Sunday, June 1, 2014

CD Odyssey Disc 625: Rainbow

Ordinarily, today would be my last day off before heading back to work. Instead, I took next week off to recharge my batteries. So far, it feels great. I’ve had drinks with friends, worked in a fun game of Ultimate, played plenty of Arkham Horror with Sheila and generally had a good time – and I’m just getting started.

Disc 625 is…. Rising
Artist: Rainbow

Year of Release: 1976

What’s up with the Cover? A giant fist rises from the deep, clutching a rainbow. I love this album cover, which is exactly as over the top as seventies rock albums should look.

How I Came To Know It:  My friend Spence is an aficionado of all things related to seventies hard rock. He put me on to the band “Rainbow” after he told me that Ronnie James Dio was their lead singer for their first three records. I bought their debut record, “Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow” first and liked it – “Rising” was my next stop as I drilled through their collection.

How It Stacks Up:  I have three of Rainbow’s albums, coinciding with the only three where Dio is the lead singer. Of the three, “Rising” is pretty awesome, but so is “Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow”. Those two albums are so different that it really depends on what kind of mood I’m in in terms of which one is better. Today I’m in a mood to put “Rising” second.

Rating:  3 stars but almost 4

The mid-seventies were a great time for hard rock, and “Rising” is a good example of why that is; powerful, innovative and not afraid to take chances.

The band’s debut, “Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow” came out a year prior and was a mix of progressive rock and Allman Brothers type blues riffs. “Rising” is very different. It is a lot heavier, more akin to the late seventies metal that would follow it than the psychedelic sixties that preceded it.

The album is anchored by the prodigious talent of guitarist and band founder Ritchie Blackmore (of Deep Purple fame) and Ronnie James Dio (of not-so-famous band “Elf”). Blackmore and Dio share writing credits on all the songs, and for the most part I like the result. The songs sound like a combination of the Deep Purple prog-psychadelia and the operatic rock sensibilities that Dio would later bring to Black Sabbath when he joined them a few years later.

Dio is blessed with one of the great voices of rock, and on “Rising” he is allowed to soar and show off. Blackmore’s guitar is restrained where it needs to be, but has a nice bluesy quality to it that keeps the nerdy song topics from becoming too ridiculous.

As with Dio’s later career, many of the songs seem to be right on the edge of being about something really important, but you can never fully figure out just what he is going on about. Apparently there is a “Tarot Woman” and at some point we are invited to “Run With the Wolf” but I can never figure out exactly why.

The album’s best song “Stargazer,” is at least recognizably about something; a wizard that builds some massive tower in the desert, while the people suffer around him. It isn’t clear why he does this, but I am given to understand that wizards like to build towers in mysterious wastelands. It is a thing. Even Dio admits:

“We build a tower of stone
With our flesh and bone
Just to see him fly
We don’t know why.”

Also, this song has at least three killer riffs that build perfectly off one another throughout the eight and half epic minutes of this track. If halfway through “Stargazer” you are not playing air guitar (or drums) then this type of music is simply not for you. Go read about the Beatles. I happen to love songs packed with power chords that are about fantastical landscapes, so I think it is brilliant.

As you may have guessed, “Rising” is decidedly not radio friendly. There are only six tracks, and two of them are eight minute monsters (the other, “A Light In the Black” is OK, but no “Stargazer”).

Don’t look for ballads on “Rising” – this is an up-tempo record with a lot of fury. There is none more furious than “Do You Close Your Eyes” which sounds like an eighties metal song ten years ahead of its time. I love the power guitar, and the thick crunchy sound. Unfortunately, the chorus founders a bit with some questionable chord progressions that saps some of the song’s energy. Also, the chorus “do you close your eyes/when you’re making love” is a bit goofy. The song is clearly about the singer’s girlfriend so…er…wouldn’t he know?

As is often the case with great rock music, it takes two big egos warring with one another to make great songs, and the tension between Blackmore and Dio’s styles is palpable on “Rising” but that tension only makes it better.


Best tracks: Run With the Wolf, Stargazer

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