Here are all the news from the year 2010 - some of these may be outdated already, so please check out the newest news for updates!
I hoped that I'd be able to give my birthday greetings to Ronnie on the Heaven And Hell European tour, but it was not to be. Instead, I give it to all the readers of Dio.net: HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Celebrate it with a good dose of your favorite Ronnie James Dio music! Remember Ronnie with the joy he brought to all of us - as a person, with his bands, through his records. Let it be a magical day.
If you haven't done so already, you might want to consider donating some money for cancer prevention. After Ronnie's death, "Ronnie James Dio Stand Up and Shout Cancer Fund" was set up. Here is a short description of it:
For more information, please go to Ronnie's official pages: http://www.ronniejamesdio.com/. You can make your donation also through the official site.
On July 24th in London, UK, Heaven and Hell will get together for one more show, with Glenn Hughes and Jorn Lande on vocals as Ronnie has sadly other commitments.
There has been a huge amount of Ronnie James Dio tribute shows all around the world since his death, and there are a number of such tribute shows still coming up too! I have received tons of messages from all corners of the world - nearly all European and South/Central/North American countries, Iran, Japan, China, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Egypt (The Chains Are On), Algeria, Malaysia, India - the list goes on and on and on, on and on and on, it's Heaven And Hell!
People remember Ronnie for his music and for his kindness. I don't know how many e-mails I've received from people who were lucky enough to meet Ronnie and practically everyone is saying the same: Despite there were countless amount of fans at the backstage, or by the tour bus, Ronnie was always there for You! When you were talking with Ronnie, it was like he was there Just For You. And it was the same for everyone present there at the backstage. Or by the tour bus. Or at Denny's where Ronnie stopped after the gig to get something to eat AND a chocolate milkshake (sorry Ronnie, I still think strawberry milkshake from Denny's is better).
We will not forget Ronnie.
People have been asking what I'll do with this site now. The answer is - of course - this: I will keep on maintaining and updating this site, and probably always trying to find enough time to keep the pages up-to-date. I have no intention whatsoever to shut things down now. I want everyone to remember Ronnie.
I will not alter the site layout - this site has looked the same since 1994 and I don't see really any need to change the layout either. I will keep on focusing the past tour dates and especially the discography section. I hope to get to update the biographies too, but I'm not sure when I'd have the time for a complete overhaul of them.
Starting from this update, I brought something new to the discographies. Getting it to all the discographies here will probably take two or three years, but now the work has started. I will assign an unique number for every item in the discographies. I've now gone through just a couple of those pages, for instance the following:
I've thought about doing this for years already, but I've been pushing this forward as it is a nightmare sized job. There are thousands of singles, LPs, CDs, VHS tapes, VHD discs, C tapes, 8-tracks, reel tapes, tour books and so forth listed on these pages. With this numbering system the collectors can identify exactly what pressings of a given record they have and which ones they're still missing.
The numbering system is very simple: All the items that are certainly known to exist will get a unique number like "Dionet-12345". These are not in any specific order - I started to number these from the very first single Ronnie put out (Dionet-00001, see the Red Caps discography link above), but I'm not going through the records in any specific order.
Also new additions are discovered and released all the time - for instance just last week I found another pressing of the old Ronnie Dio and the Prophets single, "Smiling By Day (Crying By Night)", which hopefully will find its way to the discographies with the next update. The "Dionet reference number" will seem to be out of place when you compare it against the other singles in the Prophets' discography. It is only an unique number for that particular single.
There are also other kind of numbers, such as "Dionet-UNC-12345", with the UNC standing for unconfirmed. These refer to rumored records that are likely to exist, but of which there is no proof yet. No known Dio collector has such item in his collection. Examples of these are for instance one Ronnie and the Red Caps 7" acetate and both the Canadian and US stock pressings of the abovementioned "Smiling By Day" single. My hope is to confirm as many of these unconfirmed items and change their reference numbers to the "Dionet-12345" side.
Once I get a bit further on indexing these records, I will also provide a table where anyone can search for given Dionet reference code to find out what record it translates to. However, that list will not specify the exact pressing but it helps you to find the item on the discography pages.
There has been, and there will be several interesting releases from Ronnie. Here's a quick list of what has came out since the last update of my pages and what will be coming out in the near future:
There are also very interesting plans from Niji Entertainment Group to keep Ronnie's music alive. A quote from their post on Facebook: "We are working on many exciting releases at the Niji Entertainment Group, including the package that Ronnie James Dio came up with the name for, "For The Record: The Complete Dio Vinyl Collection! Included in this amazing box set will be 15 180 gram colored vinyl Dio LP's, a deluxe photo booklet and a collection of all... access tour laminates from each Dio tour! We are also working on the Dio CD box, the Elf reissues on 180 gram colored vinyl, David "Rock" Feinstein's new solo CD featuring "Metal Will Never Die" with Ronnie James Dio on vocals, a Deluxe CD version of Tim Ripper Owens and much more!"
Ronnie James Dio lost his final battle against the dragon on May 16th at 7:45am. A sad day for the music world. Here is what Wendy posted on Facebook:
This page is maintained by Tapio Keihänen,
E-mail: dio@iki.fi.
URL: http://www.dio.net/news/,
the front page http://www.dio.net/.