metal icon Ronnie James Dio recalls first hearing about Tenacious D -- that is, the metal-inspired comic rock duo of Jack Black and Kyle Gass -- in 2001, when they released “Dio,” a song that argues: “Dio has rocked for a long, long time / Now it’s time for him to pass the torch ... You’re too old to rock, no more rockin’ for you!”

“Someone called me and said, ‘You gotta hear this,’ ” says Dio, 57, longtime frontman of his multi-platinum selling band, Dio. “ ‘They want you to quit.’ ”

Instead, the hard-rock legend -- widely credited with popularizing metal’s raised index and pinkie finger “moloch” salute -- chose to interpret the song as a paean. “The message was, ‘We really like you and when the time comes, pass the torch to us and we’ll carry on what you do,’ ” he says.

Largely as a result of the rocker’s open-mindedness and sense of humor (Dio once showed up in cartoon form on an episode of “South Park” to perform his classic “Holy Diver”), he will appear in Black and Gass’ November rock comedy, “Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny.”

In the film, Dio plays an apparition of himself -- a kind of heavy metal Yoda -- who counsels the 10-year-old Black on how to make good his dreams of rock grandeur. “The kid’s sitting on the bed and he starts to sing to a huge poster of me -- he’s asking me what to do, saying all he really wants to do is rock ‘n’ roll,” Dio says. “Then I come alive from the poster and tell him: Go to Hollywood where you’ll meet your partner and rock ‘n’ roll forever.”

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Dion to sing from spaghetti western

THE atmospheric music of Ennio Morricone -- the Italian maestro who famously scored “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” and the other Sergio Leone-Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns, among many other films -- doesn’t seem like the obvious choice for a first-time collaboration between Celine Dion and Quincy Jones.

But late last month, the French Canadian torch singer and the pioneering record producer got together in Las Vegas to add vocals to Morricone’s “I Knew I Loved You,” an instrumental piece from Leone’s 1984 crime drama, “Once Upon a Time in America.”

The song will appear on a tribute album of “duets” coming this Christmas and also featuring Morricone collaborations with Bruce Springsteen and Herbie Hancock. (An eclectic roster of artists, including Yo-Yo Ma, Sting, k.d. lang, Luciano Pavoratti and Tim McGraw, are in negotiations to record singles with the composer.)

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Often sampled, little known

THE Incredible Bongo Band, which recorded “Bongo Rock,” a now-obscure instrumental funk album in 1972, occupies a strange place in the pop pantheon.

The album has been sampled more than 2,000 times in songs by hip-hop, drum-and-bass and electronica artists, including Massive Attack, the Sugarhill Gang, Nas, the Beastie Boys, Missy Elliott, Moby and Goldie -- although Michael Viner, the album’s producer, and the other studio musicians who made up the Bongo Band say they’ve never seen a dime in royalties.

“We’re the most played and the least paid ever in the history of music,” says Viner.

Most famously, the Bongo Band’s funked-up, percussion-heavy reworking of the surf guitar classic “Apache” provided the basis for Bronx DJ Kool Herc’s earliest break-beat experiments -- an epochal innovation credited with birthing hip-hop. (One of the earliest Bongo Band samples can be clearly heard on Grandmaster Flash’s 1981 single, “The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel.”) Not the expected upshot for a project initiated as B-movie background music -- for 1972’s “The Thing With Two Heads” -- that lists John Lennon as a session engineer and Ringo Starr as a guest drummer.

“Bongo Rock: The Story of the Incredible Bongo Band,” a reissue of the group’s two albums, will hit stores on Oct. 31. And members of the band are working together to put out a reunion album in the spring.

But don’t expect further contributions from Jim Gordon, the featured drummer whose work defines the original Bongo Band records. “He was the heart of the group, maybe the best drummer of all time,” Viner says. “He’s in jail for murdering his mom.” (Gordon, a lauded session drummer who was also in Derek and the Dominos, was convicted of second-degree murder in 1984 and is serving a sentence of 16 years to life at Atascadero State Hospital.)

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CBGB’s last gig to air on Sirius

SIRIUS Satellite Radio is broadcasting a live performance by “punk rock’s poet laureate,” Patti Smith, tonight at 6 -- the final set at New York City’s iconic punk and alternative music club CBGB.

The small, dingy club, on a rough-and-tumble stretch of the Bowery in Manhattan, earned its institutional status for hosting early performances by seminal alterna-rock artists the Ramones, Talking Heads, Television and Blondie, among thousands of bands that have performed there since its 1973 opening. The club lost a protracted fight with its landlord in 2005 and has been forced to close.

Smith said in a statement that “we should remember CBGB not merely as a place. It is a state of mind.”