Sonntag, 11. Okt 2009, 7:20
To be honest, I had severe doubts about this show. My thoughts were along 'old farts', 'rip-off' and other derogatory thoughts.
Then, however few days before the show I was reading Roy Davies' excellent Rainbow biography ("Rainbow Rising. The Story of Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow" published by Helter Skelter, 2002) and suffered an acute paradigm shift.
I came to realize that all these people (with the exception of Jürgen, of course) were once handpicked by The Man Himself and who am I to argue his choices. These musicians have showed talent and ability and were thus selected to join one of the worlds premiere hard rock bands. Later on they may have been sacked by Him but that was the reality when working with a genius striving to find a direction and commercial success.
Overall, I was very happy I went to see 'Over the Rainbow' as I've grown up with these songs and I was privileged to hear them performed live even if not by the respective line-ups.
Setlist: TW and KtK were a great opener combo and crowd was wild from the start. I was pleasantly surprised to hear quite a few Dio-era songs as this was in my opinion Rainbows golden era when they took the whole genre to new direction. CLYG and EotW have also been my favorites and this was first time I heard a live rendition – extremely welcome.
Stargazer has always been a difficult song on stage as the lacking orchestra takes away some of the majestic feeling. However, the version heard in Helsinki really brought out the best of every player.
Show ended with CHH and here the band really pulled out all stops to give it all to the audience. Thanks guys, see you next time!
Sound: I was not very happy with the sound (and it seems neither was JLT as he was complaining loudly about in-ear monitoring). Guitar had too much distortion for my taste as I felt it did not do justice for older material. For Stanger In Us All songs the sound was however more appropriate. For 'Gates Of Babylon' Jürgen switched to a white Strat and the sound was much more pleasing. On a sidenote, there's a striking resemblance between Jürgen and his father so with the white Strat you could imagine, for a while, that He was on the stage..
Show: What can I say.. JLT has the stage charisma to carry the show even when rest of the band might be a bit more reserved. However, during the show rest of the band also grew up to fill their spaces and delivered consistent performance.
Setlist:
Tarot Woman
Kill the King
Can't Let You Go
All Night Long
Death Alley Driver
Eyes of the World
Ariel
Wolf To the Moon
I Surrender
Man on the Silver Mountain
Jealous Lover
Stargazer
Long Live Rock'n'Roll
Show duration: approx. 1h 50 min
Line-up:
Joe Lynn Turner - Vocals
Bobby Rondinelli - Drums
Greg Smith - Bass & backing vocals
J.R. Blackmore - Guitar
Paul Morris - Keyboards