This One Candle

At a point in time circa 1980, I was at Oasis Records engaging in one of my favorite pastimes of shopping for vinyl records. There was no streaming back then and often times if it was a band you unfamiliar with, you would base your purchase on how cool the album cover was. On this particular day I stumbled on a solo album by Kerry Livgren, the principle guitarist / keyboardist / songwriter for the band Kansas. The album was entitled “Seeds Of Change”. As I was reading the track listing on the back cover, each song gave credit to the other performers who played on each track (an all star cast to say the least), one name jumped out at me on two of the songs… Ronnie James Dio. 

At the time, Rainbow was my favorite band and Dio was my favorite singer, but I had recently been disappointed when the new Rainbow album had come out and Dio was no longer in the band. This was also prior to the announcement that he had indeed joined Black Sabbath.

So I immediately purchased the album and I noticed right away that all of the songs were from a Christian perspective and indeed learned that Kerry had become a Christian. The two songs that Ronnie sang on "Mask Of The Great Deceiver" and "To Live For The King" as well as the album as whole made a huge spiritual impact on my life.