LIVE CONCERTS

DIO - MARCH 31^st 2001 - GRAN REX THEATER - BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA.

We arrived to the Theater at 9.30 p.m. For those who don´t know the place the Gran Rex Theater is a comfortable space where more or less three thousands souls can watch the shows. It was a good choice because in other shows you have to watch the band in a completely unapropriated place (like Cemento, for example, were there is place for seven hundred persons and they sell tickets for more than 1500).

At 10.10 p.m. Dio hit the stage with his band: Jimmy Bain (bass), Craig Goldie (guitar), Simon Wright (drums) and Scott Warren (keyboards). That is the same lineup that recorded the "Magica" album. They opened the show with "Sunset Superman" the third song from the "Dream Evil" album (an extremely underrated album in Dio´s career). Sounding really tight and loud. After the second song came the first surprise: a drum solo. A curious choice but it let us see that Simon Wright can do much more interesting things than he normally does.

After a couple more songs like "All the Fools Sailed Away" (from "Dream Evil" too) the band lead us to an almost complete rendition of their latest album "Magica". Here the band was really comfortable with the material. There are special songs where they shone: "Fever Dreams", "Lord of The Last Days", "Turn To Stone", "Feed My Head" and "Challis". They played almost all the material of this album in the same order than in the CD.

After "Magica" came to an end it was the time of the ultraclassics: "Stand Up and Shout ", "The Last in Line", "Holy Diver" and the all time favorite "Rainbow in The Dark". And then it was over.

But it was not over !! And the band returned to do what the people expected. Black Sabbath´s "Heaven and Hell" and "Neon Knights" and Rainbow´s "Man on the Silver Mountain" and "Long Live Rock´n´Roll".

The band spin around Ronnie James Dio whose voice is in perfect shape and it is almost imposible to believe that a human being can express his feelings through his voice as this man does.

The band is a great one! With Jimmy Bain and Wright being a demolishing tandem in the rhythm section and Craig Goldie is great in his role of constructor of the songs and solos (despite a solo spot where he was having fun instead of trying to impress people with his technical skills).

After the classics the show seemed to be over but the band came once more to do a rendition of "We Rock", the first song in the "The Last In Line" album. A great end for a great concert.

This is a demonstration of how alive this band (and specially Ronnie) are. I enjoyed this concert a lot. I hope next time I will do an interview with Ronnie but this time it was impossible because of the lack of time (they played on Saturday and were leaving to Brazil on Sunday).

Federico Marongiu