The MFN Club, Shipley Gate, Derbyshire
Sunday 5th October 2003
SUNDAY NIGHT ROCK SPECIAL
Saw’em when DJ-ing at The Whitehouse a couple of years back, even then I thought they were something a bit special, anyway playing up the road a bit, we packed up the gear and it’s "don’t spare the horses driver," I don’t want to miss any of the show.

The start of a once a month Sunday rock night, there’s a good crowd in as the sounds of Dorothy (Wizard of Oz) tell us it’s somewhere over the Rainbow.

RAINBOW RISING it looks mighty impressive up on stage, and when the band came on the place really came alive. ‘Kill the King’, Miss-Mistreated’, ‘I Surrender’, when we were all invited to join in the vocals, ‘Perfect Strangers’ ‘Catch the Rainbow’ ‘Do you Close your Eyes’, ‘Man on a Silver Mountain’ into guitar solo and Blues, back into ‘Silver Mountain, exactly as it was on the live album ‘Rainbow On Stage’.‘ Starstruck’, ‘Since you’ve been Gone’, ‘ All Night Long’, ‘ Black Night’, ‘Stargazer’, the first encore and I said, "that’s it," forgetting that Dave the Roadie (mine not theirs) is a Rainbow specialist.

When he said, "no it isn’t over, he’s done the same thing as Blackmore used to do, lay his Guitar on the top of the Amps," yeah, Dave knew he was coming back, ‘Long Live Rock n Roll’.So that’s how it went, a brilliant night of classic Rainbow, vocals, you couldn’t fault it, his voice went to perfect pitch on each number, Roy Chudobskyi on lead guitar looked like Blackmore and could play note for note like Blackmore, and before we forget, Keyboards on ‘Tarot Woman’, which I’ve somehow missed out, the long intro/solo was something special.

So all in all we had a brilliant night, Malc couldn’t have picked a better band to kick off the Sunday Rock Nights and Rainbow couldn’t ask for a better band than RAINBOW RISING to pay them tribute.

For me, Rainbow Rising are the best, no ifs or buts, end of story…. 

MICK MOONSHINE  'It's Only Rock 'N' Roll' Magazine - Issue 35