• Sold out crowd, rather old people - almost only such people who had been Rainbow fans back in 70s and 80s
• No warming up band, but...
• No warming up band needed, the audience were extremely interested in the show
• Just before the show was about to start, some techincal difficulties arose and they started again the "before-the-band-comes" music (Interesting hand signs at the mixing table on the side;)
• Started about 20 minutes late at 22.50, some classical song I didn't recognize was played with the lights on, then lights were turned off and the old

intro started with the SIUA album cover picture projected on the white backdrop, a little bit afterwards this was replaced by a rainbow - Started with

- After this song Doogie talked how Ritchie had left Deep Purple at the Helsinki gig a few years ago and how he had now returned, because it is

- During

a picture of Beethoven was projected to the backdrop - After DTC, there was

- After Paul Morris had finished, Doogie told us that the next song is from the very first Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow album, .. and from the latest Ritchie Blackmore's album (and at this point people began screaming Still I'm Sad) ... and from the On Stage album

- After SIS was finished, the drummer Chuck Burgi played some drums

- "Paul Morris is going to introduce this next song to you, hum to it if you recognize it" -- Doogie

- During Perfect Strangers Ritchie shook his head very often and didn't look too happy at all... Don't know what went wrong, or was it just Ritchie's attitude ;)

- After HOTMK at 12.20 the band left the stage and audience started to scream "Rainbow! Rainbow!", and after a couple of minutes, the band returned to stage with

- Doogie tried to make the audience sing the SOTW right from the beginning, turned the mike to face the audience, but didn't succeed too well and take the mike to him himself. Still the audience sung the "Smoke on the water and fire in the sky" parts. Band left the stage during the song, and audience continued to sing that chorus line until the band came up on stage and finished the song.

- After SOTW the band came to shake hands with the audience and Ritchie went and got a couple of white T-shirts and threw the to audience, where they were torn apart - I found a little piece of it after the show was over. In the end there was the normal, old outro with the Rainbow logo projected to the backdrop.

All in all, a great show, although those Ronnie James Dio's Rainbow songs sounded to me very flat compared to Ronnie's versions of them. Ritchie was very much alive, he walked all across the stage and every now and then shook hands with the audience. However, my girlfriend's comment about him was "He's an idiot", as you still could see some of Ritchie's attitude to his fans. I missed very much Stargazer, though.

The audience in the front was very much into the show, especially when they played old songs. However, the back circle (the seat area) was very inactive, almost all of them were sitting and at least Doogie didn't like that too much. I was on the right side of the stage, first some 5-6 rows from the stage, but then eventually reached a point about 2-3 rows from the stage with my girlfriend, who was heading to the first row (I didn't want to go to there and tried to stop her;). Then some guy fainted next to my girlfriend and we carried him away to the security guards and stayed about 5-6 lines away from the stage on the right side for the rest of the show.

My friend Sami had opportunity to meet the band at the airport when they arrived on Friday and then again today before the show. The band played football at one local football field and my Sami's friend was playing against them there ;). Sami had talked a little bit with some of the band members and had heard that the band had rehearsed at the Kobe Halle in Copenhagen for four days before they came here and spent half of that time with technical problems. Those problems apparently had been fixed, as the show went without problems except the one just before the show was about to start.

Many people were there with tape recorders, for example one guy just in the front of the left loudspeakers was recording the show on DAT tape with microphones on his neck. He looked very much like Italian, I wouldn't be too surprised if some Italian bootleg company had sent him to record the show. A couple of Japanese people there too, some of them seemed to record the show too. Those Japanese were going to follow at least next couple shows.

Tapio Keihanen --- dio@snakemail.hut.fi
                        Oh, carry home by broken bones and lay me down to rest
                                         Forty days of cries and moans I guess
Ronnie James Dio/Rainbow 1978                     I've failed to pass the test