Rainbow Sounds Too Good

Zebonka12 wrote:

I've never understood why they felt the need to add so many unrealistic harmonies to this gig. Maybe they thought listeners were more naive back in the day, or didn't have access to other 70's gigs to compare to.

Talk about hitting the proverbial nail on the head.

All that Zebonka said, plus the fact that Justin Bieber sucks. Ok? That's the meaning of life. That's why the Rainbow sounds too good.

Rick wrote:

The harmonies on Fairy Feller sound legit according to my ears. Roger and Brian sound very strong on that one.

Their harmonies in the seventies were pretty impressive.

Yeah - it's clearly only three parts, and still sounds terrific. There'd certainly at least be remnants of the original vocals if they were overdubbed, wouldn't there?

bucsateflon wrote:

golden ear syndrome

"Their harmonies in the seventies were pretty impressive"

I've been listening to a couple of unreleased 70's gigs where the harmonies are competent, but nevertheless very sparse and rough sounding, vs. the Rainbow gig which has always had studio quality stuff thrown on the top.

They were good, but they weren't that good, and it's not really a coincidence that they sounded mysteriously way better on the one filmed gig that they had notions of releasing/screening/whatever.

It's not even a problem that they overdubbed stuff; I for one was just exploring what their thinking might have been when they were doing it.

Zebonka12 wrote:

"Their harmonies in the seventies were pretty impressive"

I've been listening to a couple of unreleased 70's gigs where the harmonies are competent, but nevertheless very sparse and rough sounding, vs. the Rainbow gig which has always had studio quality stuff thrown on the top.

But still much fuller and more frequent than what they were doing by the Magic Tour.


I honestly don't care that the Rainbow's backing vocals are overdubbed. They sound better that way. Plus, it's not as though it's some kind of tampering, it's just some stuff they sang in the studio over the top of it afterwards. It's still Queen singing harmonies in 1974/75 that we're listening to, which is valuable in and of itself.

"They sound better that way. Plus, it's not as though it's some kind of tampering"

We have the albums for that.

"which is valuable in and of itself"

As a historical document, maybe. What might've been more valuable to me was a high quality, unfucked recording of Queen in the 70's.

I bought Rainbow and I love it, but it's a cock-up to stubbornly hang onto those overdubs. It's Brian May saying to my face, "meh, I don't think our audience is smart enough to know the difference".
It's a tad haughty for me.