Terry
07-02-2006, 07:11 PM
Have been looking to scoop this thing up for about a year now. All I've been able to find is the Sacred Heart live video (which I picked up, even though it has Craig Goldie on guitar) and Evil Or Divine (a 2002 concert, I think, which I have no interest in picking up)
Anyway, this DVD has generous (although not complete) portions of two concerts, one from Holland in 1983:
Stand Up And Shout - Straight From The Heart - Shame On The Night - Children Of The Sea - Holy Diver - Rainbow In The Dark - Don't Talk To Strangers
and one from the Philadelphia Spectrum in 1984:
Don't Talk To Strangers - Mystery - Egypt(The Chains Are On)/Drum Solo/Heaven And Hell/Guitar Solo/Heaven And Hell/The Last In Line/Heaven And Hell - Rainbow In The Dark - Mob Rules - We Rock
Man, seeing that Last In Line tour on DVD brought back some great memories of that concert, which was probably second in terms of all-around excellence (musicianship, stage production values, etc.) only to Van Halen in that year.
Vivian Campbell was such a shit-fucking-hot guitarist back then. Bain was always a solid bass player, and Vinny Appice proved you didn't need two bass drums to power a hard rock band: that dude was a locomotive force and did more using just the bass drum, snare and hi-hat on his kit than some drummers with outlandishly sized kits (I couldn't help but laugh when I saw AVH's 4 bass-drum kit - may make me somewhat of a CVH heretic, but that always looked silly). Appice is right up there with Nicko McBrain and Stewart Copeland in terms of doing more with less...
But the drawing-card for Dio, to me, was always RJD's powerhouse vocals and Vivian Campbell.
"The concept of 'The Rock Guitar Solo' in the eighties has pretty much been reduced to: 'Weedly-weedly-wee, make a face, hold your guitar like it's your weenie, point it heavenward, and look like you're REALLY DOING SOMETHING. Then, you get a big ovation while the smoke bombs go off, and the motorized lights in your truss twirl around.' There are a lot of reasons why musicians like to play solos on stage - but the usual reason in rock and roll is to get The Blow Job. One way to ensure that you look like the greatest thing going when you play Your Big Solo is to make sure that you end your solo by going up the scale, then grab that last note and repeat it as fast as you can. The clever subtext to the audience is, "Oh, I'm squirting now!"
Frank Zappa
Yeah, that describes a lot of what Vivian did to a tee on this DVD, but it sure beats him playing second fiddle to Phil Collen for the last 15 years. But the dude was wailing on an Aria Pro with fiber optic lasers embedded in the body, and I thought that was cool because I had a customized Aria Pro and used to get ranked on by my guitar-playing buds at the time for playing an Aria Pro, as they all had Kramer Barettas, Charvels, Jacksons and B.C Riches.
Plus, there is a bonus interview of RJD in 2005 talking about the making of the Holy Diver album. He had been signed to Warner Brothers with Black Sabbath. As a condition of that, Warner Brothers also signed RJD to any future solo projects he might undertake. After he quit Sabbath, RJD put his band together in London, then flew them to Los Angeles and started recording, producing it himself, unbeknownst to Warner Bros. A month into recording, a Warner exec calls up RJD and asks why the recording studio he was working in was billing Warner Bros for a month of studio work. RJD replies that he is honoring his solo contract to Warner Bros and producing his first solo album. The exec tells him that Ted Templeman is his producer and tells him to meet Ted at ten AM the following morning. RJD shows up at ten the next morning. Ted wanders in a couple of hours late, bleary-eyes, asking "Who called a meeting for this early in the day?" Then Ted asks RJD what he's doing. RJD tells him. Ted looks at him, then replies, "Okay. Go and produce your album, then," and leaves. Not in a dickhead way, but listens to what RJD says and is like "All right. Off you go then."
Neat.
Anyway, after getting up at 7 this morning to beat the traffic from Brandon to Orlando and daily afternoon rains to spend the morning at Typhoon Lagoon, it was a nice find, this DVD. Thanks to the Virgin Megastore in Downtown Disney [yeah, Walt was a facist, and his parks are ridiculously overpriced, but....well, what the fuck :) ].
Anyway, this DVD has generous (although not complete) portions of two concerts, one from Holland in 1983:
Stand Up And Shout - Straight From The Heart - Shame On The Night - Children Of The Sea - Holy Diver - Rainbow In The Dark - Don't Talk To Strangers
and one from the Philadelphia Spectrum in 1984:
Don't Talk To Strangers - Mystery - Egypt(The Chains Are On)/Drum Solo/Heaven And Hell/Guitar Solo/Heaven And Hell/The Last In Line/Heaven And Hell - Rainbow In The Dark - Mob Rules - We Rock
Man, seeing that Last In Line tour on DVD brought back some great memories of that concert, which was probably second in terms of all-around excellence (musicianship, stage production values, etc.) only to Van Halen in that year.
Vivian Campbell was such a shit-fucking-hot guitarist back then. Bain was always a solid bass player, and Vinny Appice proved you didn't need two bass drums to power a hard rock band: that dude was a locomotive force and did more using just the bass drum, snare and hi-hat on his kit than some drummers with outlandishly sized kits (I couldn't help but laugh when I saw AVH's 4 bass-drum kit - may make me somewhat of a CVH heretic, but that always looked silly). Appice is right up there with Nicko McBrain and Stewart Copeland in terms of doing more with less...
But the drawing-card for Dio, to me, was always RJD's powerhouse vocals and Vivian Campbell.
"The concept of 'The Rock Guitar Solo' in the eighties has pretty much been reduced to: 'Weedly-weedly-wee, make a face, hold your guitar like it's your weenie, point it heavenward, and look like you're REALLY DOING SOMETHING. Then, you get a big ovation while the smoke bombs go off, and the motorized lights in your truss twirl around.' There are a lot of reasons why musicians like to play solos on stage - but the usual reason in rock and roll is to get The Blow Job. One way to ensure that you look like the greatest thing going when you play Your Big Solo is to make sure that you end your solo by going up the scale, then grab that last note and repeat it as fast as you can. The clever subtext to the audience is, "Oh, I'm squirting now!"
Frank Zappa
Yeah, that describes a lot of what Vivian did to a tee on this DVD, but it sure beats him playing second fiddle to Phil Collen for the last 15 years. But the dude was wailing on an Aria Pro with fiber optic lasers embedded in the body, and I thought that was cool because I had a customized Aria Pro and used to get ranked on by my guitar-playing buds at the time for playing an Aria Pro, as they all had Kramer Barettas, Charvels, Jacksons and B.C Riches.
Plus, there is a bonus interview of RJD in 2005 talking about the making of the Holy Diver album. He had been signed to Warner Brothers with Black Sabbath. As a condition of that, Warner Brothers also signed RJD to any future solo projects he might undertake. After he quit Sabbath, RJD put his band together in London, then flew them to Los Angeles and started recording, producing it himself, unbeknownst to Warner Bros. A month into recording, a Warner exec calls up RJD and asks why the recording studio he was working in was billing Warner Bros for a month of studio work. RJD replies that he is honoring his solo contract to Warner Bros and producing his first solo album. The exec tells him that Ted Templeman is his producer and tells him to meet Ted at ten AM the following morning. RJD shows up at ten the next morning. Ted wanders in a couple of hours late, bleary-eyes, asking "Who called a meeting for this early in the day?" Then Ted asks RJD what he's doing. RJD tells him. Ted looks at him, then replies, "Okay. Go and produce your album, then," and leaves. Not in a dickhead way, but listens to what RJD says and is like "All right. Off you go then."
Neat.
Anyway, after getting up at 7 this morning to beat the traffic from Brandon to Orlando and daily afternoon rains to spend the morning at Typhoon Lagoon, it was a nice find, this DVD. Thanks to the Virgin Megastore in Downtown Disney [yeah, Walt was a facist, and his parks are ridiculously overpriced, but....well, what the fuck :) ].