Here are all the news from the year 2007 - some of
these may be outdated already, so please check out the newest news for
updates!
Word from the webmaster
Another four months has passed without a single update on
these pages. Sorry. The time is just so limited these days
that I simply haven't managed to put out anything. Now this
update focuses again mainly only on the discography and tour
date sections.
Heaven And Hell 2007 tour over and out
The tour came into conclusion in Bournemouth on the southern
coast of the UK on November 18th. The tour was a big
success: The band did whole 98 full-lenght kick-ass shows,
starting in March in Canada and now ending to 11 shows in
the UK - wihch was the 23rd country the tour.
I had the opportunity to follow the tour with a few friends
of mine - Thomas, Larry & Lorrie - for the very last five
shows. It was incredible to see how much energy the band
still had at that point of the tour even though they had
went around the world already. I saw this tour for the first
time in Canada near the beginning of the tour, then a couple
of shows in Finland in the middle of the tour and now the
last ones - and the same energy that was there in London,
Ontario in Canada was still present in the very last show at
the Bournemouth International Centre some 90 shows later.
The last five shows in the UK were one of the best "Dio
Trips" I've done over the years. It was good to be there
with good friends, see several excellent gigs and meet many
interesting people. Spending one late night in the hotel bar
we even got invited to the support band's tour bus to play
some football!
This tour and the albums Rhino Entertainment put out during
the year got tons of good reviews from the music
publications and reviewers. Many also compared the tour to
the previous Black Sabbath tours - I'm not sure if those
comparisons are justified, though, as this Heaven And Hell
reincarnation of Black Sabbath is simply totally different
band than the original Black Sabbath lineup.
What next?
Already before the Heaven And Hell tour was over, the band
announced that they're interested in doing a full studio
album together again and are searching for a record
company. This was a big surprise to many, as this tour
started as one-off tour. However, I guess since things were
working well within the band, and there was so huge interest
among the fans to this line-up, they decided to continue
working on.
What about Dio the band then? It has not gone anywhere.
There are plans (although no confirmed dates yet) for Dio
the band to do a European tour in 2008 - the estimates when
that tour would happen vary from March-April to June-July
time. My personal guess is that they'll appear at the
European metal festivals in the summer, but that remains to
be seen.
As for Black Sabbath this year, I have no guesses at
all. Before this Heaven And Hell tour happened, there were
plans for the 40th anniversary tour for 2008 for original
line-up of Black Sabbath. I haven't got any idea whether
they'll do that now or not. Time will tell.
My guess is that Ronnie-fronted Sabbath, or Heaven And Hell,
will be able to complete the new studio album in the fall of
2008, and after that we'll get another 6-12 month world tour
to support that.
After the 2008 album+tour is over, then what? I believe
another Dio album will see the light - before the Heaven And
Hell decided to have the 2nd run next year, Ronnie was
planning to do another Dio album. I guess those plans have
now just been pushed a bit more forward in the future.
Craig joins Budgie
The Welsh band Budgie announced that Craig Goldie will help
them on their Australian tour in February - from Saturday
the 16th to Saturday the 23rd of February. Craig is just
helping them out for this tour, he's not joining them
permanently.
Craig is also working with Doogie White, vocalist for
Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow in mid 1990s. Doogie is doing a
solo album and Craig is going to play guitar on it.
Also, according to a recent interview (click
here
to read it) there might be a reunion of Giuffria in the
works as well. Craig was in this band in mid 1980s before he
joined Dio. And in top of that, he's also involved with a
band called Virus. And if that was not enough, Craig also
announced already in May that he's joining the American
melodic hard rock band Hydrogyn.
Craig has also his own program called Destiny Bridge (click
here to read more
about it on Craig's own pages) which is set to help new
bands to break into the music industry.
Simon's back with Rhino Bucket...
Simon Wright, drummer for Dio, did a tour with Rhino Bucket
across the USA in September-November 2007. He also confirmed
that he's still a dedicated member of Dio, this Rhino Bucket
tour was just a side project for him.
...and Vinny's back with Derringer
Vinny Appice, the former drummer for Dio and the drummer for
Heaven And Hell (and Black Sabbath before that;), is now
back with Derringer, the band he was in before he joined
Black Sabbath in 1980. Derringer has now reunited for a
handful of shows in 2008.
Record News
New box set: The Japanese Universal
released the first four studio albums (Holy Diver, The Last
In Line, Sacred Heart and Dream Evil) in miniature LP
sleeves as a limited edition box set just before
Christmas. This set is going to sell out quickly, so get
your copy while you still can! The miniature LP sleeve CD
releases are sold also separately without the box.
Live From Radio City Music Hall American box
set: Rhino Entertainment/Rhino Handmade released
the live 2CD+DVD set as a stunning, large box set with tons
of extras included. You can read an excellent review of the
box set by Joe Siegler by clicking
here!
Or you can see his excellent Black Sabbath site at address
here,
a couple of updates worth of mentioning to the fellow
record collectors: The thing that surprised me a lot was a
FINNISH release of Holy Diver with Philips labels. This is
not a new release, it dates probably back to 1983, but I
never expected to find a new version of a Finnish Dio
vinyl. Surprises never cease. Other rare items that have
surfaced to the collectors' markets recently include US
test pressings of Roger Glover And Guests' The Butterfly
Ball LP as well as of the Hear 'N Aid: Stars US 7"
single.
However, a new very limited edition (I was told only 5
copies were made!) vinyl 3-LP bootleg is probably the most
surprising addition to the discography section this time
around. This bootleg is from a recent Heaven And Hell show
in London, UK and it appeared just a month after the
show.
The details of all these + the ones mentioned on the above
mentioned Updates list can be found in the bio/discography
section here.
Happy New Year 2008!
And the last words from me for this year: Happy New Year
2008! We will definitely have a new Dio-ful year coming up
with both Dio shows and the news from the Heaven And Hell
side!
European tour rumors
After the UK tour in November (see the ad below), it looks
like at least the German fans will get another chance to see
Heaven And Hell live - a handful of dates for late November
have surfaced, although not confirmed: Essen, Stuttgart,
Munch and Hannover.
Hot Topic store in Hollywood hosts a signing session with Heaven And Hell
Ronnie, Tony, Geezer and Vinny will be signing copies of the new DVD
and CD Heaven and Hell: Live from Radio City Music Hall at the Hot
Topic in Hollywood Tuesday, August 28th at 6pm.
Hot Topic in Hollywood can be found at this address:
Hot Topic (Hollywood & Highland)
6801 Hollywood Boulevard
Hollywood, CA 90028
(323) 462-2590
To qualify to the signing, one must preorder the Live From Radio City Music hall release and get a wristband which will then guarantee a place in line to meet the band.
For more information, go to http://www.hottopic.com/.
Live From Radio City Music Hall DVD on big screen in Cleveland, OH
Rhino Records will present a screening of Heaven And Hell's "Live From
Radio City Music Hall" DVD at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame & Museum
in Cleveland, Ohio on Wednesday, August 29 from 6:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Admission is free. The DVD will be shown in its entirety in the Rock
Hall's fourth floor theater. Free Heaven And Hell official band
merchandise; including tour shirts, programs, limited-edition posters,
and more will be passed out at the end of the showing (while supplies
last; limit 1 item per person).
The producer of the DVD, Barry Ehrmann, will also make an appearance at the screening. He has produced loads of other music videos too, including Deep Purple's Perihelion and Queensryche's Mindcrime At The Moore. He's also behind the King Biscuit Flower Hour record label who have been putting out many of the concerts from the King Biscuit radio archives.
The event is sponsored by the Rock Hall, WJCU, WCSB, WRUW and Free
Times magazine. Visit http://www.rockhall.com/ for more information.
In addition, The Exchange, an independent record store chain with 21
stores in the Cleveland and Pittsburgh regions, will be offering a
special sale price for the new Heaven And Hell release in support of
the Rhino Records screening.
For details of that (and event advert poster), click here:
http://www.bravewords.com/news/71786.
Bob Daisley on the new Hoochie Coochie Men CD/DVD
Bob Daisley (Ronnie James Dio connection: Bassist on the Rainbow's Long Live Rock 'N' Roll tour, as well as the touring bassist for Dio's late 1998 Scandinavian tour) and his band The Hoochie Koochie Men is going to release a new blues album, "Danger: White Men Dancing", on October 1st, 2007 on Edel Records. There will be a special limited edition version including a DVD, too.
The album will feature Jon Lord on keyboards, as well as guest appearances of Ian GIllan, Jimmy Barnes and Jeff Duff. The band consists of Tim Gaze (vocals, guitars), Rob Grosser (drums), Jim Conway (harmonica) and the above-mentioned Bob Daisley on bass.
Eagle Rock Entertainment re-releases Deep Purple Royal Albert Hall DVD
Eagle Rock Entertainment will re-release the DVD of Deep Purple's
concert at the London's Royal Albert Hall, titled as "In Concert With
The London Symphony Orchestra Conducted By Paul Mann". This is one of
those two Deep Purple with the London Symphony Orchestra concerts
there back in 1999. As you may remember, Ronnie James Dio sung two
songs (Love Is All and Sitting In A Dream, off Roger Glover's
Butterfly Ball album) at those shows, as well as participated in the
encore, Smoke On The Water.
According to Eagle Rock Entertainment's announcement, this is one of
their most popular DVDs up to date. They will re-release it on
September 18th.
Heaven And Hell's show from Sweden Rock Festival will be broadcasted
on Swedish radio
Heaven And Hell was one of the headliners of this year's Sweden Rock
Festival in early June. The show was recorded and will be broadcasted
on Swedish radio, P4 Live on Saturday, September 29th at 8pm Swedish
time (GMT+1). You should be able to listen to the broadcast online as
well at address http://www.sr.se/p4/live!
Simon Wright touring with Rhino Bucket
Simon Wright will join Rhino Bucket for a US tour in September-November. Back in 1994 Simon played on Rhino Bucket's Pain And Suffering album. Now Acetate Records (as a record collector I have to say that this is quite a nice label name!) has reissued the album in remastered form, with additional five previously unreleased songs.
Simon is not joining the band permanently, he'll be doing only this tour with them. The full lineup of the band is as follows:
- Georg Dolivo - Lead Vocals & Rhythm Guitar
- Brian "Damage" Forsythe - Lead Guitar
- Reeve Downes - Bass
- Simon Wright - Drums
Long Time No See
Oh boy. It has been far too long time since I put up an
update here - four and a half months. Sorry for the
inconvenience.
It looks like that I will not be able to keep the news
section up-to-date at the moment. Too little time with so
much things happening in the scene. The Heaven And Hell
reunion tour is generating so much attention from both the
media and the record companies, as well as from the fans
that I should be posting news every day - and these days the
time I can spend on my pages is far too little.
I'm open for ideas - if you have any ideas what I should do
to keep the news section as news section, instead of
something like this "the band released a new live album 3
months ago, and sorry guys, it sold out immediately". E-mail
me constructive ideas by clicking
here!
Record Discoveries
If you go to the Updates section
of my pages, you can find all the changes to my pages listed
there. With this update, I've added TONS of interesting (and
not so interesting I guess) records on my pages. There is a
huge flood of Russian counterfeit flexi singles listed with
this update - those were made probably around 1993-1994 time
frame, but I discovered those only now. No pictures of those
as I don't yet have them.
Another interesting find is a side project from Ronnie,
dating all the way back to 1970. I got e-mail from a fellow
Dio fan located in Cleveland, Charles Abou-Chebl, where he
asked whether I know about a record titled "Self Made Man"
by Austin Gravelding. It credits one song to someone called Ron
Padavona. After some research on this, it turned out to be
our dear Ronnie James Dio.
When Heaven And Hell tour reached Finland, I was able to ask
Ronnie about this particular song. Once I played the song to
him, he remembered it instantly, saying that he probably
produced this for his friend Austin "Rick" Gravelding. There
seems to be two versions of this record, a promo copy as
well as the actual release.
Another interesting item is a recent release from Black
Sabbath - titled Live At Hammersmith Odeon. US-based Rhino
Handmade released a strictly limited, individually numbered
run of 5000 copies of a single CD, recorded at London's
Hammersmith Odeon on Mob Rules tour. Needless to say, the CD
sold out on the day of its release (May 1st) and became
instantly a collectors' piece. Prices on Ebay have started
to decline a bit, but at highest this CD went for almost
$200. There is also extremely rare advance/promo CD-R
pressing of it - only two copies of it have been sold
through Ebay this far.
The Japanese Universal reissued all the Rainbow CDs again,
this time as a 10CD box set called "The Polydor Years
1975-1986". Very nice work - all the CDs are in miniature LP
sleeves with individiual title strips (or OBIs if you prefer
Japanese). The prices for this seem to vary between
$250-$300. I didn't have time to include this in my
discography yet, but it is legitimate release and is out
there already.
Finally one interesting find: A record company called Nitty
Gritty Records in South Africa - of all the places -
released Roger Glover And Guests: Love Is All/Homeward 7"
single back in 1979. It seems that none of the
Dio/Purple/Roger Glover collectors were aware of this until
one copy of it suddely came up!
Recap of Black Sabbath / Heaven And Hell news
As said above, there has been lots of stuff going on in the
Black Sabbath/Heaven And Hell story. Their world tour is
doing very well, drawing large audiences all over the
world. At the same time the record company is clearly
working for the band too.
On May 1st, Rhino Handmade released the Live At Hammersmith
Odeon CD as told above. In addition to that, the New York
City show on the Heaven And Hell tour was recorded and is
now coming out on double CD and DVD on August 28th on Rhino
Entertainment. SPV is apparently putting out the European
release. There will be also a special edition of these which
will be available only through Rhino.
The Heaven And Hell world tour busses and trucks have been
rolling in Canada, USA and Europe. Next they'll be seen on
the road in Australia in August - first time for Ronnie
for 21 years! As soon as the Aussie tour is done, the band
will do a couple of shows in Mexico, followed by another US
tour, some gigs in Japan and elsewhere in Asia and then in
November, the UK. After that no dates have been announced,
but more dates may still be added to the tour.
This is it for the news this time around. I hope to be more
active on this front some day - and remember, if you have
any ideas, drop me a line using the link above!
Word from the webmaster
Happy new year everyone! Your lazy webmaster would like to
wish everyone a very Dioful year 2007! This year will bring
very interesting developments in the music scene, as Ronnie
is teaming up with his old friends from Black Sabbath - see
more detailed news about that below.
Uh, what new year..? Well, I haven't made a single update
this year, so I thought it'd be polite to wish everyone
happy new year now with the first update of this year. Merry
Christmas as well - I won't put a year here so you won't
know if I mean last Christmas or the one 9 months ahead.
I've been getting tons of e-mails in the past few months,
all asking why there have been no updates even though there
have been lots of Dio related news on all the other Dio
sites as well as those heavy metal news & rumor places all
around the Internet. Well, I've got the same response as
before - both my work and my family has eaten so much time
that I really haven't had time to work on these pages.
And then when I'd have had some time to work on them during
the Christmas break, my (t)rusty old laptop decided to take
a nice Christmas break as well - although it looks like it
is never coming back from the break. I was lucky enough to
have taken backups of everything just a few hours before the
PC called it the day so nothing really was lost.
I've got lots of different plans for the year 2007 regarding
this site, but honestly I have to say that most of those
plans probably will not see the light. I will keep on trying
to maintain the tour date archives, discographies and news
as much as I can, but even though I've been working on the
biographies and other areas in the background, I don't want
to make any promises for updates in those areas. I will try
to split this news section from the other sections so at
least the news section would get more frequent updates. With
my current update method I need to update the whole site
each time I want to release something new here - and as yo
can see, it is not working well;)
Nevertheless, I hope all the readers will find something to
browse here - and if not, head to the next Heaven And Hell
gig or go to Ebay to buy some Dio rarities!
It goes on and on and on, it's Heaven And Hell!
As most of the readers surely already know, Ronnie is
teaming up with his old mates from Black Sabbath. They
decided to call the band Heaven And Hell instead of Black
Sabbath and will do a lenghty world tour which started a
couple of days ago in Canada. Here's a short summary of the
Black Sabbath/Heaven And Hell situation today - but for more
detailed information, I suggest you check out my
Heaven And Hell
timeline page where I try to keep logging the news
each day a new twist occurs in the tale.
Black Sabbath is going to put out a new best-of album with
three brand new tracks. The world-wide release of this one
will be April 4th (April 3rd in Europe) and the record
company will be Rhino Records. Rhino's sister label Rhino
Handmade is also going to put out a special live CD recorded
in London on Mob Rules tour back in 1981 (or 1982, depending
on which London show they included on the CD).
As stated above, Heaven And Hell tour started on March 11th
in Canada. The first North American leg will tour through
Canada and with the last show in the USA - New York City to
be exact. Then after a short break they will continue
touring the US. For June, they'll cross the pond and do
(mostly) a festival tour all around Europe. After that the
tour will continue somewhere - Asia, South America,
Australia all have been mentioned. At least one of the shows
will be filmed and released on CD and DVD later on this year.
As said, this is a very short summary of the news - for more
detailed plans, please check out the abovementioned
Heaven And Hell
timeline page! It is also worth of checking Joe
Siegler's brilliant
Black Sabbath
Pages!
Also, Steve Mignardi, Ronnie's personal assistant, is
keeping a blog from the tour on his MySpace page
here!
What else than Heaven And Hell?
The Heaven And Hell project has eaten up lots of bandwidth
from the other news. Still, there has been loads and loads
of news from other Dio related projects and happenings. See
below for details.
I've received several questions by e-mail from Dio fans
around the world about what will happen to the band now as
Ronnie and Scott both have gone to Heaven And Hell for this
year. The answer is apparently that Simon, Craig and Rudy
will remain in Dio but will take a year of holidays from Dio
- but it still remains mostly unknown whether they will
really take holidays or if they will do a solo project or
participate some other projects until the Heaven And Hell is
over and done. At least Simon has joined UFO to do a tour
with them now as Ronnie's involved with Heaven And Hell.
Master Of The Moon tour ... finally done!
Back in September I announced that the Master Of The Moon
tour is over and done, except maybe two planned shows. Those
particular shows did not materialize after all, but one new
show surfaced for the New Year's Eve for Kavarna in
Bulgaria. Dio played there a free show at the city square in
front of thousands of people partying for new year and the
joining of Bulgaria to the European Union. The show was
filmed and broadcasted live on the Bulgarian television.
After the show, Dio came back on stage with the city mayor
to celebrate the new year and watch the fireworks. The whole
city of Kavarna seems to be a great Dio fan gathering as
they painted a huge portrait of Ronnie on a side of a large
16-story building there. If anyone has a photo of the wall, please
contact me by e-mail!
Ronnie is a Metal Guru
Now it is official: Ronnie is a Metal Guru. On November 6th
he was given Metal Guru award at the Classic Rock Roll
of Honour organized by the British Classic Rock
magazine. Ronnie was in the UK at the time working with Tony
Iommi on the new songs for the Heaven And Hell project and
both Tony and Ronnie participated the event. The staff at
Classic Rock magazine seem to be Ronnie James Dio fans as
there are regularly Dio related articles in the magazine, as
well as Dio is often featured on the CDs and DVDs stuck into
the cover of the magazine.
At the same event Ronnie also announced that Heaven And Hell
will headline the Donington Download festival in June - that
is the same festival that was called Monsters Of Rock from
1980 until the early 1990s. Dio's played there twice before,
on Holy Diver tour in 1983 and then four years later on
Dream Evil 1987 European tour.
Pick Of Destiny out
November saw Dio on the silver screen too. As told already
before, he's got a role in the latest movie by Jack Black
and Kyle Gass - Tenacious D's Pick Of Destiny! Ronnie sings
a short piece there to he young Jack Black as Jack is
wondering what to do with his life. Go to see it while it is
still in the theaters!
Dio members on Butchering the Beatles album
The Beatles released one of their most famous albums,
Yesterday And Today, back in 1966. It soon became known as
the Butcher Cover album because of the artwork - it had the
Beatles members grinning with toy dolls ripped into parts
and cuts of raw meat all over them. Of course, this created
a huge uproar and right after they had the album out in the
stores, they had to pull it back. To solve the problem with
the sleeve, the record company printed another version of
the front sleeve and glued it over the original one. This
naturally created an instant collector's item of the Butcher
Cover printing.
What relevance this above babble has with the topic here?
Not much, just the name and the fact that several (over 50) heavy
metal artists have released "Butchering The Beatles" cover
album, consisting of only Beatles songs. The album has 12
songs, with Dio members on "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" -
Geoff Tate of Queensryche sings it, Craig plays guitar, Rudy
bass, Simon is drumming and Scott is on keyboards. It also
has "Magical Mystery Tour" which features Jeff Pilson on
bass, "Revolution" with Vivian Campbell on guitars and "Day
Tripper" with Doug Aldrich on guitars.
The album was released world-wide on Restless Records on
October 24th, 2006. It was produced by Bob Kulick.
Tracy G busy with CDs
Slightly before Chrismas, Tracy G released a new CD titled "A
Spooky G X-Mas 2006". The Tracy G Group played also a few
gigs around Christmas time, so did Tracy's other band
Epic. Epic apparently does not exist any more, Tracy's
working on a new version of his band Goaded.
NAMM 2007
The whole Dio band were present at the NAMM 2007 convention,
signing autographs and meeting fans & other musicians there
in Anaheim, CA between January 18-21.
Ronnie and Rock Walk of Fame
On January 17th, 2007 Ronnie was inducted into Guitar
Center's Rock Walk of Wame in Hollywood, CA. For more
information, check out the Rock Walk of Fame
home page!
KNAC interviewed Rudy
Gig review coming?
I won't promise anything, but I will try my best to post a
review of the Heaven And Hell London, Ontario gig on March
24th. My wife and I will be flying over there to see the
show and unless I manage to sleep on the return flight, I
will type in my review.