LIVE IN HELSINKI, Virgin Oil Co., 27 October 2010
Over The Rainbow’s small tour of Finland started from Helsinki on 27 October 2010. I was luckily on business trip in the Helsinki area at the time and therefore able to witness the new line-up of ex-Rainbow members. Two years ago I managed to see another Rainbow related line-up, when “Back To Rainbow” tour arrived in Turku. That tribute project consisted of Finnish musicians who had invited Mr. Bonnet and Joe Lynn Turner to take part in the tour. Joe Lynn looked way better than two years ago, for some reason he looked quite tired at that time. Now he was joking a lot, and really making an effort to heat up the audience. Joe Lynn was still enjoying ”Fisu”, the cocktail he got to know the last time around in Finland. The show started about 30 minutes later than announced, no warm-up bands were invited. When I arrived at the venue at 8 pm sharp, there was still plenty of space, I easily managed to take my spot on the second row (no photo pit was available). But when the show started, more and more people started to fill up the venue. By the end of the show, the place was quite crowded.
Right from the start, I was really impressed by the sound – it was very good and balanced. The audience showed respect to the band members from the beginning of the show. The show was kicked off with a golden oldie “Tarot Woman”, followed by another classic “Kill The King”. I was happy that they had chosen “Can't Let You Go” to their set. “All Night Long” was another highlight for me. In the “Eyes Of The World” Blackmore Jr. proved his true talent with his axe. A kind of a turning point of the show was ”I Surrender”. The crowd was singing their hearts out from that point on.
While Bobby Rondinelli seemed to be very bored behind his drums throughout most of the show, his tour mates tried their best to entertain the audience. Nice incident was e.g. that before the drum solo, Blackmore Jr. and Greg Smith changed their instruments for a while. Greg Smith was taking care of the backing vocals in surprisingly good way. Paul Morris behind the keys was also singing backing vocals in a couple of songs. During the drum solo - Bobby Rondinelli continued to hit the drums looking quite unenthusiastic and emotionless, changing later to bongo drums.
The main set ended to a nice sing-a-long moment, and this song was of course “Long Live Rock & Roll”. After thanking the audience for a while the band members left the stage, only to come back in a short time. If the atmosphere was quite high earlier, it did not go down a bit. People close to the stage did their best to shake hands with Joe Lynn and the other guys, the feeling was close to hysterical. Someone even grabbed Joe Lynn by his balls, but obviously this was not the first time, since Joe Lynn only laughed at it! When it was time for “Man On The Silver Mountain” Joe Lynn remembered the one and only God of heavy metal, Ronnie James Dio. The audience started chanting “Dio, Dio, Dio” for a while.
Review and photos by Mira Suutari-Toivonen |
