live review

"Over The Rainbow" - Live In Larissa Friday 11th of June 2009



We often face a weird misty meeting with the ghosts that move between us, leaning shadows of a legendary past carrying the etiquette of an age gone by. The gentle isolated Medieval Knight in love, former tough Man-In-Black for years, gave to his son the blessing of his electric guitar, the gift of a glorious name and a company of veterans ex-Rainbow members to conquer the world once again. Watching "Over The Rainbow" playing at my hometown -where only a few bands from abroad have ever played- was for me, a typical 80's Rainbow kid growing up with their music, almost an eerie experience. The brave set list, opening their performance with epic "Tarot woman" was on the other side the strongest conclusion of that night: so many unique and important songs could drive even a bunch of typical employees to kiss golden eternity. In fact, there were many more than this in front of our eyes but the weight of the songs was floating above everything. Rainbow had raced a journey playing finally almost everything and shaping in the end parts of the general culture in the heavy sound: from classical hard rock to epic and power metal and finally to delicious pieces of cake from commercial hard pop music and all of them always first class, they had always been the perfect alibi for those who loved attractive music and quality hard rock at the same time... Joe Lynn Turner, moving between the image of his past and today's beer belly and lifting face, had the most difficult mission of all. He had to suffer with the limitless difficulties of Dio's songs and also some Bonnet's great moments but tragically had also to fight against his former self in hard pop anthems like "Street of dreams", "Can't let you go" and "I surrender"... Sometimes he was pretty good, but in parts like legendary "Stargazer" or epic "Eyes of the world" (in fact the best Dio song that Ronnie never sang...) he was hardly and slyly beaten by time... Before playing "Man on the silver mountain" they looked to the sky and raised their hands saying goodbye for the loss of a very good and special ex-Rainbow friend and everybody thought with a secret chill how it would be to watch Rainbow with Ronnie holding the microphone again... After one and a half hour of solid sound and hard rock history lessons there were no hard feelings left...Only sympathy and nostalgia drying in a hot greek summer night...