Blackmore's Night- Shadow of The Moon & Berlin Night 17/12/1997 boots

My daily travels to and from work is more enjoyable when listening to my favourite albums rip to my mp3 player, and its a habit of mine to include a live bootleg of a recording made during shows related to that studio album. So you can hear how the songs progress and evolve from studio to playing live in a short space of time.

One cd I can say I really really like is Blackmore's Night first ever album called Shadow Of The Moon. I first bought it when it came out in about 1997, and 16 years later its still wonderful to my ears. The cd booklet is worn-off, and I think I already lost the back cover of the cd. Periodically, I still listen to this cd more then many others.
Lets talk the negatives out of the way...

Ritchie Blackmore's full devotion to Blackmore's Night, also his girlfriend/wife Candice Night and medival folk, RENAISSANCE music
- means we miss out on any  Rainbow reunions involving him and it will never be with Cozy Powell and Ronnie James Dio now gone.
- also even though Deep Purple, David Coverdale, Glenn Hughes and a few Rainbow ex-members are still active, I doubt the man in black wants to play with them again. Although I think he and Ian Gillan still got big problems. Its a real tragic from my point of view.

OK now having that out of the way, I want to say if you had never listen to this album, but you love or had enjoyed Ritchie Blackmore works or Rainbow with Dio castles,dragons and dungeons era or Robin Hood's Renaissance music, romantic dreamy Scarborough Fair music etc, then this album will be perfect from start to finish.

I have no problem listening to every track, 
so my favourite songs are Shadow Of the Moon, The Clock Ticks On, Be Mine Tonight, Play Minstrel Play, Ocean Gypsy, Magical World, Writting On The Wall, Renaissance Faire, No Second Chance, Spirit Of The Sea, Greensleeves, Wish You Were Here
and the three Ritchie Blackmore instrumentals Minstrel Hall, Memmingen and Mond Tanz.
Basically every song from the cd.

Some of the above are traditional songs, the popular Greensleeves, that Ritchie Blackmore plays live during the Rainbow period,
and even a bit of Tchaikovsky.

ok now moving on to a live bootleg of that era...
This one is called Berlin Night recorded December 17, 1997 at Passionskirche Berlin, with additional few songs from Dec 11 Mainz and Dec 16 Koln.
Some highlights,
- the intro itself which include some Deep Purple hints
- Shadow Of the Moon live has an extra intro verse.
- Under The Violet Moon was played from the yet released 2nd album
- St Teresa...that Joan Osborne song was played, and it fits in perfectly.
- Candice Night talks abit about Rainbow, ""run by a powerful EVIL WIZARD"" and they start to play Temple Of The King and listening to this reminds me how I really love Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow.
Other Rainbow songs played was 16th Century Greensleeves, Ariel, Still I'm Sad, Man On The Silver Mountain, a bit of Difficult To Cure and Deep Purple's Black Night. The last from another night.
- Plus some great songs from the Shadow Of The Moon, though I wish they should have played more from this album.