Dio concert review; June 17th, 1997 by Joe Karavis

The following is a review of a Dio show on the fourth North American leg of Angry Machines tour, originally posted on Black Sabbath mailing list.

Date: Wed, 18 Jun 1997 11:37:09 -0500
From: Joe Karavis (voivod@tl.infi.net)
Subject: DIO...Scranton, PA 6/17

Dio played at Tink's in Scranton, Pennsylvania June 17.

Let me say, and I really hate to say it.... it sucked. Let me tell you why. This place Tink's is a tiny little place. It has a very small stage, there's no place to sit down, and get this..... there are these giant steel support beams that run right through the middle of the floor, and there's one right in the middle in front of the stage, along with one on the stage itself! There was almost no advertising for the show, no opening act. They told me on the phone it started at 8 P.M., but Dio did not go on until 11:20 P.M.

They packed the place in, obviously selling too many tickets, and probably violating the fire code. We could not really see much of anything. Often we'd see Ronnie's head, the bass player, and I saw Tracy G's head twice. I did not see Vinnie Appice at all! Not once! but I did see his drumsticks. They flooded the place with fog making visibility even worse.

Soundwise, it sucked. Ronnie's vocals overpowered everything. He sounded great, but the band was a muffled mess. And the solo's were pathetic, a drum solo, a bass solo, and the most awful sounding guitar solo that seemed like it would never end.... nothing but noise. I really liked Tracy G's guitar work on the albums, but he was awful live. Heaven and hell was all screwed up.

Dio did pretty much the set he's been doing all along on this tour, so nothing unexpected was played. The one cool thing I can say is Dio mentioned the last time he was to the Northeast Penna. area, when sabbath played the Kingston Armory on the Mob Rules Tour. How could he remember that, after all these years, playing gigs all over the world? The t-shirts were not very cool, so I did not buy one.

Overall, the performance really lacked the dynamic excitment of Dio shows of years gone by. It's really a shame. I'm really bummed out because I have been a fan of Ronnie for many years. How can a man of such talent have to play such bad venues? I'd be interested in seeing other people's posts about what they think about the rest of the tour.

Joe Karavis