This is the first appearance for Rainbow in the blog. Rainbow were of course a rock band spring off from the Deep Purple family, led by Ritchie Blackmore. Their most famous and go to album for teenage metal fans was Rainbow Rising (with its brilliant painted cover and gatefold sleeve - reproduced at the top of the post) which is represented well in the first half of this The Best Of compilation.
I had n't really appreciated how bombastic the music was, especially with Ronnie James Dio's singing. Stargazer is classic Rainbow and classic heavy rock often (at the time) near the top of best songs ever lists, up there with Stairway To Heaven and Freebird. Its most obvious bedfellow for me, though, with its slow build and slight ethnic atmosphere, is Led Zeppelin's Kashmir. All those bands were making music like this in the mid '70s.
Later in the '80s they went more mainstream with shorter rock numbers and even had a few single hits with tracks like All Night Long and I Surrender. Although not as epic as their older songs this move didn't represent a complete sellout to synthesizers and '80s production values although I do remember fans were unimpressed with new singer Graham Bonnet's haircut which was very non heavy metal.
The songs of the period aren't that remarkable but do retain a decent heavy rock edge. Various reformed versions of the band are still going generally under Blackmore's leadership but the original band disbanded in 1984.
In a similar vein we revisit more heavy rock with Led Zeppelin and The Scorpions (what a brilliant lead guitarist Uli Jon Roth was - he should be at least as famous as Jimmy Page).
However Klaus Schulze's gurgling worldy flavoured Picture Music is much more my thing these days.
Led Zeppelin - Physical Grafitti (cd 2)
Midlake - The Courage Of Others
John Legend - Get Lifted
Rainbow - The Best Of
Klaus Schulze - Picture Music
Klaus Schulze - Picture Music
Scorpions - Tokyo Tapes