This may seem like an odd choice for a RAMzine, but if any other musical work listed performers such as those, it would certainly be a feature. The album is The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper’s Feast, and while it may not be rock all the way, it has some marvelous performances from those names and a few others.

Ronnie James Dio sang the part of a frog on the most famous song from the album, and the only one to have the animated ideas realised. ‘Love Is All’ is a good time; it’s a soft rock song that you can’t help but love! He also sings a froggy ballad called ‘Sitting In A Dream’ with an almost ‘Rainbow Eyes’ adjacent vocal approach, and it’s irresistible. Glenn Hughes shows his usual strong vocals as Harold The Herald (a Gadfly), heralding the day of the ball backed by another quality, soft rock song.

David Coverdale puts in a remarkable performance as he pours emotion into ‘Behind The Smile’, warning all of the attendees to beware of the fox. In under two minutes, he is peerless and the album is worth it for this one alone. Another class and rolling rock song is (hard to believe I’m typing this) ‘Sir Maximus Mouse’, sung by Eddie Hardin with a Hammond solo slotted in, and it also features Nigel Watson playing a saw…you couldn’t make this up! Another piece of classy, orchestrated rock is John Gustafson giving it rice on the fast moving ‘Watch Out For The Bat’. There are a couple of less rocky songs, but even the Helen Chapelle vocal that is almost only audible to dogs has oodles of charm. Tony Ashton’s performance – just him and piano on ‘Together Again’ – as a totally inebriated newt is pure genius. The John Lawton song incidentally is the ballad ‘Little Chalk Blue’, which was only available on the single yet remains on the remastered versions of the album.

The TV series never materialised and the whole thing was performed live only once. It featured Ian Gillan in place of Ronnie James Dio and, after the reception he got from the crowd, it helped persuade him out of ‘retirement’. There is a DVD of the concert available, but the director keeps cutting away from the performers to some ‘specially shot footage’ of a load of prats prancing about in shit costumes and renders it almost unwatchable.

So, there you have it: a strange mix of genres, performers and, in all, twenty short songs that will entertain. It does deserve more recognition that it got or gets. Give it a try and be swept into the froggy, moley, spidery, foxy, batty and adorable world of The Butterfly Ball.

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While the new artwork and layout that adorns this 2021 reissue is no improvement on the original CD/DVD version that was released in 2006, the remastered sound is a huge plus here and it comes across as crisp, powerful, and full of texture. Other than the passionate delivery of ‘Holy Diver‘ from start to finish, perhaps the most notable and exceptionally cool thing about this soul-stirring opus is that we get gems such as Rainbow’s ‘Tarot Woman‘ and the majestic ‘Gates of Babylyn‘ — not to mention Sabbath’s gloomy stroke of epic genius titled ‘The Sign of the Southern Cross‘ from the hallowed Mob Rules record (1981). Rainbow never even performed ‘Tarot Woman‘ themselves on the Rising tour (or any subsequent tour for that matter), as Blackmore felt that they could not make it work in rehearsals. The inclusion of the melancholy ‘One Night in the City‘ from Dio’s Last in Line LP (1984) is also quite the treat.

Ronnie James Dio never turned in a bad performance but one could make the argument that his vocals are slightly rougher around the edges in places here than on, say, Evil or Divine – Live in New York City (2003), or the criminally underrated Dio’s Inferno – The Last in Live (1998), just to compare to a couple of Dio live albums. Having said that, he still sounds amazing throughout and the band is firing on all cylinders. Guitar slinger Doug Aldrich returned to the fold for this short tour as Craig Goldy was unavailable for a few months back then, but Doug pulls it all off in style and his fluid, melodically gorgeous way of playing suits Dio’s material perfectly. Rudy Sarzo (formerly of Whitesnake and Ozzy Osbourne) is phenomenal on the bass and lays down a thick, solid groove with drummer Simon Wright (formerly of AC/DC). The only real downside to Holy Diver Live is the inclusion of the guitar and drum solos as they add very little of value or relevance to the proceedings, but then again, they were aired that night and so for completion’s sake someone must have decided that should be present on the discs. Everything else on here is pure gold, though.

I do feel that this gig was of historical importance and that the Holy Diver Live release has been vastly underappreciated and overlooked, but here is to hoping that this 2021 edition of the splendid thing will generate more praise and be celebrated for the superb record that it is. The output offers 113 minutes of startling depth and heavy metal excellence, and you are wrong if you think that this one is less essential than any of the other concert albums that Ronnie has appeared on because, well, you really cannot have too much of a good thing. For me, I can still feel the warmth, joy, and excitement of the show when I close my eyes and immerse myself in these discs. What a beautiful feeling that is.

Holy Diver Live was released on 12th February via BMG

The post Dio’s ‘Holy Diver Live’ sees one of the great unsung live recordings remastered and reissued appeared first on RAMzine.

The fiery opening track ‘Jesus, Mary & the Holy Ghost‘ and the ferocious ‘Blood from a Stone‘ will inevitably melt either your face or your brain, and the title track is so goddamn massive and strangely eerie that it is capable of moving mountains AND haunt your dreams. The heartfelt power ballad ‘Give Her the Gun’ is also a standout as is the vicious ‘Evilution‘.

An interesting thing about the fourth track on the album, more specifically ‘Hollywood Black’, is that the title derives from the Black Sabbath Dehumanizer rehearsals and writing sessions that took place in 1991-1992. Musically, the Sabbath demo track was probably an entirely different thing to what ended up on the Strange Highways album. Dio most likely only kept the title and then set new music to it. Still, it is cool that there is reference and a nod to the Black Sabbath days on the aforementioned album. Should you be intrigued by or interested in listening to the Dehumanizer rehearsals, they are floating around on YouTube.

I distinctly recall the first time I ever listened to Strange Highways back in June 2003. It was something else entirely and it took me a while to get used to it and even warm to it, but the more I listened, the more I loved it. It was truly compelling and almost claustrophobic at times. It is perhaps the heaviest and angriest album of Dio’s career, and it still holds up to this day. Unfortunately, not that many people know of it and it had very little commercial success when it was released. One can only hope that it will enjoy a renaissance of sorts and that more fans and listeners will pick up on it. Many of the songs worked really well in a live setting, which is evidenced by the superb Live in London: Hammersmith Apollo 1993 live recording that was released just a few years ago. The band totally slays, and Tracy G’s inventive and unorthodox shredding-style breathes new life into all the Sabbath, Rainbow, and DIO classics.

Quite a while ago there was an interview with the aforementioned six-string wizard Tracy G conducted by a Ronnie James Dio message board and there were a couple of interesting bits there relating to the writing sessions for Strange Highways. Ronnie would take the musical ideas and riffs and so on home with him following rehearsals and then bring lyrics around the next day to present them to the band:

^{We would record it with Vinny’s little tape deck. Ronnie would take it home and the next day he would sing to us what he wrote to it, and always whatever he came up with to me was amazing. To record the CD, he hired an outside producer named Mike Fraser. He just worked on the new AC/DC CD. I loved him, he just let us do what we do. He did not make any changes, he just captured what we were and how we played. Awesome to me; that’s the way a great CD should be written and recorded. Just do it and let the musicians be themselves and it will flow better, I think.}

Bassist Jeff Pilson (Foreigner) also remembers his time with the DIO band fondly and said that

^{. . . we were a great band. And then the other side was the camaraderie, ’cause Vinny Appice [drums] is a very dear friend of mine. Tracy G [guitar] was a great friend. Scott Warren was a good friend, who was playing keys at the time, and Ronnie was a dear friend. So there was a lot of camaraderie, and we were a great band. It doesn’t get better than that.}

In summing up, Strange Highways deserves the tag ‘modern classic’ and the next time you find yourself craving for hard, pulverizing heavy metal with a delightfully sinister twist to it, you really need not look any further than this stellar output.

Line-up:

Vinny Appice – drums

Ronnie James Dio – vocals

Tracy G – guitars

Jeff Pilson – bass and keyboards

Recorded at Rumbo Recorders, Los Angeles, California.

Produced, mixed, and engineered by Mike Fraser.

Bibliography:

http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/former-dio-guitarist-tracy-g-talks-about-his-years-with-the-band/

https://www.blabbermouth.net/news/ex-dio-bassist-jeff-pilson-says-he-is-all-for-ronnie-james-dio-hologram-touring-the-world/

Strange Highways – Wikipedia

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The 90s were hard on a lot of heavy metal bands and that included DIO, which is a shame in that they released two of their very best albums during this time (Lock Up the Wolves from 1990 and Strange Highways from 1993), and following the lackluster and uninspired Angry Machines (1996), DIO kept touring for a couple of years before shuffling the line-up and getting down to the business of writing and arranging Ronnie’s first proper concept album as we were approaching the new millennium.

By 1999 the line-up consisted of two returning members, namely guitarist Craig Goldy and ex-Rainbow bassist Jimmy Bain (R.I.P.), along with former AC/DC drummer Simon Wright and of course, Ronnie himself. The keyboards would be handled by Craig and Ronnie this time around. What eventually emerged in 2000 was stunning to behold. Simply put, Magica was a musical revelation when it came out and it generally garnered favorable reviews and heaps of praise from the fans. Many saw it as a return to form, but it was much more than that; it was an engaging and at times gripping (dark) fantasy narrative that was beautifully conveyed by means of epic riffs, soaring vocals, sweeping melodies, and a subtle sense of melancholy. Did I mention that the album artwork is exceptionally wicked too? By looking at it you can just tell that you are in for a breathtaking musical adventure.  

Magica is truly steeped in a wonderfully strange and misty atmosphere and immersing oneself in it its glorious compositions is akin to embarking on a thrilling journey to unknown dimensions and otherworldly spheres. The confidence that is on display and the sheer power and bombast of the tracks are positively overwhelming and everything flows together seamlessly with the only miniscule flaw being that it could do with one more fast-paced track in order to add slightly more variety to the proceedings. The tender and heartfelt ballad ‘As Long as It’s Not About Love’ defies words and needs to be experienced while ‘Challis’ possesses a fantastic drive and an abundance of killer riffs. The final track is the actual narration of the storyline, which means that Ronnie is essentially doing a spoken-word piece with a moody ambient texture moving and floating in the background. It seems a fitting conclusion to the affair and wraps everything up nicely. In the words of author Mick Wall,

Yours truly had the pleasure of attending two DIO performances in Copenhagen in less than a year (September 2002 and July 2003) and the first one included ‘Fever Dreams’ and ‘Lord of the Last Day’ in the setlist whereas the latter contained only ‘Lord of the Last Day’ – two of the best and most memorable cuts from the album. They sounded phenomenal in a live setting, which is also evidenced by the superb live album from the Killing the Dragon tour entitled Evil or Divine, which was captured on tape in New York. The deluxe edition of Magica that is out there contains a handful of live renditions of the Magica studio material, so I suggest you look for a copy of that one.

Ronnie James Dio was incredibly proud of Magica and he often discussed his plans for two follow-up LPs, but sadly, that never happened. However, the majestic single named ‘Electra’ surfaced in 2010 and was intended to be a part of Magica parts II and III. So far, that the is the only material from the sequels to the Magica record that has surfaced, but whether or not there are other properly recorded tracks or perhaps even some cool-sounding demo versions from those sessions lying in the vault remains to be seen.   

Magica stands tall and proud as one of the most accomplished, captivating, and melodically rich works by both DIO (the band) and Ronnie James Dio, which is saying something. Join me and celebrate its 20^th anniversary this year by cranking up the volume, closing your eyes, and letting your mind and soul wander among the shadows of Blessing, the netherworld in the Magica saga.     

Line-up:

Ronnie James Dio – Vocals/Keyboards

Jimmy Bain – Bass

Craig Goldy – Guitars/Keyboards

Simon Wright – Drums

Produced by Ronnie James Dio

Recorded and mixed at Total Access, Redondo Beach, California

Tracklist:

1. Discovery
2. Magica Theme
3. Lord of the Last Day
4. Fever Dreams
5. Turn to Stone
6. Feed My Head
7. Eriel
8. Challis
9. As Long as It’s Not About Love
10. Losing My Insanity
11. Otherworld
12. Magica – Reprise
13. Lord of the Last Day – Reprise
14. Magica Story

Words cited:

Wall, Mick. Black Sabbath: Symptom of the Universe. Orion, 2014

The post Turn To Stone – Dio’s marvelous Magica opus and why it’s A Modern Classic appeared first on RAMzine.

Biography

Ronnie James Dio was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire under the name Ronald James Padavona on the 10^th July 1942.  It was a very sad day for all metal heads, as Ronnie bid his final farewell on 16^th May 2010 after a long bout of stomach cancer, which was first diagnosed in 2009, and he climbed the Silver Mountain, throwing a salute of the metal horns (A hand gesture he popularized that has stayed within the metal community and remains to this day) for the last time.

Ronnie was in my opinion a wizard, I say this because his music was sheer magic and it lives on in the hearts of metal heads, far and wide and young and old alike.

Dio sold over 47 million albums throughout his metal career. Fronting numerous bands, his first being The Electric Elves, later shortening the name to the Elves and then moving on to Rainbow in the mid 1970’s. He stayed with Rainbow until 1979 then left to join legendary Black Sabbath whom he stayed with until 1982 then left to form Dio with Vinnie Appice, Vivian Campbell and Jimmy Bane.

In 2006 it was confirmed that Dio would once again join Iommi, Butler and Appice to tour under the name of Heaven & Hell – the name of the first album Dio recorded with Sabbath. Ward was supposed to be included in the line-up but later withdrew.

On May 4^th 2010 Heaven & Hell announced they were cancelling their tour due to Dio’s ill health – Dio’s last stage performance was August 29^th 2009 in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Dio died at 7.45am on May 16^th same year, just twelve days after his final performance. A public memorial service was held on May 30^th at the Hall of Liberty in Hollywood Hills. On all accounts the place was filled to capacity, with fans outside watching the service on a wide screen.

But the legend lives on in each and every one of us that bought his albums and saw him live in concert – this tribute album is to honour Dio with some of the top artists putting their signature to some of the greatest Dio, Rainbow and Sabbath tracks – with all money raised going to the “Stand up and Shout Cancer Fund!” Ronnie has the last word on the album from a moving performance of “This is your Life” released from ‘Angry Machines’ (1996) and a sad reminder that we will never hear a voice like Dio’s again.

The Ronnie James Dio Stand Up and Shout Cancer Fund, co-founded by Wendy Dio, is a non-profit charitable fund 501(c)(3) dedicated to supporting cancer-prevention research, raising awareness and educating the public about the vital importance of early detection and prevention when dealing with this deadly disease.

Review

Kicking off the album are the familiar tones of ‘Neon Knights’ sung by Anthrax, and although they have done an immense job with the track, no matter who sings this, I can only hear Dio’s voice.

This is beautifully portrayed by Tenacious D ‘Last in Line’ starts off fluid and builds into a fiery beast, with a superb spin on the original, adding flutes that give it a truly medieval sound – Dio would be proud of this!

This is a beast of a track from Adrenalin Mob, who have not turned away from the raucous metal legacy Dio left behind with ‘Mob Rules’

One of my favourite Dio tracks of all time – ‘Rainbow in the Dark’ although there were many! The words are so poignant and no doubt will stir a few memories. Sung and played brilliantly by Corey Taylor, Roy Mayorga, Satchel, Christian Martucci, Jason Christopher – (Previously unreleased)

Do your demons

Do they ever let you go?

When you’ve tried do they hide deep inside?

Is it someone that you know?

You’re just a picture

Just an image caught in time

We’re a lie you and I

We’re words without a rhyme

 

Halestorm take on this mighty track ‘Straight through the Heart’ the slant being taken on by female vocalist, Lzzy with her strong and very distinct vocals, reminding me of Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart.

‘Starstruck’ sung by none other than Motörhead and Biff Byford of Saxon another previously unreleased track is great, although Biff has lent his screaming voice to this it still has a good Motörhead spin on it, with the harmonies, although rough sounding, still blends superbly!

Being an avid Scorpions fan – still… I was interested to see what they would do to this track, ‘Temple of the King’ and in my opinion, they have made it their own. Klaus’s vocals are unmistakable, as are Matthias and Rudolph’s guitars – this is smooth and memorable.

‘Egypt the Chains are on’ a very under-rated track, expertly sung by Doro the metal high priestess lending her lilting tones to the proceedings, in an eastern take from ‘The Last in Line’

Killswitch Engage sound slightly similar to the original, on ‘Holy Diver’ but saying that Jesse Leach has added a twist of his own with thunderously powerful vocals complimenting the track really well.

‘Catch the Rainbow’ clearly holding strong sophistication from Glenn Hughes, Simon Wright, Craig Goldy, Rudy Sarzo, Scott Warren – yet another previously unreleased track. These guys have done it proud with great musical content that flows seamlessly with orchestral appeal (Always did make me smile when Dio sang we ‘Catched’ the Rainbow)

‘I’ is quite a sinister track from Heaven & Hell and the take on this is from Oni Logan, Jimmy Bain, Rowan Robertson, and Brian Tichy. (Yet another previously unreleased track) Not surprising Jimmy Bane plays on this as his style has always been a bit dark, however, Bane is still superb and a legend in his own right. This is one is heavily laden with guitar! With strong bass lines – of course!

‘Man on the Silver Mountain’ starts off with a bit of a Country flavour, however it soon turns back into a recognisable track, that is until Halford starts to sing – and I just cringe as it sounds off key in places! Ouch! However, musically it sounds strong and still just as good as when Dio sang it originally with Rainbow.

“A fine and touching tribute to one of the best metal vocalists and composers that ever lived – Ronnie James Dio. Forever in our metal hearts – we salute you!”

‘Ronnie Rising Medley’ is just simply breath-taking – Metallica have really surpassed expectations with this, featuring A Light in the Black, Tarot Woman, Stargazer, and Kill the King, some fantastic tracks here that bring back memories of a misspent youth! I may have to take Metallica a lot more seriously after this! Truly superb guitar work!!

‘This is your Life’: Over to our legend Ronnie now with a beautiful ballad – I don’t know if I will be able to listen all the way through without getting upset. It’s humbling listening to his distinct vocals and hearing the words he wrote, knowing he will never sing and write again is just too much to bare.

The words are poignant as only Ronnie knew how to write. It makes me think about Wendy and how she is coping? – If we the fans feel upset on listening to Ronnie’s dulcet tones – how does she feel being without the master by her side?

A fine and touching tribute to one of the best metal vocalists and composers that ever lived – Ronnie James Dio. Forever in our metal hearts – we salute you!

A Tribute Album to the late great Ronnie James Dio ‘This is your Life’ the  14 track album by Various Artists is out now!

Track List:

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