Sitting here in South San Francisco on a foggy afternoon taking in Ronnie James Dio and his Glam/blues project ELF. I have heard the other ELF records...but this one...there is something about this one...Ronnie Dio is singing, for sure...but it has not gotten to the operatific heights that he found in Rainbow and Sabbath. I do not wax sentimentally on his Sabbath run, and even though a few of those tunes remind me of watching my friends hit the Tombac back in High School, those records just wawnt me to listen to Master Of Reality REAL LOUD and screw the rest.But then there was ELF. With its Elton John meets Ian Hunter attitude....dark, sweet...and while the first record has one of the great album covers of all time...right up there with Mortiis, if you are into that kind of thing...L.A/59, the sophmore effort, carries with it just a little more soul. Roger Glover of Deep Purple is wearing the producer hat and he does stay true to the sound of the times: dry pumping drums and crunchy guitars mixed with boogie woogie bungle boy bombast. If there are Rainbow-ish underpinnings, remember...a majority of the ELF line-up joined with Blackmore soon after.Will ELF change the world? Never... Is it good music to drink to and ponder the beginings of the less-evil Ronnie Dio (no James back then)? Yes.