Search - Dio :: Dio Anthology: Stand Up & Shout

He Rocks

Sampson Simpson | Canada | 05/06/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"While not without flaw, Shand Up and Shout is chock full of metal goodness. Let's be serious for a moment: Any compilation that contains classics from Rainbow, Black Sabbath, and Dio is going to be awesome even before you pick the tracks. Add some old classic Elf, and you have a well rounded glimpse into Ronnie James' career as a metal icon.



Elf were never my favourite band, my friends always likened them to "The Guess Who with Dio singing", and you can hear that in the boogie-woogie piano. Rhino did pick some of the best Elf tunes, including Carolina County Ball, my favourite.



To be a complete set, at this point Rhino should have stuck in the two songs Dio did with Roger Glover: Love Is All and Sitting In A Dream. After Elf, but before Rainbow, Dio had participated in Roger Glover's (ex-Deep Purple) first solo album along with a plethora of guests. The two best songs, undeniably, were sung by Dio. They really should have been on here, especially since Dio reprised them both on a recent tour with Deep Purple.



And then...and then...Rainbow rises. Ritchie Blackmore (also ex-Deep Purple...see a pattern forming here?) loved Elf when they opened for DP, and stole the entire band (sans guitarist) to form the first version of Rainbow.



Now, of course, you could argue for an entire CD's worth of Rainbow tracks to represent Dio. Three are picked, one from each Rainbow album that Dio participated in. Stargazer is absent, which to me makes no sense. I also would have loved to hear Kill The King and Rainbow Eyes, but we could be here all day discussing this.



How Black was his Sabbath? Very black indeed, you can get none-more-black. Three albums here are represented by eight tracks, and here the selection is pretty undeniable. Again, you could make convincing arguments against songs like Turn Up The Night and in favor of I, but the good news is there is a Black Sabbath/Dio boxed set coming that will cover all these great songs.



Dio made a solo album, and left Sabbath (in that order) only to be replaced first by Ian Gillan (ex-Deep Purple) and Glenn Hughes (errr...ex-Deep Purple). Dio's solo career speaks for itself.



Ronnie's Dio albums get over an entire CD, but it's not nearly enough space. As another reviewer pointed out, where is Mystery? Dio's most pop moment should have been here, the video and single were what introduced many of us to Dio in the first place. I would also like to have replaced the overly long Lock Up The Wolves with something else from that same-titled album. You could replace that one song (which has been on other compilations before) with two other Dio classics. Give me Wild One and Mystery instead. Better still, they should have included the rare Time To Burn from the Intermission EP. Time To Burn was Ronnie's first collaboration with guitarist Craig Goldy, and stands up and still one of the best things they have done.



Rhino may not have had the rights, but a few Dio albums are missing completely. Speaking personally, I don't miss any songs from Angry Machines or Killing The Dragon. Something about those albums (and the recent Master Of The Moon as well) just don't do it for me, so excluding them is fine. The underrated Strange Highways does get a look-in via the title track, but I would have picked Jesus, Mary & The Holy Ghost instead. I vastly prefer Dio's fast stuff to his slow ones, if you haven't noticed.



Most criminally, Magica is completely ignored. Fever Dreams, Lord Of The Last Days, Feed My Head, As Long As It's Not About Love, any of those tracks deserve to be on any Dio anthology. Why are they not? Ask Rhino, I guess.



Another track that should have been here: Stars, by Hear N' Aid. Campbell & Bain (ex-Dio) wrote it with Ronnie, performed it with Ronnie, and a slew of every big metal name circa 1985. Halford...Tate...Lynch...Dokken...Malmsteen...Neil...Nugent, they were all there. The Hear N' Aid album is impossible to find. That one song, such an important part of Dio's history, would have been very welcome on this collection.



Complaints aside, this is an awesome collection. Pics, packaging, liner notes (by RJD), history, it's all here. Total value for the money. Unfortunately if you used this collection as a guide for expanding your Dio collection, you'd miss a lot of classics. Yet, it's a start. It's a start."

Great multi band career spanning retrospective

Joseph M. Siegler | Garland, TX USA | 11/27/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"If you're a hardcore Dio fan, then you have all of this material. However, if you don't, it's a worthy pickup, as it covers from Dio's pre solo days in Elf, Rainbow, & Black Sabbath, as well as his Dio material (although it doesn't cover the last 3 studio albums, as they were on a different record label). Still, it's a nice cross section of Dio's career (his first album came out in 1958!) and while this doesn't go back that far, it's something worthy to have if you don't already have all of his albums.



Great liner notes, too, as Ronnie has a paragraph or so to say about every track on here. He even says that one of my personal favorite Sabbath songs isn't one of his favorites (damn ).



Would be nice to see one of these things that cover his pre-Elf material (Ronnie & The Redcaps, Ronnie & The Rumblers, The Electric Elves, etc). But as it stands this is a great package that covers the majority of his career."

Nice collection!

Michael J. Cleary | U S of A | 05/17/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Hey I'm with the other reviewers in feeling some songs should have been included here rather than others(i.e.Mystery,Rock n'Roll Children) but overall it is a pretty great disc. You get "man on the Silver Mountain","Heaven and Hell" and a good collection from "Holy Diver" on two CDs. Short of buying the upcoming boxed set where else can you get this overview from a great career. I think with most anthologies people tend to focus on what is missing rather than what is included. This set smokes from the begining to the end(even though I am not much of an ELF fan). I highly recommend this album to anyone who is interested in sampling one the great heavy metal masters. I know you will want to buy the complete albums from DIO.



All smoke, No mirrors!"