Rainbow Band

On Saturday 16th August 1980 Rainbow took to the stage to headline the first rock festival to be staged at Castle Donington. It was the culmination of the band s tour in support of the hugely successful Down To Earth album, released in 1979, and would prove to be the last live show featuring this particular line-up of the band: Ritchie Blackmore (guitars), Don Airey (keyboards), Graham Bonnet (vocals), Roger Glover (bass) and Cozy Powell (drums). The set featured tracks from the new album alongside classics from earlier in their career. There are virtuoso solo spots for Blackmore, Airey and Powell which serve to highlight the sheer musical prowess in the band. The show climaxes with Ritchie Blackmore destroying his guitar and thrusting it into an amp which promptly bursts into flames before fireworks burst overhead at the conclusion of an explosive show.

On Saturday, August 16th, 1980 Rainbow took to the stage to headline the first rock festival to be staged at Castle Donington. It was the culmination of the band s tour in support of the hugely successful Down To Earth album, released in 1979, and would prove to be the last live show featuring this particular line-up of the band: Ritchie Blackmore (guitars), Don Airey (keyboards), Graham Bonnet (vocals), Roger Glover (bass) and Cozy Powell (drums)…

Ritchie Blackmore decided to pull the plug on Rainbow following the supporting tour for 1983's Bent Out of Shape. To commemorate the end of the band, he released the appropriately-titled, Finyl Vinyl. A double-record set of live recordings and a handful of studio outtakes, primarily culled from the Joe Lynn Turner era but also featuring selections with Ronnie James Dio and Graham Bonnet, Finyl Vinyl offers a haphazard alternate history designed for hardcore fans (by 1986, that's pretty much all Blackmore had left). For those fans, the album is actually quite a treat. Rainbow always sounded better on stage than they did on the studio – rawer, harder, alive – and songs that sounded half-baked in the studio, such as selections from Difficult to Cure, sound right here.

RAINBOW'S tour of Japan in March 1984 would be their final set of live shows before they disbanded in April that year with Ritchie Blackmore and Roger Glover joining the Deep Purple Mark II reunion. This show from the famous Budokan in Tokyo captures the band in scintillating form performing tracks from across their career including a stunning version of "Difficult To Cure" with full orchestra and other classics including "Spotlight Kid", "I Surrender", "Catch The Rainbow", "All Night Long", "Can't Happen Here" and more.

This is an essential package! Whoever put this together obviously knew what they were doing, and all is placed in chronological order. Discs 1-3 are a terrific compilation of material from the MGM years, consisting of commercial recordings of soundtrack materal. If no recording was commercially released, the original soundtrack is used-great for such numbers as "Hoe Down" with Mickey Rooney! But the last disc makes this package essential-here is a pristine soundboard recording of Judy's final performance at the Palace Theater, MYC-2/24/52! She was concluding a 19-week engagement, and the atmosphere is electric. Fantastic stuff!

On their second release, Rainbow not only avoid the sophomore jinx; they hit a home run. After replacing the entire band (except Ronnie James Dio) immediately following the recording of the first album, Ritchie Blackmore and the Rising lineup (Blackmore; Dio; Tony Carey, keys; Jimmy Bain, bass; and the late, great Cozy Powell, drums) had plenty of time on the road touring the first album to get the chops and material together for their second…