Ronnie James Dio News: June 1999

According to Wendy Dio after Dio's show at Sweden Rock Festival a while ago, the second Hear 'N Aid project is being planned at the moment!

The original Hear 'N Aid project in the mid 1980s was created to help the famine in Africa. The money made from this second project is going to be donated to the Children Of The Night organization. The organization (who have their web pages at address http://www.childrenofthenight.org/) helps kids living on the streets.

At this moment only a couple of names who'll participate are known. These include Jimmy Bain, Rowan Robertson and Vivian Campbell!

The Rainbow Tribute Album organized by Helloween's drummer Uli Kusch should now be ready. It'll be released in Japan on July 21st. More information about it can be found here.

The Aerosmith tribute album should be now ready, but no release date has been announced yet. Ronnie sings the Dream On song on the tribute album. For more information, please click here.

Dio's ex-guitarist Tracy G has his new band together. They've recorded a couple of demos already. Those songs are called Wrecking Ball, Fearless and Camel's Back.

The forthcoming Dio tribute album track listing has been revealed. For more information, please click here.

There was a chat organized at the official Dio web site, http://www.ronniejamesdio.com/, where both Ronnie and Craig discussed on-line with Dio fan club members.

Here are some things that were mentioned:

- Currently there are no plans for second guitarist on the next album, Magica.
- About half of the Magica has been written by now, but it is hard to estimate as all the songs are woven together in the concept theme.
- Ronnie's still working on the autobiography, but Magica has slowed the writing process of it.
- Dio's planning to release a video from the Magica tour.

Def Leppard with Vivian Campbell on guitar (Viv was Dio's guitarist from 1982 to early 1986) are releasing their new album Euphoria on June 8th in the USA. They've already released one single off the album, titled "Promises". More information on that and Vivian Campbell can be found at these addresses: http://www.defleppard.com/ and http://www.rockin.to/Viv/. TV Channel VH1 will broadcast "Def Leppard Story" on June 8th.

Vinny Appice, who used to be Dio's drummer until May 22nd, 1998, is currently thinking about putting his own band together. More info will be posted here as soon as I hear anything about the project.

Old news already, but not mentioned on these pages yet - The label Pony Cannon released a Rainbow tribute album on September 18th, 1998. For more information, please click here.

Radio Mafia Records has released Jeff Pilson's "War and Peace, the Flesh and Blood Sessions" CD, dated to 1989/1990.

Dio's tribute album is going to be released on July 12th, 1999.