"Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore... We must be over the rainbow." After Dorothy utters those famous words from The Wizard Of Oz, Rainbow takes the stage, underneath a colossal, glowing, rainbow-colored arch that connects to each side of the stage, and bandleader Ritchie Blackmore immediately rips off a scorching guitar solo to pump up the crowd. His notes soon melt perfectly into the show's ferocious opening number, "Kill The King", the "Burn"-like anthem that would appear on the band's forthcoming new album, Long Live Rock 'N' Roll, which would be released early the following year.
Rainbow Live In Munich 1977 was filmed at the Olympiahalle, in Munich, Germany, on October 20th, 1977, and features the incredible Rainbow lineup of Ritchie Blackmore (guitar), Ronnie James Dio (vocals), Cozy Powell (drums), Bob Daisley (bass), and David Stone (keyboards). Rainbow fans will know that the band survived revolving lineups throughout their brief nine-year history, I guess Blackmore was a little difficult to please, but this one here is certainly one of the best. Blackmore formed Rainbow in 1975 after quitting Deep Purple at the height of their fame. After a string of hit albums, Blackmore broke up the band and reformed the famous "Mk II" Deep Purple lineup in 1983. I remember their Perfect Strangers reunion album like it was yesterday. That damn "Knocking At Your Back Door" intro still gives me chills.
For the second song of the set, Blackmore dusts off Deep Purple's "Mistreated", which Rainbow covered on their live On Stage album, released the same year as this show. This Burn classic gets the 12-minute extended treatment which allows Blackmore, and especially Cozy Powell, to show off their incredible chops. Dio does a fantastic job capturing the passion and soul of this slow-burning, power-blues anthem, but if you want to see the definitive live version, run out and get yourself the Deep Purple Live In California 74 DVD, where David Coverdale gets christened as frontman of the new Mk III lineup in front of about 200,000 people.
From there, they delve back to Rainbow's debut album, Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow, for a smoking version of the medieval fantasy-inspired "Sixteenth Century Greensleeves." Blackmore starts off picking some clean electric guitar, in honor of the original English folk tune, "Greensleeves," before the band eventually explodes into their own hard driving version. "Catch The Rainbow," from the same album, is transformed into an 18-minute long, spacey jam, which allows Blackmore to brilliantly traverse between gentle, clean, chorused leads and jaw dropping metallic solos.
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