279 - Dio Mio

Have you ever known anyone so uber talented that it blows your mind?

Besides me?

I kid.

Welp, the keyboard player in this clip is one of my best friends. I've known him for... God... a long time... seventeen years? Can it be? Mike is an amazing musician. Unbelievably talented. I asked him to play the wedding march at my wedding? He wrote a song instead. Said he didn't want me to walk down the aisle to a funeral dirge. It was a pretty, magical sounding song. His stuff is usually jazzy, but he knows of my Danny Elfman obsession, so he made the notes sound twinkly just for me. =)

Anyhoo. As some of you may know, Ronnie James Dio passed away recently (I think he was at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston), so this is a tribute band that came together to honor a rock icon. For those of you who don't know Dio, he was in Black Sabbath for a while after Ozzy moved on, but he also had a solo career of his own. He's also responsible for giving us the 'devil horns' hand gesture. He's Italian, and it means something entirely different, but much like Rob Halford's S&M leather fetish getups (Judas Priest), it quickly became a part of heavy metal culture.

The lead singer in the tribute band does a fair imitation of his voice, but here is a clip of Dio performing Holy Diver live. It's one of the songs he is best known for. Probably the only song more well known than Holy Diver is Rainbow in the Dark. I was lucky enough to have seen him play a small club several years ago. Amazing voice... almost operatic.

RIP Dio. Sorry I was late.