Ronnie James Dio - Stand Up and Shout: The Dio Anthology

29 savage cuts on 2 CDs from Dio's Elf, rainbow, Black Sabbath & solo releases. The most complete collection ever! Plus track-by-track commentary from Dio himself. Remastered. Deluxe digipak w/slipcase. Rhino. 2003. Album Description

Best of Elf, Rainbow, Latter-Sabbath and DIO in one package!

Singer, Ronnie James Dio, has been in the rock business since the early 1970's. This 2-disc, greatest hits set features Dio singing with four of the bands he was associated with during the '70's, '80's and '90's, and includes tracks by his first serious blues/rock group, Elf, Ritchie
Blackmore's "Rainbow," latter-day Black Sabbath and "DIO," the band that Ronnie and Sabbath drummer, Vinny Appice, formed back in 1983.

Highlights from the first disc include Rainbow's "Starstruck" and "Long Live Rock 'N' Roll" featuring Ritchie Blackmore, Cozy Powell and DIO-bass player, Jimmy Bain, as well as the entire backing band for Elf, minus the guitar player of course.

You also get a taste of Ronnie's partnership with Tony Iommi and Black Sabbath during the early eighties w/ "Neon Knights" and "The Mob Rules"
which are some of the best tracks created during Sabbath in the '80's.
There is also a sampling of "Dehumanizer," the Dio/Sabbath reunion disc
that came out in 1992. The track, "Computer God" is one of the heaviest
tracks ever written by Geezer Butler (sabbath bassist) and Ronnie James Dio during their 1992 Mark II Sabbath Reunion, which actually led to reformation of Ronnie's DIO group.

Disc 1 closes with a live version of "Sacred Heart," a track from DIO's third album, which would see the band touring the world with an expansive stage set full of dragons, castles, some pyro and of course the exciting laser shows. This first CD is shock full of Ronnie's best tracks with Rainbow, Sabbath and Elf, and is ane excellent cross-section of his early material as frontman for some of the world's best loved heavy metal acts.

Disc 2 features a bunch of tracks by DIO (the band), which includes a decade of Dio Classics that begins with material from "Holy Diver" from 1983 and ends with 1993's underground classic "Strange Highways," which actually includes half of The Mark II Sabbath Lineup.

Other highlights on this disc include "The Last on Line," "We Rock"
"King of Rock 'N' Roll," "Dream Evil," "All the Fools Sailed Away" and
"Lock Up the Wolves." If you're into '80's Power Metal then this disc
will be sure to impress, due to the unprecedented talent of Ronnie James Dio and his band-mates (Past and Present) in DIO. Vinny Appice, current drummer for Heaven & Hell (Sabbath, Mark II Era) is featured on all, but one track of the tracks on this CD, and he is quite possibly the best drummer that Ronnie has ever collaborated with, besides Cozy Powell of Rainbow.

This is a great buy for anyone on a tight budget, who enjoyed Dio's work with Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Elf and of course DIO. It is also the best way to get affiliated with the man, the legend ... the one-and-only,
"Ronnie James Dio!" Pick it up now, and get an expansive sampling of Dio's last 35 years in the business.





August 23, 2008

Dio Anthology

It is a great CD for any rock collection. This double album shows the Dio's greatest songs, including Black Sabbath, Rainbow and Elfo songs. And the live songs demonstrate the power of Dio's voice. February 22, 2008

Nice collection!

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! May 18, 2006

He Rocks

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. May 6, 2006

Great multi band career spanning retrospective

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. November 27, 2005

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