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Over the Rainbow
(bootleg CD)

1. Take Your Hands Out Of My Pockets (4:11)
2. Here Comes The Night (3:23)
3. I Just Want To Make Love To You (5:40)
4. Brown Eyed Girl (3:15)
5. Moonshine Whiskey (7:16)
6. Moondance (5:26)
7. Bring Me My Nightshirt (2:41)
8. Domino (4:40)
9. Caravan (8:46)
10. Cypress Avenue (5:41)
11. One More Time (3:01)
12. If You And I Could Be As Two (3:14)
13. Gloria (3:35)
14. Hey Girl (5:07)
15. My Lonely Sad Eyes (2:42)
16. Mystic Eyes (3:06)
    Total time: (71:44)

Review by David Walker:
This should've been a classic boot. The material is, at the very least, of significant historical value. But the disc is disappointing. The Rainbow sound, though quite listenable, isn't nearly as good as its TV/radio simulcast origins would promise. The Deventer sound is poor, even damaged at times -- worse than Amsterdam's Tapes.

This historic show -- Van's earliest booted live performance? -- has only appeared previously on the rare vinyl boot Please, No Moke!. This first CD appearance sounds as though it could've been taken straight from that notoriously bad-sounding lp. But the new CD's worst offense, and the one that actually ruins the disc for me, is its mutilation of "Cyprus Avenue" - the dramatic climax of the Rainbow performance. Halfway through the song -- just as Van gets intensely quiet with "And you were standing there...." -- there's a loud buzz of static, a Dutch voice introducing VM's first Deventer number, and an electronic whistling sound; Van and the Blizzards start playing "One More Time," and it's the Deventer show from there till the end. Damn! Just when "Cyprus Avenue" was beginning its final four-minute climactic build. Talk about your coitus interruptus! This rude yank out of "Cyprus" totally devastates the disc, imho. It's hard to tell if it's accidental or some misguided, deliberate attempt to fit everything onto the one disc; the disc as is runs just a few seconds over 71 minutes, so four more minutes of "Cyprus Ave." shouldn't have been a problem.

Other notes:
Much of this Rainbow show was used for Van's 1973 live LP, It's Too Late To Stop Now. This show is notable for three songs ("Moondance", "Brown Eyed Girl", and "Moonshine Whiskey") that weren't on ITLTSN or the unreleased acetates of this LP.

The show was broadcast simultaneously on stereo FM radio and on BBC TV's Old Grey Whistle Test. I think this was one of the earliest stereo radio broadcasts, and the first simultaneous TV/radio broadcast of a "rock" concert. (Alan Lloyd, London, England)

Part of the van-the-man.info unofficial website