Rainbow Reunion of Sorts

I have been meaning to post about this for a long time. A number of ex-members of Rainbow have gathered and are on tour as "Over the Rainbow." One notable absence is founding guitarist Ritchie Blackmore who has been performing Renaissance Faire music the last bunch of years for whatever reason.

But here is the lineup:

Joe Lynn Turner (Rainbow 1980-1984) - Vocals
Tony Carey (Rainbow 1975-1978) - Keyboards
Bobby Rondinelli (Rainbow 1980-1983) - Drums
Greg Smith (Rainbow 1994-1997) - Bass
Jürgen "J.R." Blackmore - Guitar

Yep, that is Ritchie's son on guitar.

Keyboardist Carey posted a blog entry after the band's recent Russian debut:

We rehearsed like madmen for several days in a Moscow studio — J.R. and I had pre-rehearsed at my house in Germany and Bobby and Greg in New York. After the first 10 minutes, it was pretty clear that when we didn't suck; we were pretty good. The tricky part is playing balls-out, take-no prisoners, and still being (reasonably) accurate. If you start thinking about what you're playing, you're automatically using a safety net...

First couple of shows had great moments and some fairly dodgy ones, as well. What surprised me was the turnout and the excitement level coming back to the stage.

The last four gigs were light-years better. Everybody had sort of figured out how they wanted to play the songs (this doesn't include Greg and Bobby, they had it cold from the beginning, for which they've both earned my eternal emnity).

I think Joe's doing a great job on songs he'd never sung before, great frontman, and Jürgen — well, I knew he was good going in, but he's killer and growing with each performance. And yes, he IS a Blackmore.

Here is a clip of the band doing the Dio-era tune Stargazer. It sounds pretty epic if you ask me: