review

a bit belated this one. but then that is the effect that comes from seeing ronnie james dio in action. he is a diminutive man, but he has the voice of a giant.
to be honest i wasn’t expecting much of this gig, if only because when we had previously seen him it was a dream gig – just the best that dio had ever done. all thriller and no filler.
this was going to be a concert based around the playing of dio’s first solo lp “holy diver”. so we knew we were going to get the whole of that lp. the question was would we get more of the stuff he did with rainbow and black sabbath or would it be more of dio’s later years and the albums that followed holy diver?
when we went last year we turned up just before the gig was due to start and ambled in to a reasonably packed astoria. this year the queue for admission snaked its way into soho square and back on to oxford street. the astoria itself was packed, jammed to the rafters with boozing metal fans.
i am not a lover of crowds so that was a minus point there and there.
the wait for the gig to start seemed to go on and on.

it was worth it. opening with tarot women and then sign of the southern cross and the little man was off and running. we then had all of holy diver, followed by classics such as gates of babylon, heaven and hell and we rock.

sure there were some duff moments. the horrid film that introduced holy diver which looked as if some blind computer arts student had created it and it could have only looked good to people who were viewing it on mobile phones.
then there were the solos – drum solo, i used to like them, now i want to throttle drummers who think playing along to classic pieces make them seem good. (the best drum solo remains groon on king crimson’s earthbound….and the best drum solo story is still the one of the mont, but that is for another time…). if that was not bad enough then the instrumental played by the band was enough to make you go ugh….
finally the other thing that took the shine off the evening was the raven haired east european hunny who was going out with a bald headed scarecrow. ah be still my beating heart.

through all of that the thing that remains is the clear soaring operatic voice of dio, shouting out his words of mysticism and mythology. emotion and passion – all up there on the astoria stage.

it was not as good as last year, but it was still one of the best 10 gigs i have seen.

rock on ronnie.