If anyone wants to come and talk to me about my shoddy joinery work, my door is always open.
On paper the idea of recording Rainbow during their Rising tour, promoting their seminal hard rock classic album, and releasing a live album from said tour should have be a slam dunk. The potential for a classic double live album from this band was there: playing songs from their first two albums, the classic line up of Dio, Blackmore, Bain, Powell and Carey, and maybe a Deep Purple medley thrown-in for good measure; instead they chose poorly and we got a noodly, guitar snooze-fest that makes drinking from the wrong holy chalice a very enticing prospect than listening to this record.
There’s only 6(!) tracks on this double album, the least number of songs that have been featured on an album I’ve reviewed so far, and the one song from the Rising album (Starstruck) is at the arse-end of a medley with Man On The Silver Mountain (no complaints there) and a track literally called Blues! WTAF! It gets worse. I love Catch The Rainbow, it’s such a beautiful powerful slow number with a great solo but to stretch it out to 15 mins (from its original 6 minute studio cut) and not do anything interesting with it is such a crime against that song. And to follow that up with another side-long track of a very dull Deep Purple song, Mistreated, and more pointless noodling just reinforced my thoughts of this being a missed opportunity for a great live album.
Do I really need to ask my usual questions? 4 of the six tracks are over 10 minutes and 2 of those songs take up a whole side each! I would neither recommend nor listen to this again, other than the opening track Kill The King, there is nothing on here that would entice me to put myself through this again. Lacklustre guitar solos, minimal crowd noise and dull production does not a live album make.
I think this may be my least favourite live albums to date, it almost makes the Hawkwind album tolerable, almost. I can’t give this any higher than a 2 in all honesty. In fact there was a single released from this album, with “Kill the King/Man on the Silver Mountain/Mistreated”, and that is a much more enjoyable listening experience than the whole album. Avoid this record like you would avoid chuggers. To wash the taste of this album out of my mouth, my next album will feature the band the Beatles could have been. TTFN!
La Barba Azul 