The album and show starts off with the wonderful "Spotlight Kid", where Joe really showcases his best. As one of the songs he has performed on he knows where and how to sing it, and this comes across brilliantly, full of the energy and enthusiasm it exudes and deserves. A terrific opening track. This is followed by "Love's No Friend" from the Down to Earth album, and is almost the mirror image of the opening song. It lacks that fire and energy, and falls back into the category that the band had begun to seek from this point in time, the cracking of the mainstream market in the United States. There's nothing overly terrible about the song, and it's obvious that this is where Joe's vocals are at their best, in this kind of song, and he equals Bonnet's original version. But as a great Rainbow song? No, sorry. Next comes "I Surrender", another of the JLT fronted songs that he does the best on. Following this comes a somewhat stilted and difficult version of "Man on the Silver Mountain". Honestly, what were they trying to do here? This is almost like an 'easy listening' version of this great track, dominated here by the keyboard (which should be settled nicely in the background, but instead dominates) and with Joe going a completely different route with the vocals from the originals. Oh dear. "Catch the Rainbow", on the other hand, may not be Dio-esque, but Joe does do quite a good job on the song, and Ritchie loves to play along in this kind of atmosphere and situation. The ability to freeform and extend the song to the band's liking always come in handy as well. Though it again takes up time that another song or two could have filled. Another song off the new album being toured, "Can't Happen Here" comes in next, and again Joe is comfortable in its execution.
"Lost in Hollywood" is a disappointment. Joe's singing of the song is wildly disproportionate to the original version with Bonnet on vocals, and that is a pity. It fuses in parts of "A Light in the Black" - which would have been better hearing Joe have a crack at the full version... or, after this, perhaps it was best not. Still, it should and could have been a lot better. This then segues straight into "Difficult to Cure", which sounds as terrific as it always does. Then Joe has a turn at trying to reproduce "Long Live Rock and Roll". Now, this is a difficult task again. Rainbow's original vocalist pretty much has a mortgage on how to sing his own songs. I guess, as with most of his material, Joe tries to turn this into a commercial version and vision of the song. That's pretty tough, and perhaps for those seeing the band live back then 35 years ago they could accept it as it is performed In the end we run into the same problems that faced the version of "Man on the Silver Mountain earlier". I think listening to it here, any version with Dio singing on it is a better version of the song.
Then we come to "Smoke on the Water", with a little bit of "Lazy" and "Woman From Tokyo" at the start. Now, here we are some six years after Ritchie had left Deep Purple, and he still felt it necessary to re-include this song into the band's set list. Personally, if he had done an instrumental medley, pasting together some of the best riffs from his Purple days, it would have been much more effective. Really, if you go to see Rainbow, with five albums worth of material behind them by this point in time, do you really want this played instead of one or two others? What about "Stargazer"? "Or "Gates of Babylon"? Was Joe less intimidated singing "Smoke on the Water" than these two songs? It seems strange.
As a recording of a moment in time, this has its place. It sounds great, the band is in good form, Joe does his job (as already discussed, with highs and lows), and Ritchie... well, is Ritchie. If you are a fan of the band you will enjoy this, even despite some of things I have said here. It just... could have been better... on any number of levels.
Rating: "You're in love with the spotlight". 4/5
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