Concert Review for Ronnie James Dio, Live at the House of Blues in Las Vegas Mandalay Bay on April 1st, 2000.

    No this was no April Fools Day, I really was going to see Ronnie and at the House of Blues in Las Vegas!!!!! Nothing could prepare me more for this show than the touch of green felt playing black jack, and the free cocktails that the Mandalay Bay gave me to prepare me for this Heavy Metal Legend. I felt like I was at home, looking around seeing fellow heavy metalers sitting at the tables gambling brought me back to 1983 when I first saw Ronnie in concert for his Holy Diver Tour. Since I had just seen Ronnie 5 days earlier at Palookville in Santa Cruz, I kind of knew what I was getting into, what kind of songs he would play and how the crowd would react, but Vegas is a different crowd. They were ready for this legend and the cocktails were flowing.
     He opened the show with the same song that he opened for in Santa Cruz which was Sunset Superman, a decent tune to get the crowd going, and then he went into the Holy Diver album with Invisible, Gypsy, and Straight Through the Heart, of course not in that order because it's real hard to remember after you've had a stiff Vegas cocktail. Now after seeing the Santa Cruz show, I knew he was going to go into his new album, and that the crowd may respond rather hastily after they had to sit through the playing of the whole album. But everyone in Vegas really got into the new "Majica" album and gave Ronnie what he deserved which was respect!! After the playing of the entire album, Ronnie went into such classics as Man on the Silver Mountain, Long Live RocknRoll, Holy Diver, Rainbow in the Dark, and then what really suprised me was that he started playing some songs from the Last in Line album which he did not perform at the Santa Cruz show. The lighters lit up all around me as I heard the start of the guitar lyrics for Last in Line, I think I was in Heaven!!!!
     Then....Johnny was a dark child came out of his powerful voice and yes I was in heaven....Ronnie James Dio, Winning money on the Tables, and Free Cocktails...what more could you ask for???? And then he came back and blew everyone away with WE ROCK!! Yes Ronnie does ROCK!! and Long live RocknRoll!!
by Mike Hagen