Rainbow On Stage (1977)

Long Live Rock 'n' Roll may be singer Ronnie James Dio's last album with Rainbow, but at least he went out on a high note. While the material is not quite as strong as on the previous studio effort, Rising, Long Live Rock 'n' Roll maintains the momentum the band had built up…

Live in Germany 1976 is a live album released by Rainbow in 1990. The tracks are cherry-picked from a series of German dates (Cologne on 25-9-76, Düsseldorf 27-9-76 Nuremberg 28-9-76 and Munich 29-9-76) recorded on the world tour in 1976. It was re-released two years later in the USA as Live in Europe on a different label. The content is the same for both although sleeve notes differ.

This album is the actual recordings at Shepperton Studios, England where the band was rehearsing for the forthcoming tour to support the release of 'Level Headed'. The master tapes for this release have been supplied by Andy Scott from his archives. One may speculate it was in the USA in March 1976, when Ritchie Blackmore came on-stage with SWEET to pay a tribute to Paul Kossoff, who died a few days earlier, that RAINBOW guitarist told his compatriots about recording haunts Clearwell Castle and Château d’Hérouville, and it was there that the Ballroom Blitz brigade worked on their arguably heaviest album, the last to feature singer Brian Connolly. A solid record, “Level Headed” saw the light of day in January 1978, but the band started preparation to take it on the road much earlier, this collection documenting their stay at Shepperton Studios.

Though it met with little commercial success, Happy the Man's 1977 debut quickly became a cult sensation with fans of prog rock. It's easy to see why: their sound combines a number of diverse influences in a distinctive manner, and their music is as complex and meticulously arranged as any prog album one cares to mention. Unlike some popular prog acts, Happy the Man does not allow one instrument to take center stage or allow relentless soloing to dominate the songs. Instead, the focus is on complex interplay between the group's players: compositions like "Knee Bitten Nymphs In Limbo" and "Stumpy Meets the Firecracker in Stencil Forest" are built on the kind of mathematically complex yet playful instrumental interplay that is normally associated with Frank Zappa's most complex work…

Despite their origins as a bluesy hard-rock outfit, the members of Samson decided to jump the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) bandwagon, drafting a powerful young singer called Bruce Bruce (who later rose to fame as Bruce Dickinson with Iron Maiden) to give them much-needed visual and musical credibility. The scheme worked, and their first album, Head On, contains top-notch NWOBHM, featuring raw, energetic performances capped with often silly or naive lyrics…

Sun Ra - Somewhere Over The Rainbow (2018) {Sun Ra LLC Official Digital Download}
FLAC (tracks) - 16bit/44kHz - Official Digital Download (bandcamp.com) -> 275 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 98 Mb | Cover | 5% repair rar
© 2018 Sun Ra LLC
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Jazz Funk / Experimental Big Band / Progressive Jazz

As live, late-1970s Sun Ra albums go, Somewhere Over the Rainbow is a cut above. It's similar to and contemporaneous with The Soul Vibrations of Man and Taking a Chance on Chances, two live sets also issued on Saturn in 1977 (and available in our digitally remastered download catalog). Somewhere Over the Rainbow (Saturn 7877) was also known as We Live to Be: the titles of track one on side A were often handwritten on labels and/or generic sleeves, a common practice in Saturn's DIY packaging process.