Rises Over Japan (No Label)
Approximate Running Time 83 min, Color NTSC Segment 1-6 Bodokan, Tokyo, Japan 15th December 1975, Deep Purple Segment 7-8 Pop Deux French TV Paris, France 8th October 1970, Deep Purple Segment 9 Hammersmith Odeon, London, UK 9th May 1974, Deep Purple Segment 10-16 Trivoli Koncertsal, Copenhagen, Denmark 22nd September 1976, Rainbow Segment 17-28 Falkoner Teatret, Copenhagen, Denmark 1st October 1977 , Rainbow: Introduction, Burn, Love Child, Smoke On The Water, You Keep On Moving, Highway Star, Wring That Neck, Mandrake Root, Intro, Burn, Intro, 16th Century Greensleeves 1, 16th Century Greensleeves 2, Catch The Rainbow 1, Catch The Rainbow 2, Guitar Crash, Do You Close Your Eyes, Intro, Over The Rainbow, Kill The King 1, Kill The King 2, Mistreated, Guitar Solo (Mistreated), 16th Century Greensleeves, Long Live Rock and Roll, Guitar Solo/ Lazy, Guitar Solo (Still I’m Sad), Guitar Crash (Do You Close Your Eyes)
Rises over Japan is a new release from a no label company that collects a range of material ranging from must see to collectors only. It starts of in fine fashion with the video of the December 75 gig with the Mark IV line up, I love the Bolin era purple and feel the Come Taste The Band, Days May Come, KBFH releases and This Time Around are essential to everyone’s Purple collection. The entire concert was filmed and then a hastily half hour of footage was put out after the break up of the band and tragic death of Tommy Bolin. The copy used for this release is almost excellent in quality, the best I have personally seen and is a fantastic watch. It is nice they chose two tracks from the CTTB record and the latter, You Keep On Moving, is a personal favorite.
Smoke on the Water is cut, omitting Glen Hughes take of Georgia on my Mind. The Japanese audience is whipped into a frenzy by the time Highway Star is played an members of the audience try, some successfully, to get on stage. It is also interesting to see the roadie at the side stage try and keep order as photographers and camera operators try to capture the action. All in all even though is just a fragment of the concert it is an exciting to watch. The next two tracks are the Mark II band playing for French TV with the band surrounded by the audience. They play two Mark I tracks with gusto. Wring That Neck is fantastic to watch with Ritchie Blackmore leading the band with incredible solo after solo ranging from quiet picking to jazz improvisation that has to be seen.
Mandrake Root is more the showcase for Jon Lord and his also rises to the occasion, manipulating his organ and get some great effects. The quality of the footage is very good, I have a copy with a slightly better picture obtained from a Internet torrent site, audio is of very good quality also. The final Deep Purple track is also professionally recorded and unfortunately was the only portion of the concert filmed of Deep Purple Mark III’s appearance at the Hammersmith Odeon in support of the Burn record. The recording captures the instrumental intro and the first number Burn. The footage shows its age but is very good, the audio quality is a little muffled but not bad. The footage is great, capturing the band surrounded by dry ice as they rip into Burn.
The remaining footage is the collectors only part of the DVD and showcases Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow in audience filmed concerts that of poor audio and average at best video quality and is just fragments of the show. Some people can enjoy this type of footage, others don’t. I find myself in the former category, I saw Blackmore in Deep Purple in the 80’s so to be able to watch him in his prime is a treat. He attacks his guitar with savagery and is a real showman. This being said I think if the producers of this DVD would have been better off the include more Deep Purple footage to round off the DVD instead of using the Rainbow Footage. The DVD comes housed in a clamshell style case with great shots of the Mark IV band in action and I must give this release a thumbs up on the strength of the Deep Purple footage as it gives us a nice overview of what an important band they were (and still are).
1 Comment
The Bolin MKIV footage was released earlier this year on silver disc DVD with other nice vintage DP footage. Not sure how it compares quality wise with this release but based on what relayer has written it sounds like this version may be better quality. Here is what I wrote back a few monthes ago……..
“The MK4 Bolin Purple footage has been released before on silver DVD as I have a title on the Crime Crow Productions label titled “16 Gold Bars” which I picked up 2-3 months ago. It has the same 5 songs as reported to be on the “Rises Over Japan” title. The Bolin footage on the 16 Bars release is 30 minutes in length and is a little dark and is several gens removed from the master as the faces get fuzzy on distance shots and the colored stage lights bloom a little but still very enjoyable to see Tommy Bolin Purple footage…The 16 Bars title also has very good footage with 4 songs (MKII) from July 14th, 1970 Granada TV, Two songs (MK2)from the POP2 French show October 8, 1970 in watchable quality, 2 songs (MK2)from Hofstra U May 27th 1973 in watchable quality, two songs (MK1)from Playboy After Dark October 23, 1968 in watchable quality, and three bonus songs (MK2) with no date which look like lip sinc’d promo videos…All in all a very nice selection of early 70’s Purple in decent quality…Highly recommended”