Wednesday. It’s a bastard of a day. Just far enough away for you to be forgetting the fun you had last weekend, not close enough to the fun you’re going to have next weekend. It’s a desolate, bleak day, it’s the place where you can view a long horizon during the hell of another working week. So whose bright idea was it to have one of the best gigs I’ve been to this year on it then eh? Eh? Eh? I want to know who is responsible for this travesty! Well that would be the people at the Tiv, a venue that is continuing to improve every time I go there. It’s now got a lovely, shiny, new, long, well-stocked bar, so naturally it’s Wednesday and I am a) driving home and b) needing to be up for work in the morning, so I don’t get to sample the wares. Bloody Wednesday!

Thankfully tonight’s openers Gin Annie have decided that on this particular Wednesday they are going to party like it’s Saturday, hurrah! They are another band on my personal “love to watch” list, I’ve caught them a few times now and been very impressed every time. Their sound is melodic classic rock, hard-edged and heartfelt at the same time. Opener “Best I Ever Had” is upbeat and bouncy, and the vocals are superb. There’s a new song ‘Dying To Love Again’ which is more mellow, but still manages to rock out. This is not a ballad, it’s more of a punch to the gut. But with a nice cuddle afterwards. The band look like they are having fun, especially during my personal favourite song ‘Fallin’”. The crowd are starting to have fun too and it’s all good. They finish with a song called ‘Born To Rock & Roll’ which is a proper anthem and deserves to be huge. I can’t even say they sound like anyone else, because they don’t. It’s rare to find a band that are as fresh and original as this, and I think we should treasure them. We should hug them and squeeze them and call them George.

Vega on the other hand are not really my “thing” at all. They should be. They produce well-crafted songs, they are great musicians and singer Nick has a fantastic vocal range. Their style is AOR mixed with a bit of prog, wrapped up in a veneer of rock. They remind me a lot of Queensrÿche. But. They’ve been around for some 10 years, played everywhere, released several albums, are doing what they do really well. But. Their sound swirls around me, washes over me, but I just can’t get into it. I can appreciate what they do, I can see everyone else in the room loving them but it’s just not happening for me. Sorry guys, it’s not personal, you’re just not for me.

So to Last In Line. A history lesson for you, pay attention at the back please! Back in the early 80s, after his stints with Rainbow and Black Sabbath, Ronnie James Dio put his own band together and released what would become one of the seminal 80s metal albums, “Holy Diver”. I was 19 when it came out, and I loved it. It remains in my top 20 albums of all time, and listening to it now is still a labour of love and evocative memories. Further albums followed and despite many line-up changes and other projects, Dio as a band continued until the sad death of Ronnie in 2010. It seemed at the time that his legacy of songs would remain the bastion of countless cover bands because after all nobody could ever fill his shoes even if he did have quite little feet. Stuff happens though, and one thing that happened was that the musicians who originally played on and co-wrote the first 3 Dio albums (“Holy Diver”, “Last In Line” and “Sacred Heart”) got together and started talking about how they could preserve that legacy, and maybe bring it to a new audience. Vinnie Appice, Vivian Campbell and Jimmy Bain talked. Then despite them all having other musical commitments they played, and they found a vocalist who, while not Dio because nobody else could be, had a voice that could carry those classic songs better than most. That was Andrew Freeman, and eventually in 2016 the four of them  released an album “Heavy Crown” which was a fitting tribute to the great RJD. It seemed that the project had legs, and all was looking good. But then disaster struck again. Jimmy Bain also died, suddenly and unexpectedly, while at sea on the ill-fated Def Leppard cruise. I was there, it was awful. There was another hiatus, and then they came back again with replacement bassist Phil Soussan. I have to say that the first time I saw them this was a bit of a shock, as Phil not only plays well but also looks very much like Jimmy!

On to the current day, and a second album imaginatively titled “II” has just been released. The band continue to play together wherever possible, and tonight they have come to the Tivoli to blow the roof off. It’s a pretty special experience to see a band of this calibre in such an intimate setting. These guys are used to playing stadiums to tens of thousands of people yet here we are in North Wales with an audience of a couple of hundred. It’s times like this when I really appreciate how lucky I am to live the life that I do and see the bands that I get to see. But enough about me, you want to know about the show don’t you?

They start off with a song I don’t recognise, but to be fair that’s pretty much the only one. After that it’s straight into ‘Stand Up and Shout’ and ‘Straight Through The Heart’, and the crowd are there with them, word for word. It’s hard to believe that these songs are 36 years old, older in fact than several members of the audience tonight. Do they capture the essence of Dio? Oh yes. He was one of the ultimate metal frontmen and this band really do him justice. There’s a song off the new album called ‘Year Of The Gun’ which is dark, heavy, proper metal. My kind of metal. It has a blistering solo from Vivian Campbell, who is totally on form tonight. There’s a swirly taped keyboard intro to the next song and the crowd is literally holding their breath – is it? YES! ‘Holy Diver’! Pass the ibruprofen, all us old gits are going to hurt tomorrow as we explode into a frenzy of headbanging and horn-raising! Ah, the memories this song brings back for me! I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that metal doesn’t get better than this song.

Vinnie stands up from behind his implausibly small and simple drumkit to introduce the band and after a new song ‘Black Out The Sun’ we get the classic ‘The Last In Line’. Another slice of 100% classic rock, with its singalong chorus and chugging beat. We may never never never come home, for sure. There’s more incredible soloing from Viv, in his “day job” at Def Leppard it’s sometimes easy to overlook just what a talented and versatile player he is. Phil gives us a moving tribute to Jimmy Bain that brings a lump to my throat as they launch into ‘Starmaker’ from the album that they released just as he died. This means a lot to me as I was lucky enough to be at his final performance and this was very much Jimmy’s song back then. It still is, and it’s a fitting tribute to a man who lived such a full and interesting life.

As they launch into ‘Rainbow In The Dark’ I reflect that this is a bittersweet evening. On the one hand it’s wonderful to hear these songs played so well, but on the other it’s a sharp reminder of the fragility of life and the memory of those no longer with us. That’s the end of the main set but of course there is more to come, and after a brief interlude they come back on for an encore. ‘Don’t Talk To Strangers’ has the crowd singing again, and new(er) song from the first Last In Line album ‘Devil In Me’ still sounds like a Sabbath song to me! The final song is ‘We Rock’ and we most certainly do. Hard. Fast, Like our lives depend on it. Of course we rock, that’s why we’re here.

As we trudge out into the night I realise that it’s still Wednesday and you know what? I don’t care. Me and the guys from Last In Line may have been doing this for decades now but that’s fine because We do indeed Rock. Even on Wednesdays.