Newsgroups: alt.music.deep-purple Subject: REVIEW: Rainbow, Oslo 3. October From: trond@thehighwaystar.com (Trond J. Stroem) Date: Thu, 05 Oct 1995 15:31:01 GMT
OK, here's my review, two days after the gig and with the whole thing a bit more distant.
I'll try to be as brief as possible.
Good things:
"Temple of the King" was VERY good. VERY good. I feared the worst when one of the Finnish reviewers uttered that it was turned into some kind of Heavy Ballad (I envisioned a version ready for the as of yet unreleased compilation "Ultimate Cheesy Power Ballads Vol. 13"), but it was done very stylish, with some very nice guitar from Ritchie.
Overall, his best playing was when he calmed down. His playing near the end of "Hunting Humans" was also very nice.
Other good songs: "Wolf to the Moon" (too short!), "Black Masquerade", "Ariel", "Perfect Strangers" (I think this one worked, despite me missing IG badly! :-) and I actually thought the opening duo "Spotlight Kid" and "Can't Happen sorry Too Late for Tears" were, if nothing else, nice. They set my foot a-tapping.
Dougie White sung very good. Good voice in the chap, even though he looks like Bruce Dickinson reincarnated. His Dio impersonating was good, his (short) Bonnet was good, and his JLT was *way* better than JLT himself ever has done it. Besides, he was a lively guy, enjoying to be up there. His rant against modern music before LLR'n'R were utterly pathetic, though, especially in the light of what were to follow.
The lighting was quite impressive. Perhaps a bit overdone. (A *bit*?!)
Ritchie's playing was quite accurate. He looked like he was having a good time. I noticed he was at the middle of or the *left* side of the stage for much of the concert.
So, why didn't I enjoy myself?
Well, I was positively bored for about one hour of the concert. It started with the noodling during "Long Live Rock'n'Roll", which was awful, overlong, and generally going nowhere. Dougie singing a snippet of Woman From Tokyo to the wrong melody, a short SKOW vocal/guitar duel, the Black Night riff, lots of sing-a-long... Following this with "Hunting Humans" was not smart either, the show had lost it's drive. (For me.)
Then, cutting off "Wolf to the Moon" (one of the better songs on the new one) to play "Difficult to Cure" AGAIN... uh-uh, not smart.
I'll skip reviews of the keyboard and drum solos, as there could be minors reading this. I have seen one keyboardist and one drummer who can get away with solo spots, and I saw none of them up there on Tuesday, even though Chuck Burgi's sunglasses made him remind me of the other drummer.
Basically, there were one hour during this concert were I felt bored.
Things looked better after "Black Masquerade" and "Ariel" followed back to back, then we got one verse of "Since You Been Gone", which actually was one of the better bits in the whole concert. "Perfect Strangers" was also nice, then down it goes with "Hall of the Mountain King", "Burn" and "Smoke on the Water".
Tom-Eirik and myself left during the singalong parts of "Smoke on the Water", so we missed the extra "Hey Joe" and "Black Night" noodling afterwards. And I'm not sad that I left.
Blackmore's playing was accurate, but he didn't get close to the greatness he showed on the 1993 tour.
If Rainbow comes here another time with the same concept, I won't bother to see them. This concert left me flat. USD 35 down the drain.
However, I'll gladly go and see Ritchie with his renaissance project, if that ever tours. :-)
Conclusion: I wish Rainbow the best of luck in the future, but I'm no longer interested in what they're doing.
Best regards, -- Trond J. Strøm trond@thehighwaystar.com
Svante Pettersson 20 november 1995