That's exactly my point, sir.

Yep.

I got into Dio in the mid-80s so I actually went BACK to Black Sabbath having gotten into him with "Holy Diver" and "Last in Line". I didn't discover Rainbow until even later, as I was working back through Blackmore's catalog after wearing out my Malmsteen tapes.

However, my preference for Sabbath over Rainbow really doesn't have anything to do with Dio. I just prefer Tony Iommi and the crushing riffs to Ritchie Blackmore's sound.

I put "Mob Rules" above "Heaven and Hell" but only because of quantity rather than quality. "Children of the Sea" is my favorite song, by anybody, but "Voodoo" and "Sign of the Southern Cross" together make "Mob Rules" the better overall album, IMO.

The Rockman, like any other musical invention, inspires. The sound inspired a generation of producers, artists and musicians to something that had never existed before.

Just like drum machines, digital keyboards, the Synclavier, Sony DASH machines and the first 48 channel SSL consoles, the Rockman opened up a new gateway to creativity in the 1980's.

"Headless Cross" is...um...ok...

No, it's not.

No I haven't. I'm not a big blues lover but I like some stuff. Haven't delved deeply into the genre because I've heard a lot of stuff I don't care for. I'll check them out though.

So is Driving Wheel a band? It's always struck me as a band name and a good one.

Like I said, I was 12.

Speaking of Ainsley Dunbar...obligatory Frank Zappa reference!

They said he could DANCE, and, of course, THEY were right! Ladies and Gentlemen, this is it: THE STUDEBAKER HAWK DANCING LESSON & COSMIC PRAYER FOR GUIDANCE featuring Ainsley Dunbar, hit it!

WTF happened with them? I loved their sound. Just crazy shit that kept them from keeping it together enough to make music?

Without providing any real details, this is it in a nutshell.

Too many drugs, too much money, too much fighting between the brothers, so on and so forth.

I was really excited when "Holy Diver" came out and thought it was decent but "Last in Line" wasn't as good. To me, there is something missing in Dio's solo work that is there in Rainbow and Black Sabbath. I should probably mention that I kind of fell away from metal about the time "Last in Line" came out and only recently heard any of the later Dio stuff (including "Dehumanizer" and "The Devil You Know") when my son started buying it a couple of years ago.

I have "Mob Rules" rated pretty high because that was the album they were supporting when I saw Black Sabbath. I think "Heaven and Hell" may be the perfect metal album, though.

What's "missing" is Ritchie Blackmore and Tony Iommi.

Vivian Campbell has never been a good songwriter. He doesn't write cool riffs and he's nothing more than a mediocre Gary Moore clone (before Gary went Blues in the 90's).

He plays in cover bands around Hollywood and he's basically a cover band guy in Def Leppard. He occasionally plays with the reformed Thin Lizzy, which is a complete joke since Phil WAS Thin Lizzy and he's in a new Dio "Tribute" band, now that Dio's dead.

He's a waste of oxygen, IMO.

#1 Anthony Shriek
#2 High heel & the sneakers
#3 Orgasm
#4 Stiff
#5 S.M.D.

I remember one of them got married in the late 90's/early 2000's (I think that's when it was) and the wife was all over the grocery store magazine racks - in stuff like BH&G and Good Housekeeping.

Not a big fan of the little, squashed compression sound. It's lifeless; even in the hands of the best players, it really seems sterile. Part of the way an instrument sounds is dependent on the room it's played in. Take away the room, and it takes away from the overall sound and ambiance.

Like, to me, Hysteria wouldn't sound as dated if they had broken out the Marshalls and cranked it up. Of course, that's not Mutt Lange's style - the only band he did that with was AC/DC (no accident that those are the Best records of his career).

That's why I don't like Foreigner - I LOVE Mick Jones and Ian McDonald; can't stand the records, the sterility of them. rock and roll is an inherently imperfect art form - it should never BE perfect; that 'perfection' washes away the very mojo that makes it beautiful, ya know?? It's like, we got away from that BS in the 90's and now it's cycled back, only now everything is through cakewalk/protools plugins and bands 'run tracks' live.

So you KNOW what I'm talking about, and WHY I don't like that music. I'm not being a dick; it's a tanglible thing. All those songs are ran through the same box, and plugged right into the board. That's why they literally all sound the same, exactly.

Amplifiers hum, that's how rock and roll sounds when you turn it up, ya know?? and the same amp with the same guitar on the same settings in the same room will sound different from day-to-day, just because the air is different, and then any recording you make will be different...it results in a different snapshot of that day.

Chris was married to Kate Hudson for a few years but that's been over for a long time. She's moved on to another rock star.