THIS WEEK IN CLEVELAND

From the Cleveland Scene:

Huge in Germany (and Here)
Manowar's U.S. tour is a short one, but we got lucky

The upstate New York metal band Manowar has led a strangely split existence for almost three decades. Though they perform before massive, adoring crowds in Europe, they've never been more than a cult act in their home country. The disconnect has gotten so extreme that bassist and bandleader Joey DeMaio said a couple of years ago that they may never play America again. But when they do play the States, they've shown a particular affection for Northeast Ohio.

The band performed exactly one U.S. show in support of 1992's The Triumph of Steel: at the defunct Flash's here in Cleveland. Four years later, following the release of 1996's Louder Than Hell, they played the Machine in Massillon and filmed a video for their song "Return of the Warlord" at the club.

Given all this, it's a bit surprising that Manowar are playing three U.S. shows this year. It's less surprising that two of them are in Cleveland. The band comes to the Agora this weekend for a two-night stand that will include a complete performance of their debut album, 1982's Battle Hymns, and a greatest-hits set.

And since Manowar have released a series of live DVDs over the years, it's totally possible that the two Agora shows will be filmed for release. (Though, for the record, DeMaio says he's "not sure at this point.")

Even within the metal scene, Manowar's music can be polarizing. Their best songs are pure metal, with anthemic power conveyed through thundering rhythms, screaming guitar leads, Eric Adams' powerful Halford/Plant-style vocals, and DeMaio's prominent and melodic bass lines.

They make no concessions to radio or trends, but if you grew up on classic metal by Dio and Judas Priest, there's plenty to love about Manowar albums like Sign of the Hammer, The Triumph of Steel, and especially Battle Hymns. (If you want a single starting point, their 2007 album Gods of War Live covers almost their entire career.)

On recent albums Warriors of the World and Gods of War, they've balanced headbanging anthems with symphonic interludes and some unexpected covers (check out their take on Elvis' patriotic "An American Trilogy" medley). But late last year, following the return of original drummer Donnie Hamzik, the group scrapped Hammer of the Gods, a concept album they had been working on with German fantasy novelist Wolfgang Hohlbein, and rerecorded their debut, releasing it as Battle Hymns MMXI.

"We didn't go into this thinking we were going to improve Battle Hymns," says DeMaio. "What we did want to do was take advantage of the technology that allows one to make a record today with a lot more power and dynamic range than we were able to back then."

Indeed, the new versions of these songs aren't radical departures from the originals — the mix is slightly different, with more space for DeMaio's virtuosic bass lines and a few '80s-style vocal effects omitted, which lets Adams display the power he's retained (and at times increased) over 30 years of concerts.

There are two major differences between the original and rerecorded versions of Battle Hymns. Orson Welles' original narration on "Dark Avenger" is replaced by a newly recorded one by Christopher Lee. And the title track gained three whole minutes, bringing its total running time to nine minutes on the new CD.

That's merely a result of playing the song onstage for so many years, says DeMaio. "One of the nice things about making a record and being able to perform live is that you have the chance to interpret and reinterpret the songs over the course of years," he says. "And the little things you do sometimes yield interesting and great results."

That may be the first time the words "little things" have been used when talking about Manowar's music. The live show will be as epic as anything in metal, even if they're playing in front of just a few thousand very patient U.S. fans, rather than the 50,000-plus they typically draw in Germany.

TOM PETTY, THE MASSES AND ME

I went to Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night to see Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, with Buddy Guy opening up; if you want to read my more formal review of the show, which was excellent, it's over here.

I've seen a bunch of concerts at Madison Square Garden over the years—Dio, Radiohead (twice), Coldplay, Iron Maiden (also twice), Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Nine Inch Nails, AC/DC, Bob Seger, Metallica, Mötley Crüe...a surprising number of shows in all, considering how ambivalent I am about the whole arena experience.

Some of the music I listen to is really popular; I have a shit-ton of classic rock in my iPod, along with a bunch of classic hip-hop, loads of big-name metal bands, et cetera, et cetera. Some of it's not popular at all. This has never really concerned me—I don't spend much time thinking about whether other people like the stuff I like. (This is very different from thinking about why I don't like stuff lots of other people do like, which I do all the time.) When I write a review, for example, there's an element of the utilitarian "consumer guide" to it, but I'm not really trying to convince other people that they should buy the album in question, even if I write that way sometimes. I'm just saying that I think it's good, and trying to explain why in some kind of coherent way while avoiding masturbatory theoretical bullshit.

Because of my lack of interest in music's relative popularity, the atmosphere of a massive arena show, with thousands of people screaming and singing along, doesn't really have much effect on me one way or the other. I don't care that all these people standing around me like Iron Maiden as much as I do; I just care that Iron Maiden is one of the best live acts in music, that they put on a fantastic, well-paced, consistently entertaining show. Sometimes, though, it can provide an element of surprise that's fun.

At the Tom Petty show, for example, I was surprised to see people singing along with such fervor to slow songs like "Free Fallin'" and "Learning to Fly." I like "Free Fallin'" a lot, that first verse is an absolute killer, but I'm a much bigger fan of some of Petty's earlier, meaner songs. He's got a real talent for creating evocative, minimalist images. Think of the first two lines of the song he opened the set with, "Listen to Her Heart": "You think you're gonna take her away/With your money and your cocaine." You know exactly who that guy is. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker would have devoted a whole song to painting that asshole's portrait; Petty conjures him and dismisses him in two lines.

I like that side of Tom Petty more than the jangly balladry that inspires girls to sing along and hug their boyfriends at his concerts. And/but watching that audience reaction made me think mine was a minority opinion. It reminded me that Tom Petty hasn't been that snarling guy for quite a few years now (though he still transforms into him from time to time, like on "It's Good to Be King" or "I Should Have Known It"). And that you can probably sell more albums and concert tickets by making girls hug their guys than by making guys pump their fists and snarl.

But here's my point: I think I could have enjoyed that concert just as much had none of those people been there. They weren't an important part of my aesthetic experience. And I'm wondering whether I'm alone on this one, whether the feeling of being surrounded by fellow Tom Petty fans enhances the experience for other people in some major way. And I'm trying to figure out when I started feeling this way, because it wasn't always the case. I used to like mingling with crowds, especially when that meant getting into a sweaty moshpit. Now I'm old(er), and my legs hurt if I stand up for two hours at a show, so I'm much more likely to go to something big enough (in an arena, say) that there's a seat there for me to flop back down into when things get boring (and every show gets boring at some point). A thing like the Summer Slaughter Tour, which features eleven or twelve death metal bands in a row, many of which I like a lot, but is held in a tiny sweatbox of a club with no seats and starts at three in the afternoon? You can forget about that bullshit.

Still, pure physical discomfort isn't what makes me so unconcerned with being part of a crowd. It's something larger, something I can't put my finger on yet, and/but it's something that's making me re-evaluate rock music as a whole. Because for a lot of people, the idea of rock (and pop) as communal experience carries a lot of weight. Someone whose preference is for solitary listening seems to be in some way "doing it wrong," or having an "incomplete" understanding/experience of the music. I'm not convinced. In fact, I think rock music may be best experienced in focused solitude. Because it's not part of a total package—it's not just the sonic component of an evening that depends on beer, lust and air thick with sweat to be complete. The music is enough all on its own, for me anyway.

RONNIE JAMES DIO 1942-2010

Legendary metal singer Ronnie James Dio passed away early Sunday morning, May 16, from the stomach cancer he'd been battling since November 2009. The 67-year-old Dio had one of the greatest and most recognizable voices in metal history. His career began in the 1950s, fronting various rockabilly and R&B groups (Ronnie and the Red Caps, Ronnie and the Prophets) in upstate New York. "When you start, you do cover material, and whatever happened to be around, we did it," he told me in an interview last August. "We did a lot of blues, a lot of R&B material very popular back East—people like Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, the Isley Brothers, James Brown, those kinds of people. You did what was put in front of you."

Dio really found his niche in the early '70s, though, first with the boogie/Southern-rock-style band Elf and then alongside former Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore in Rainbow. With his theatrical outfits and dramatic, sweeping gestures, not to mention his astonishingly powerful voice, he established a persona far larger than his relatively small physical stature, stalking the stage and commanding the audience's attention at all times.

After leaving Rainbow in 1978, he moved on to front Black Sabbath, and in so doing reshaped that legendary band in his own image. "When we did 'Children of the Sea,' I think that was the first one we wrote together, and that showed that I was more than capable of doing it," Dio recalled about taking over as Sabbath's lyricist. "And Geezer [Butler, bassist and primary lyricist during the Ozzy years] really didn't want to write. When I came in, he said, 'You're gonna write the lyrics, aren't you?' and I said, 'Well, I certainly hope so,' and he said, 'Oh, thank God, that's one job I never wanted.'"

Where the band had been focused on doomy rock and relatively down-to-earth lyrical concerns with Ozzy Osbourne up front and Butler doing most of the writing, when Dio joined, he brought his own interest in heroism and myth to bear on the albums Heaven And Hell, Mob Rules, and Dehumanizer. Last year, that lineup of Black Sabbath, now renamed Heaven And Hell, released one of 2009's best albums, The Devil You Know—a stunningly heavy, operatic meditation on mortality and doom, by four guys who helped invent a genre and got back together to show the youngsters how it's done.

But no matter how heavy the music was, Dio's fundamental optimism always shone through. "None of the songs end with 'OK, and now we're going to die,'" he told me in that conversation. "My manner is always to let people know that someone out there feels the same, and luckily I've got a stage to speak for them."

Of course, Dio also achieved solo stardom in the '80s, with albums like The Last In Line, Holy Diver, and Sacred Heart, and classic metal anthems like "Rainbow In The Dark," "The Last In Line" and "We Rock." I was lucky enough to see him live three times—first on his Sacred Heart tour in 1986, then as the middle act on the bill (between Motörhead and headliners Iron Maiden) in 2003, and finally in 2008, fronting Heaven and Hell on the Metal Masters Tour with Judas Priest, Motörhead and Testament. The latter show was my then-eight-year-old nephew's first concert, and I'm really glad he was able to see a true legend perform. The world of metal has suffered a great loss; we'll never see another performer like Ronnie James Dio.