overlap

Ok, so the clues were there as early as Sixteenth Century Greensleeves on the album 'Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow' over thirty years ago, but while I'm at least a passing fan of the Rainbow material I should be honest and say I've never felt suitably inspired to either chase up the collected works, the life stories or get much of a handle on the current activities. Sure, I've read Ian Gillan's biog, I've got three or four Deep Purple albums, a Rainbow 'Best Of' and a few other bits and pieces but as is usually the case I prefer to let the live experience inform my opinion, and then influence me to go shopping on the back of that. I've seen Deep Purple twice in the last year, Dio eighteen months ago, and whatever I had to say about them at the time should be easy enough to find in my posting archives here, but in the last couple of days I've caught up with one of the more influential figures connected with those groups of people. When you turn up to a venue and there are extra posters on every single door reminding you that no photography, filming and that sort of stuff is allowed, and you've even got bouncers demanding to check your mobile phones are turned off, you know there's a certain potential stroppiness vibe that travels around with the band. Of course those restrictions just make me all the more inclined to see what I can do with my camera, though the results aren't really up to much. I've added the best representation of the stage set below, even if the individuals are blurred it should give the general idea. With a stage set with drapes to look like the walls of a medieval castle, the support band don't have a lot of room among the onstage kit. Nevertheless and despite their limited English, they go down well with a mix of traditional music from England, France, Spain, Macedonia and the Czech Republic, which is where I guess they come from. I didn't rush to buy their album in the interval, but I'm happy enough to have my four skinny indie kids routine challenged by stuff that sounds completely different, and for that alone I can definitely recommend Gothien. Time moves on, and backwards too in this case, so of course it's unrealistic to base expectations on the glorious pop-rock carried by Joe Lynn Turner and Graham Bonnet's vocals, but equally Blackmore's Night have apparently been doing this for ten years themselves now, so there can be no doubt they know what they are doing. In between the medieval flavoured stuff there's a neat stab at Soldier Of Fortune early on, which sounds decent enough in a female lead vocal acoustic version, but we're soon back to the mandola. The two female backing singers are outstanding, Gothien pop up to take part in a song or two, but there's lack of cohesiveness as Ritchie repeatedly switches to the mandola so the bass player switches to an acoustic guitar for the sake of fifteen seconds of music before they switch back or the song ends. Ritchie also plays the hurdy-gurdy, and something that looks more like a lute but could be anything from where I'm sat. And don't even ask what the adult in a bunny suit hopping across the stage is about - it's one of those did I really just see what I thought I saw moments. Candice Night has a bunch of moves, a nice line in well-worn husband-baiting patter, and a decent enough voice without being anything special, but there's no surprise she leaves the screaming to the backing singers for the Ah-ah-ah bits of the second half of Child In Time and to be honest the whole thing's a bit ropey karaoke. It's never nice to knock someone doing stuff they appear to enjoy, and there are one or two bouncy poppy numbers I enjoy too, indeed Home Again is the sort of thing that would make a decent Heart b-side, but what with that and whichever song it is that starts by talking about 'Gemini and Capricorn rising in the east', there's more than a hint of Jeanine St Hubbins that keeps me watching between my fingers rather than turning me into a convert to the cause. And even when a white strat appears for the encore, it's not enough to turn an interesting spectacle into another new thing for me to be a fan of. It was great to see for myself and make up my own mind, and good luck to 'em, but it's not for me, and it is one to file under stuff to see if they happen to be coming very close when I've absolutely nothing else to do.

Labels: Blackmore's Night, Ritchie Blackmore