Newsgroups: alt.music.deep-purple Subject: Rainbow in Hamburg, Oct 18, 1995 : Rainer Kayser <rkayser@hs.uni-hamburg.de> Date: 19 Oct 1995 08:45:46 GMT
The venue was not sold out. I'd say only 2/3 of the ticket were sold. To hide this, the stage was shifted quite a lot towards the middle of the hall. Good move, probably.
Opening act Milky started at 20:00 and played half an hour. Pretty standard early 70s rock, I'd say, nice to listen to but not very memorable. At least they were not boo-ed.
Then at 21:00 the standard opening, some dramatic classic orchestral piece, then "we must be over the Rainbow...", standard opening riff leading into Spotlight Kid.
Here is the setlist:
Spotlight Kid was a very good opener. The crowd was hooked at once and the atmosphere was great until the end of the show.
Hightlights were, for me, Temple otK, Black Masquerade, Perfect Stranger (was really very good and tight!) and Hall Of the Mountain King. Okay, for the Norwegians this is seemingly kind of a sacrilege, but I enjoy the song, and the crowd also liked it.
Doogie is a good singer, I'd say, he delivers the new stuff, Turner songs and Dio songs all extremely good. I hope that Ritchie keeps him in the band. The bass playing was uninspired, but the bass player added som nice vocals. The keyboard player is quite good in playing the old stuff, and I even think that his solo spot wasn't bad. Some nice effects. Chuck Burgi is a good drummer, I'm glad that they left the drum computer in the studio. Great lightshow, by the way! Ritchie seemed to be in a good mood and to enjoy the gig. He served beer to the audience, joked with his band mates and played some fantastic solos. But then...
After Hall Of The Mountain King he suddenly left the stage, Doogie looked surprised, said:"Goodbye Hamburg" and the rest of the band also left the stage. Hell, that was just 1 hour and 15 minutes!!! The crowd seemingly didn't understand what was going on - they were still wild from Hall of the Mountain King, but after a while the yelling for an encore started. But then "Over the Rainbow" was played over the PA, which calmed the crowd down for a while. Half through the song the yelling started again and the audience went crazy but the lights were turned on right after "Over The Rainbow" ended. I saw a lot of unhappy and angry faces around me, and when the roadies started to draw the cables on stage, people started to boo and throw full plastic beer cups on the stage. Poor roadies. They should go and beat the man in black up.
Ritchie did it again. After 75 min of great music the crowd was happy and crazy and then he smashed us into our faces. He lost a lot of fans, I'm sure. I spoke to a lot of people and heard what many others were talking. Everyone was extremely angry and called Blackmore a complete idiot. "This was my last Blackmore concert forever" was a standard reaction.
Oh shit.
Svante Pettersson 20 november 1995