Here are all the news from the second half of 2002 - some of these may be outdated already, so please check out the newest news for updates!
When Killing The Dragon tour was nearing to its end, rumors about Doug Aldrich joining Whitesnake appeared. The rumors this time are true, Doug joins Whitesnake for a tour. The tour starts on January 29th in Florida and includes David Coverdale on vocals, Reb Beach and Doug Aldrich on guitars, Timothy Drury on keyboards, Marco Mendoza on bass and Tommy Aldridge on drums. More information can be found at Whitesnake's web site.
However, Doug will continue in Dio as well. After the tour is done, he'll return back to Dio as Dio start making a new album. The album will be part of the Magica trilogy - or actually two parts, the second and third parts of the trilogy. No release dates etc. are available yet. Some sources also claim that Doug would continue with Burning Rain after the Whitesnake tour, but those stories seem to be rumors.
Killing The Dragon tour ended on December 15th. Two nights before the band was filmed on stage at Roseland in New York City for a forthcoming DVD release. The tentative release date is in April 2003 (or perhaps June 2003 according to some sources). The band is now on Christmas vacation and will start mixing the DVD right after the holidays.
Tracy G (Dio guitarist from 1993 to 1999) just released a new double CD, "Deviating From The Set List." It includes 13 cover songs from Deep Purple, Ac/Dc, Black Sabbath and 7 other bands. This album features several ex Dio members, namely Tracy G (guitars), Larry "Bones" Dennison (bass), Jeff Pilson (bass, vocals) and Jerry Best (bass). More information about this can be found on Tracy's web site!
Bad news for you who've been waiting for the Black Sabbath "Black + Blue" DVD. It has now been delayed again with no definite release date set. Some sources say it might be out in the end of December or early January, but since this has been delayed so many times, I wouldn't put my money on any specific date.
The next Dio album is supposedly going to be return to the Magica story. Ronnie planned Magica to be a trilogy and according to some sources, the next album might be the parts two and three - maybe even as a double CD! This is not confirmed yet as the work on the album hasn't yet even started. According to Ronnie, the album storyline will return to Magica, although musically it'll be more like the style of Killing The Dragon album.
Ronnie's appearance on CNN Headline News generated lots of interest; on Sunday December 1st he was on the air once an hour! Even though it was a short piece, lots of people saw it - I got at least a hundred e-mails because of that! Great promotion!
During this weekend, November 30th-December 1st,, the November 25th broadcast will be be aired several times on CNN Headline News! No schedule is published but the promos should run every half an hour. If you didn't catch Dio on November 25th, make sure you'll catch them this weekend! You'll see the video for Push as well as a short interview!
On November 25th (tomorrow!), turn on your TV on around 8.45pm EST on CNN! Ronnie will be live on CNN Headline News! I don't know what this is all about, but we'll know soon! EST is short for Eastern Standard Time, UTC/GMT-5 hours, so the corresponding time on the West Coast of USA is going to be 5.45pm, in the UK Tuesday morning at 1.45am, Central Europe 2.45am and Finland 3.45am.
There are 15 shows left of the Killing The Dragon US tour. The tour will end on December 15th in Hartford, CT. After the tour has ended, the band will have a short Christmas break before they start mixing the forthcoming DVD. As I mentioned here a couple of weeks ago, the New York show on December 13th will be filmed for a DVD release!
Currently it looks like the Killing The Dragon tour ends on December 15th. There are still some rumors about possible South American leg but those rumors haven't been confirmed. Lets see what happens - if I get any news about the matter, you can be sure that I'll post those here immediately!
The remastered Dio CDs were released in Japan on November 19th. I haven't got those yet so I cannot say anything about them, but go to your record store and ask them to import the CDs from Japan! The remastered ones include Holy Diver, The Last In Line, Sacred Heart and Dream Evil.
First, interesting news concerning the forthcoming US tour, starting in about a week: Apparently according to Spitfire Records, Dio's gig at Roseland in New York City will be filmed for forthcoming, yet untitled DVD release! The DVD will be directed by Ken Botelho for Century Productions and will be released in April 2003 by Eagle Vision, a division of Eagle Entertainment.
More DVD news: Unfortunately the Black Sabbath and Blue Oyster Cult DVD "Black + Blue" has been delayed until around the end of November. The reason for the delay hasn't been announced, although the rumors say there is some extra footage being compiled for the DVD, possibly interview with Ronnie James Dio and various Blue Oyster Cult members.
There will be a new Black Sabbath book out there in early 2003. Most of the Black Sabbath books this far have concentrated very heavily into the pre-Ronnie James Dio Black Sabbath, while this forthcoming book will concentrate radically to 1980-present day Sabbath! These 350 pages are written by Garry Sharpe-Young and will be released by Rock Detector.
Other news include some new dates for the Killing The Dragon US tour, see the current dates here.
I met Ronnie and the guys in the UK as my wife & I followed the tour for three shows - London, Wolverhampton and Manchester. All were GREAT shows, I loved especially the Wolverhampton and Manchester ones. While talking to Ronnie, I asked about the future plans: The band will continue the Magica story on the next album, or perhaps on the album coming after the next one. This hasn't been decided yet in more detail, but anyway, Magica is going to continue!
What comes to the Elf reunion thing, it is still in the plans. It won't happen any time soon because several people involved with the project are busy with other issues. The project will most likely be just an album without a tour.
The rumored Rainbow reunion, however, is not going to happen despite the rumors that are currently floating after one Ritchie Blackmore interview. Or, if it is going to happen, Ronnie will not be the singer. Hopefully this now will set the end to all these rumors.
New dates have surfaced for the forthcoming leg of the Killing The Dragon tour. Most of these dates are still tentative and very likely will change around a bit. Tickets to some of the shows are already for sale, please check the ticket offices or Ticket Master's web site.
News from Tracy G's (ex Dio guitarist) camp: His band Driven just shot a video at Center Stage Studios in Burbank, CA for the song "Best Of Me." The video will be available on Tracy's web site at http://www.tracyg.com/ as soon as the post-production has been done.
Tracy G is also soon finishing his forthcoming solo CD titled as "Deviating From The Set List." The CD will have 13 tracks and has as many as 20 different artists on the CD. The CD consists of covers of classic rock songs. Aside from that, Tracy's been getting a band together to play club gigs in Los Angeles area; the band will be called "The Cold Monks."
Roy Davies released the long-awaited book, Rainbow Rising - The Story of Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow in August 2002 on Helter Skelter publishing. The book is available in hardback (limited edition of 500 copies) as well as paperback editions. I'll post a review of the book here as soon as I finish reading it, but I can tell you already now that there's LOTS of interesting information on the 250+ pages of the book!
Very short update before I have to go again: The planned Asian tour is not going to happen for some reason. After the UK tour is finished tonight, the band will have a month break in the touring before hitting the North American roads again in early November. Check the tour dates here.
Kings X has been confirmed to be the second opener for the forthcoming headlining US tour. HammerFall will be openers as well. There were rumors about Thin Lizzy and Twisted Sister opening the shows but those rumors apparently didn't have any solid ground. The UK shows will be opened by Oliver/Dawson Saxon.
The tour dates for the US leg of the Killing The Dragon tour have not yet been confirmed. They may still change and new dates will possibly be added there. Also, some sources claim that the South Korean and Malaysian dates would've been cancelled, but I haven't received confirmation about that. The current list of dates can be seen here.
I asked a couple of weeks ago if all the UK printings of the Black Sabbath Story Vol 2 have problems with the audio/video sync. It seems that there are two batches of the DVD out there. One, apparently quite small number of DVDs seem to have this problem but most of the replies have said that the DVD is working perfectly.
Killing The Dragon (Limited Tour Edition) will be a single CD only in the USA as well. It contains the same tracks as the European and Japanese release and will be called Killing The Dragon (Special Edition).
I'm off to the Dio tour in the UK to see the three first gigs there and hopefully have some reviews of the shows to tell you after I get back home. And perhaps some news as well.
Some dates for the forthcoming US/Canada tour in November-December have been published on HammerFall's (warming-up band for the tour) web site. See the dates here. Please note that the dates have not officially been confirmed and are more than likely to change around a bit.
Killing The Dragon (Limited Tour Edition) US release has been delayed to closer to the start of the US tour. The CD should be released on October 22nd, 2002. The Japanese release is scheduled for October 7th.
I made a mistake last week with correcting the information published on 8th of September.. Black Sabbath Story Volume 2: 1978-1992 DVD is out in the Europe already. The US and Canadian release will be on September 24th.
In addition to the other remastered releases in Japan, also Diamonds - The Best Of Diois being released as remastered in Japan today, i.e. September 21st.
According to some reports on the Internet, it seems that at least some copies of the UK printing of the DVD have the audio and video out of sync throughout the whole DVD. I'd like to hear more about this - if you have a copy like that, please could you let me know. Also, if your copy has the audio and video in sync, please let me know as well. You can contact me by e-mail at address dio@iki.fi.
After Dio has finished their European tour in the UK, they'll fly out to Asia to headline the Soyorock 2002 festival in Seoul, South Korea and will play at least in Malaysia too. The US fans will get another chance to see Dio on the road as well, as Dio will start headlining tour in North America in early November. Warming-up band will be Hammerfall from Sweden as well as one yet unnamed band.
Regardless what I told last week, the Black Sabbath Story Volume 2: 1978-1992 is not out yet but will be released apparently world-wide on September 24th instead.
Black + Blue DVD: The world release date for the long-awaited Black + Blue DVD is now set to October 8th, 2002. For those who are not familiar with this already, the Black + Blue is a concert movie from Black Sabbath and Blue Oyster Cult co-headlining US tour in 1980, produced by the Beatles guitarist George Harrison.
Black Sabbath songs on the DVD are War Pigs, N.I.B., Iron Man, Paranoid, Die Young, Neon Knights and Heaven And Hell. The DVD also features a new interview with Ronnie as well as biographies, discographies and a poster - reproduction of the original movie poster.
The Black Sabbath Story Vol. 2 - 1978-1992 DVD was released on August 26th 2002. This is a DVD version of the 1992 VHS tape release with material from Dio era Black Sabbath - interviews, live video footage and so forth. This was released in the UK with Region 2 encoding.
Evil Collection is the title for the new Dio best-of collection released apparently in Germany only on Mercury/Universal label. This has been out already for quite a while, seemingly since March 14th, 2002 without any promotion. The track listing for the CD is the following:
Killing The Dragon (Limited Tour Edition) contains Rainbow In The Dark and Fever Dreams performed by Ronnie and Deep Purple. It was unknown where those songs were recorded until now: Ahoy in Rotterdam, Holland on October 30th, 2000 is the source for the songs.
When the Dio back catalogue will be remastered? This is A Very Frequently asked question from me, and it looks like the time has come now: Universal Music in Japan is going to release remastered versions of the following Dio albums on November 13th:
This is going to be Japanese release only at least for now, I'm not aware of European or US releases coming up in the near future at least. The Dio Mania track listing is going to be the following - no idea about the Rainbow Mania track listing yet.
Killing The Dragon (Limited Tour Edition) came out in Europe on August 26th, 2002 already! It is on Spitfire Records, SPITTE 199. Apparently the US release will be on September 30th and Spitfire wanted to have this CD out in Europe by the start of the European tour.
At least the European release is a single CD release only, with those two tracks Ronnie did with Deep Purple (see below), screensaver and the video for Push. The CD is wrapped in cardboard sleeves (apparently with normal CD case inside) and contains also a poster. All the copies are numbered; it is unknown how many copies has been printed.
Tour news - the first leg of the Killing The Dragon US tour is finished; Deep Purple, Scorpions and Dio toured all around the USA for two months. After a short break, Dio will continue the tour to Europe; first some dates with Deep Purple and then continuing on their own across the Europe. Check the tour dates here!
Push video is the first promo video for Dio since "Wild One" in 1990 (or "TV Crimes" off Black Sabbath's Dehumanizer in 1992). The video features also two friends of Ronnie, namely the Tenacious D. The video can be downloaded from Dio's record company web site at address http://www.spitfirerecords.com/.
Killing The Dragon (Limited Tour Edition) will be released worldwide on October 7th by Spitfire. This should be a double CD with the following extra tracks/videos/whatever compared to the original Killing The Dragon release:
The two live tracks are from the Deep Purple's concerto tour in 2000-2001 which featured Ronnie as guest vocalist on a couple of tunes.
Killing The Dragon regular release was released during the summer in Brazil by Spitfire Records and on July 24th by Victor in Japan.
Diamonds - The Best Of Dio is rumored to be re-released as a double CD in Japan by Universal International on September 21st. This may be just a rumor; in any case it is not known what this release would contain besides the original 1992 release of Diamonds album.
Black & Blue DVD is finally coming out. This video release dating back to 1980 features both Black Sabbath and Blue Oyster Cult, filmed on their co-headlining tour in the USA. The VHS tape has been out of print for a long time already but finally Classic Pictures is going to release this on DVD. The UK release date is September 23rd and the US release will follow in October.
Black + Blue consists of the following Black Sabbath songs:
Kerry Livgren released a new compilation CD "Best of Kerry Livgren". Ronnie James Dio did two tracks with Kerry Livgren in 1980, "Mask Of The Great Deceiver" and "To Live For The King", for Kerry's first solo album Seeds Of Change. The new compilation contains an alternate take of the "To Live For The King" track with slightly different lyrics. This version was recorded already in 1980 but it was released only now.
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