Rainbow concert review; July 13th, 1978 by Rick Garcia

The following is a review of one Rainbow concert, originally e-mailed to me.

From: "Rick Garcia" (rgarcia14@email.msn.com)
Subject: Re: Tour Dates
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1999 22:41:29 -0400


This show was memorable for a few reasons. It seems these days headlining acts do not want to have acts which are better than them opening up for them. This tour was a different story. The people I went to the show with wanted to see Rainbow. Nobody, I knew at this time, had a clue as to who REO Speedwagon was anyway.

Once the house lights dimmed, the standard Rainbow "Over the Rainbow" theme could be heard. The first song which was played was "Kill the King" from their album at the time "Long Live Rock & Roll". They also played Rainbow classics such as "Man on the Silver Mountain" "Mistreated" and "Still I'm Sad". Probably the two things that I remember the most of this show was the part when Ritchie Blackmore smashed his guitar in two and threw it out to the crowd. We were sitting about twenty rows back. We were much to far away to receive a souvenir like this.

The other thing I remember was during the song "Still I'm Sad" Cozy Powell had a monstrous drum solo which ended with a set of flame throwers which were on the front of the drum set go off. My face could feel the heat from these even though being twenty rows back. After Rainbow's set we stayed for REO's set but had to leave after about five minutes. That was about all we could stand of those guys.