Ronnie James Dio RIP

Another victim of cancer, Ronnie James Dio died on 16th May at the age of 67.

Most reports have concentrated on his stint as lead singer with Black Sabbath, replacing Ozzy Osbourne in 1979, but he came to my attention previous to that on a totally different sounding track.

Roger Glover had just put together his concept album, The Butterfly Ball in 1974 and it was the lead single from this album "Love Is All" that, although failed to chart in the UK, became a number one in Holland and launched Ronnie's career worldwide.

It was a career that had taken quite some time to get going, his first recording being released in the 1950s as a trumpet player with Ronnie and the Redcaps. He then progressed through several bands until, whilst supporting Deep Purple, he came to the attention of Ritchie Blackmore.

Ritchie left Purple and formed his own group with Ronnie and the rest of his band. Rainbow were to become one of the biggest rock acts around. In 1976 Dio came to my attention again, with what is still one of my favourite rock tracks of all time, from the 'Rising' album "Do You Close Your Eyes' is a masterpiece in classic rock composing, and set the standard for the rest of the album.

The following album, 'Long Live Rock 'n' Roll' started to generate hit singles, and it was then that Ronnie decided to move on. His relatively short stint with Sabbath was followed in 1982 by the formation of his own band Dio. Their first album was a top 20 hit in the UK and spawned a single from the title track (a song that was covered in 1998 by Pat Boone, of all people, in a 'swing' style with Ronnie on backing vocals - a unique performance!!!).

Ronnie continued with Dio and to collaborate with other artists, including another stint with Black Sabbath, until his death last week. His last project was a tour promoting a new album for his other band Heaven And Hell which he formed in 2006 with ex-members of Sabbath, which was recently cancelled due to Ronnie's ill health.

Here's my 2CD compilation for Ronnie;-

CD1

1. Ronnie & The Redcaps - Conquest

2. Ronnie & The Prophets - Love Potion No.9

3. Electric Elves - Hey Look Me Over

4. Elves - Amber Velvet

5. Elf - I'm Coming Back To You

6. Elf - Carolina County Ball

7. Roger Glover & Friends - Love Is All

8. Rainbow - Man On A Silver Mountain

9. Rainbow - Do You Close Your Eyes?

10. Rainbow - Kill The King (Live)

11. Rainbow - Long Live Rock'n' Roll

12. Rainbow - L. A. Connection

13. David Coverdale - Give Me Kindness

14. Black Sabbath - Neon Knights

15. Black Sabbath - Heaven & Hell

16. Black Sabbath - Die Young

17. Black Sabbath - Mob Rules

18. Black Sabbath - Turn up the Night

19. Ronnie James Dio - Budweiser TV Ad

CD 2

1. Dio - Holy Diver

2. Dio - The Last In Line

3. Dio - Mystery

4. Dio - Hungry For Heaven

5. Hear'n Aid - Stars

6. Dio - I Could Have been A Dreamer

7. Dio - Hey Angel

8. Black Sabbath - TV Crimes

9. Dio - This Is Your Life

10. Pat Boone - Holy Diver

11. Ronnie James Dio & Yngwie Mamlmsteen - Dream On

12. Dio - Master Of The Moon

13. Queensryche - The Chase

14. Girlschool - I Spy

15. Heaven & Hell - Bible Black

Beestrax

Here's an odd one...one of my first ever compilations, originally made when I was still young enough to believe that all you had to do to make a compilation was to add together a load of your favourite tracks and copy them onto a C-90 cassette. Simple! No licensing, no rights to clear and you could draw your own cases for them too, and for that professional touch, you could use pics cut out from various magazines. No worries about marketing and creating 'hooks' to hang the album on so that people would buy it! All the complications that arose when creating various artist CDs for a living, just didn't exist (or at least it seemed that way!) Just make up a tape for your own enjoyment. Millions did it!

Over the years several of my friends requested copies of this tape, and it still remains one of my favourite things to listen to. Created from various album tracks and 7" single b-sides (remember them?), the title "Beestrax" was quite clever, at least I thought so at the time! Now lovingly re-created on CDR, I can let this album take me back to my youth, it'll do until they invent time-travel...

TRACK LIST

1. Duran Duran - The Chauffer (Blue Silver)

2. Pink Floyd - Money

3. Everything But The Girl - Never Could Have Been Worse

4. Black Uhuru - Party Next Door

5. Rolling Stones - 2000 Light Years From Home

6. Johnny Mathis - The Last Time I Felt Like This

7. Cocteau Twins - Pepper Tree

8. Focus - House Of The King

9. The Who - Boris The Spider

10. New Musik - Warp

11. Colin Towns - Kate

12. Imposter - Withered And Died

13. Rickie Lee Jones - Weasel & The White Boys Cool

14. Sandie Shaw - I Don't Owe You Anything

15. Juan Martin - Harlequin 1918

16. Nena - Ich Blieb Im Bett

17. Pink Floyd - Sheep Part II

18. ABC - Theme from Mantrap

19. Gerry Rafferty - Why Don't You Talk To Me

20. Elton John - Bitter Fingers

21. Space - Ballad For Space Lovers

OLD GREY WHISTLE TEST MEMORIES

Continuing on from my last blog, I thought I would share with you some compilations that I have made for my own amusement over the years.

One of my favourite programmes of my youth was BBC's Old Grey Whistle Test. A relative late-comer to the programme, I joined at the stage when 'Whispering' Bob Harris was beginning to lose control of, what until that point had been, his own private TV music show. No longer was the programme showing the prog rock dinosaurs of old. The youthful new bands of the mid-seventies were beginning to take a much larger foothold of TV's only real alternative to 'Top Of The Pops'. Although perfectly relaxed with the 'new wave' of music that he now presented, the introduction of excitable Annie Nightingale as co-presenter obviously irked the reserved Harris, quickly forcing him to leave the programme completely. 'Young upstart journalists' David Hepworth and Mark Ellen, and DJs Andy Kershaw and Richard Skinner, alternatively carried on banging in the nails and digging the grave, of this fine TV institution until it lost firstly it's 'Old Grey' pre-title and inevitably it's soul. By 1987 the programme was little more than an overriding title for live concerts and was dropped completely.

The influence of the 'Test' over the years can not be exaggerated, and it certainly introduced me to hundreds of acts that I would otherwise have missed. In 1980, the BBC released an album of tracks that had featured on the programme over the past few years, and the album became a regular visitor to my turntable at the time. Tracks on 'Test Pressing' were;-

1. Police - Can't Stand Losing You
2. Tubeway Army - Down In the Park

3. Willie Nile - Across The River

4. Yellow Magic Orchestra - Cosmic Surfin'

5. Simple Minds - Chelsea Girl

6. John Etheridge & Ric Sanders (credited as '2nd Vision') - Ice Bells

7. Blondie - Eat To the Beat

8. Jo Jo Zep & the Falcons - Shape I'm In

9. Landscape - Sonja Henie

10. Selecter - Missing Words

11. Alda Reserve - Some Get Away

12. Genesis - Please Don't Ask

13. John Cooper Clarke - Beasley Street

A fantastic album that I can recommend to anyone.

30 years later, I found all these tracks along with the theme tune to OGWT;- Stone Fox Chase by Area Code 615, and then went on to create my own album of personal memories of the programme.

Grey Memories:-

1. Patti Smith - Dancing Barefoot
2. Monochrome Set - 405 Lines
3. Devo - Jocko Homo
4. Talking Heads - Psycho Killer
5. XTC - Radios In Motion
6. Frank Zappa - Baby Snakes
7. Bruce Springsteen - Rosalita
8. Meat Loaf - Bat Out Of Hell
9. Ellen Foley - What's A Matter Baby
10. Kansas - Dust In The Wind
11. Elton John - Tiny Dancer
12. Roches - Hammond Song
13. Santana - Black Magic Woman
14. Dire Straits - Sultans Of Swing
15. Peter Tosh (with Mick Jagger) - (You Gotta Walk) Don't Look Back
16. Frank Zappa - City Of Tiny Lights
17. John Etheridge and Ric Sanders - Dancing Circle
18. XTC - Yacht Dance (Live on 'Whistle Test')
19. Patti Smith - Because The Night (Live on 'Whistle Test) 
20. Al Stewart - Year Of The Cat (Live on 'Whistle Test)