Newsgroups: alt.music.deep-purple
Subject: Rainbow, Paris 31.10 - yet another review 
From: Pawel Golik <golik@cgm.cnrs-gif.fr> 
Date: Wed, 1 Nov 1995 13:08:46 GMT 

Hi, Well, here's yet another Rainbow concert review. Place: Elysee Montmartre, Paris. It's a rather small hall (don't know exactly, how many places), It seemed almost full, but they still had tickets for sale on the day of the gig. I didn't take notes during the concert, so I won't reproduce the exact setlist, but it was not different from previous concerts, with all the goodies (Since You've Been Gone, Woman from Tokyo, Blues etc. and lots of drunk songs -the gig was quite long).

The support, Milky wasn't memorable at all. Standard hard rock, which is OK for me, but they lacked any ideas and failed to play any memorable tune. The vocalist, swinging ang shaking his mike stand was rather pathetic.

Rainbow was excellent (all IMHO of course). Ritchie seemed to be in a good mood, handed beers to the crowd, shook hands and played with lots of energy and dedication. The rest of the band was good too. Doogie White is a good vocalist (among Rainbow vocalist he is second only to Dio, far better than JLT and GB!) and a great entertainer. After the usual intros they started with Spotlight Kid and Too Late for Tears. Good solos from TMIB. Then Doogie talked to the crowd (telling of a recent soccer match - they lost in Lyon, and slamming techno music :) and they played LLRnR. Good version, Doogie made the people sing the chorus, they also played a bit off Black Night (just the riff and sing-along), some Scottish drunk song (to my great relief Doogie didn't try to sing in French). The picture at the backdrop during this song was the familiar motif from the "Rising" cover - cool.

The rest of the concert made me quite happy. I'm not very fond of SIUA (but I don't think it's that bad, just OK), but the new songs live sounded so much better than on the album. More energy, more prominent guitar, much better drumming (Chuck played Cozy Powell's style - heavy on the double bass, nothing subtle, but energetic, so much better than the lame "drum computer" on the album). I hardly recognized the beginning of Wolf To the Moon, with Ritchies guitar high in the mix, playing with good energy. Why the hell couldn't they get a sound like that on SIUA - it would make it a very good album. Same applies to Hunting Humans (a fine solo and good performance from Doogie), Black Masquerade and Ariel (Candice was audible, but not visible, at least to me). They also did justice to older stuff, the only slight disappointment being that Ritchie dropped his subtle acoustic theme on Temple of the King, but he played a great solo on this number later on. They played a short version of Since You've Been Gone, but it was obviously quite hard on Doogies voice. He still did a very good job, singing much better than on SIUA, and doing justice to the older songs. He threw in a lot of Scottish drunk songs, and made the crowd sing Waltzing Matilda along with him. It seemed that his sense of humour and spirit did much good to TMIB, he was even smiling at Doogie's jokes.

Paul Morris had his keyboard solo on Diffcult to Cure. IMHO he was good, especially in the first part, when he played with just the piano sound. Most of this solo was quoted from the classical (couldn't identify everything, surely some Beethoven), he did it excellent (although there was no magic only Jon can create). The second part of the solo, using lots of synth effects was not that good (or simply didn't fit) but still I think that he's a good player He seemed a bit restrained during the show, avoiding more solo parts, even when TMIB encouraged him. His solo meddled into the intro to Still I'm Sad - a short version, I prefer Dio's one.

Then Chuck got his five minutes - an average hard rock drum solo, far from Paicey's subtlety and virtuosity, just fast playing, but quite energetic (I highly doubt you could get anything like that from the infamous drum computer).

TMIB was in good form and mood, he seemed to enjoy playing and gave us a lot of great solos. The man still rocks live! If only he had the same energy on albums...

They played some DP songs, apart from the short Black Night riff in LLRnR they played Perfect Strangers (not bad, but I dare say that Dream Theater's cover is better), Woman from Tokyo (short, but good).

For encores there was Blues (short, but nice), Burn - a dynamite version, great to hear this riff live, the bassist sang Glenn's parts quite well, and of course SoTW. Both Doogie and Greg (the bassist) sang, they even made Paul Morris sing a few lines (he's not much of a vocalist, but everybody was having a good time).

To summarize (excuse me, this review is rather chaotic, it's late when I type it) - a very enjoyable evening for any Rainbow fan (except perhaps for those, who dislike all the post-Dio Rainbow in general). I was not very enthusiastic having heard SIUA, but now I'm still a fan of Rainbow and TMIB. And I'm looking forward to new DP (see you in Zabrze guys!), It's great to have both bands around doing what they like! It's useless to argue about TMIB and DP, let's enjoy what both are doing!

Cheers Pawel ======================================================================= I PAWEL GOLIK I I I in Poland: I I Dpt. of Genetics I mail: pawel@ibbrain.ibb.waw.pl I I Warsaw University, Warsaw, Poland I tel: +(48)22 658 44 99 ext. 3236 I I and I in France: I I Centre de Genetique Moleculaire CNRS I mail: golik@cgmvax.cgm.cnrs-gif.frI I Gif-sur-Yvette, France I tel: +(33)1 69 82 31 87 I I__________________________________________________________________________I I http://agrimonia.ibb.waw.pl/People/pawel.htm I =======================================================================