Dio concert review; Dec 04th, 1996 by Todd Sunderland

The following is a review of the first Dio show on the Angry Machines tour, originally mailed to me. Republished here with permission from the author. I had to edit the layout a little bit for better outlook on web, but all the information is still intact.

From: King Of All Commuters (sterniac@abs.net)
Subject: JAXX Show ROCKED
Date: Thu, 05 Dec 1996 21:05:17 -0500

Just wanted to drop a short review of the show last night at JAXX (feel free to publish it if you'd like) - there isn't much to say beyond the fact that The Man kicked ass like you read about. RJD's voice sounded _great_ and he really seemed to enjoy himself throughout the show. After seeing the show, I'm surprised about some of the talk about Tracy G not playing fast/good/whatever - I thought he cranked throughout the concert - to include his solo during "Mistreated" (which sounded schweet all around).

JAXX itself is a great place to see a concert (I hadn't been there before) - the acoustics were excellent and while it isn't very large, it was pretty packed by the time The Man hit the stage. There were three opening bands, two of which were actually pretty damn good - Division and Mere Mortals. The consensus among my friends and I was that they both had a sort of "Iron Maiden meets Queensryche" sound, and they did a great job. The other opener, Trust No One, wasn't bad either, but I could have done without them.

The Man hit the stage about 11:15 and all hell broke loose. As has been commented before, "Jesus, Mary, and the Holy Ghost" is a powerful opener and set the stage for a pretty much non-stop night of head banging. Set list as I recall it (I did have a few beers last night ;) ) is as follows and is not in correct order:

• Jesus, Mary and the Holy Ghost
• Straight Through The Heart
• Holy Diver
• Heaven and Hell
• Don't Talk to Strangers
• Mistreated
• Double Monday
• Last in Line
• Stand Up and Shout
• Big Sister
• Hunter Of The Heart
  Encore:
  
• Rainbow in the Dark
• Mob Rules

One of my friends saw the set list by the sound board and they had "Institutional Man" listed on it, but they didn't play it...not sure why...

There were autographed copies of AM ($16.00) for sale along with the t-shirts, which a friend of mine bought, and I bought a photo of the band autographed by each member for $5.00 - not bad.

This was the fifth time I have seen The Man in concert - he continues to deliver kick-ass shows and his voice is as impressive as ever. Looking forward to next time around...hopefully after the European leg ;)

Cheers, Todd Sunderland