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Blackmore\'s Night | Past Times With Good Company

A living rock legend makes a successful 180-degree career change.
CD, Steamhammer

Tekst: Vinodh Lalta

Publicatiedatum: 01 december 2002

Far too many people nowadays have grown unhappy with their jobs. But still they won't quit their current jobs for various reasons. Either they feel they're too old to go out and compete on the job market, or they lack the courage to leave a secure thing behind and chase after some dream. But, on the other hand, there are people who DO make the difficult decision to break with the past and follow their hearts.

Ritchie Blackmore is one of the latter. This man is a living hard rock legend, with a career spanning well over 25 years. During his time in both Deep Purple and Rainbow, he was responsible for a huge number of rock anthems, and he has influenced an entire generation of guitar players, such as Yngwie Malmsteen and Axel Rudi Pell.

But, as we found out a few years ago, Mr. Blackmore never really enjoyed the heavy guitar rock. Instead, he's always been fond of folk and medieval music. So, even though Rainbow had just made a glorious comeback with the already-classic album Stranger In Us All, Blackmore split up the band and put his rock guitar(s) aside.

Together with his longtime companion Candice Night, he founded Blackmore's Night. And after having graced the world for over a quarter of a century with his guitar riffs and lightning-fast solos, Mr. Blackmore now finally has the chance to play the medieval folk music he always wanted.

And even though this came as quite a shock for many rock fans (myself included), Blackmore's Night proved to be a huge success. They recorded three well-selling studio albums, and now, Past Times With Good Company,, their first live CD, is being released.

This double live album covers an entire show by Blackmore's Night and contains a selection of their finest songs, together with two songs from Blackmore's previous bands: Deep Purple ('Soldier Of Fortune') and Rainbow ('16th Century Greensleeves').

Even though the music by Blackmore's Night isn't nearly as heavy as Blackmore's earlier work, this album never becomes a drag. After all, "not heavy" doesn't necessarily mean "boring"! Okay, it IS something completely different than we were used to, but once you're over that, the music is actually quite pleasant.

The acoustic guitars, mandolin, and all the other medieval instruments, together with the vocals of Ms. Night and the other band members, are really soothing to the listener's ear. But there are also plenty of faster, energetic (passages in the) songs to prevent us from dozing off.

By the way, if you have the feeling that the song 'Fires At Midnight' sounds familiar, you might be right. For this song, Blackmore's Night used the same (500-year-old !) melody as the German band In Extremo did in the track 'Maria Virgin' on their first album Weckt Die Toten.

On Past Times With Good Company, great music is combined with a crystal clear live sound and the announcements of Ms. Night (for the song 'Home Again' — even in Dutch!) throw in a little bit of humor. With this live album, Ritchie Blackmore proves that 180-degree career changes ARE possible, even if you're a rock legend!

http://www.kindamuzik.net/recensie/blackmore-s-night/past-times-with-good-company/2102/
Meer Blackmore\'s Night op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/blackmore-s-night