Ah what to say about Milky who opened the show for Rainbow at every gig I saw. They sucked big time but I don't want to really say anything bad about them cos they are such nice guys. They are quite strange looking though. The guitarist is tall and lanky and looks like a Frankenstein who wants to be Jimmy Page. He shoes are so huge that when he plays his wah-wah pedal, his foot completely covers the pedal! The singer looks like a concentration camp prisoner or AIDS patient. He wore the same outfit for at least three gigs in a row. The bassist looks like an "extra" from the set of La Bamba with a hispanic look and slicked back hair. The drummer is the only one who even looks Swedish. They played 3 songs that lasted half an hour. Occasionally the guitarist pulled off some interesting pure pentatonic non-blues soloing. Talking to them after the gigs left me with the impression they are overblown to be on the Rainbow tour and very respectful and deferential to Ritchie and Rainbow. They really believe in what they are doing and take any praise or encourgement to heart. They have a CD coming out in Sweden next month so I wish them well. This band is sort of like your local college band who aren't that great but you have a soft spot for because, well, they need all the support they can get.
The gig itself was fantastic- just what I hoped it would be. Fantastic solos by RB. No trilling or hack soloing to fill space. He REALLY played some stuff that would blow your mind and seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. I was right in front of him the whole time shouting my balls off and sweating my ass off ( the Germans for all their technological advancements havent mastered the idea of air conditioning yet...). The gig began with Spotlight Kid and the lighting man must have been having a grand mal epileptic seizure or something cos the flicker lights were going annoyingly bezerk. This was the only gig where it was this crazy. Maybe RB finally got tired of it and made the "adjustments". I am sure most of you know the basic set lists. Sold-out Berlin included snippets of Greensleeves and the beer drinking songs. Temple of the King and Hall of the Mountain King stood out as some of the best versions of the tour that I saw. Perfect strangers had the very effective red backdrop siloutte lighting that was very powerful. It was probably the best received song of the night. As you all probably know, Ritchie has a plastic cup of beer or two taped up and during the concert he takes a wooden pole and puts it though the tape loop on the cup and gives it to one of the fans in the front row. At Berlin RB hands it to me. What a thrill!! Doogie announces over the PA "There's a Scot for you!" (as I am climbing over the rail to get the beer, throwing women and children behind me......). With the heat in the hall, the beer was quite welcome, too!. The only downer to the gig was RB's invite during LLRnR to Paul to do some lick trading. Paul ignored RB's beckoning. With that and his keyboard solo that sounded like a really good keyboardist farting aroung in a music store, I wonder what RB sees in him.
All in all this was a great show to start off my tour and whet my appetite for things to come.
HTML by Svante Pettersson 13 December 1995