You're right, Over The Rainbow is a "new version" of legendary "Rainbow". You see, it's a commercial project. They only play old songs without making sth new. Nevertheles, I'm tremendously grateful to them. Thanks to OTR I'm exploring original Rainbow music. Now I can say that I was quite lucky to miss Monsters Of Rock. We were finding out where we can get money for the tickets back when we saw info about the upcoming concert. We didn't know at all who were Rainbow, but decided to exchange our Monsters' tickets for OTR ones. Fortunately, the organisators were able to do such an exchange. I found the setlist from last-year shows and began listening to their music. I didn't pay much attention to them at that time. They sounded quite different from Scorps... british rock is really special, you know... So... On 1st October I and my dad went to the ex-cinema where the concert was held. At first we were surprised to see rather big crowd surrounding the building. We've met dad's colleague, chated for a bit and then went iside the building. The prices for OTR stuff were quite high as always before the concerts, so we didn't buy anything. We had to wait for about 15 minutes in the hall and I noticed a girl in an old Rainbow t-shirt back from the 80s (I thought then "gee...what a great fan she must be"). Skipping waiting, finding seats and so on... The lights faded and the show begun. At first I just listened the songs and clapped, but after the third song I couldn't resist and started singing. I didn't know only two songs then - Can't Let You Go and Gates Of Babylon. Uhh... Joe sings perfectly... He asked the audience to come closer to the stage. (You see, it was an ex-cinema, so there were only seats without any space for a dance-floor) People managed to find themselves place in front of the scene. We didn't go there because we were in the middle of the row and could have fallen in the darkness trying to get down from our places... The concert was amazing... Rondinelly on drums rocked the audience! And the keybord solo in Tarot Woman and Can't Let You Go just blew my mind away... 2 and a half hours passed away a lot more quickly than I thought they would...
On our way home I sang lines from different songs, for example Eyes Of The World, I Surrender... Next day I wrote a couple lines about the concert in "russian facebook" called "vkontakte". And one girl who also was on the concert found me. I was surprised to find out she was the one wearing that old t-shirt! Haha! She's a fan of Scorps too so we chat a lot now. It's great to find somebody in your city with same interests. And the concert gave me a lot of energy. I felt rather miserable for two weeks before it... Now I listen mostly to Rainbow... those three albums with Joe Turner are my favourites... I tend to listen only to a new band for me when I realize that it will become one of my favourites. That was really a night to remember...