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Headbanging presidents
Musical tastes of the current Russian president Dmitry Medvedev have been well publicized. Undoubtedly, Finnish president Tarja Halonen was aware of this when choosing entertainment for the official state dinner this Monday April 20 in honour of Medvedev’s visit to Finland — she invited singer Timo Kotipelto and guitarist Matias Kupiainen (both from Stratovarius) and Jani Liimatainen (Sonata Arctica) to perform for the guests. After they performed two Stratovarius songs and a cover of Burn, Medvedev demanded an encore. Voice.fi reports:
Singer Timo Kotipelto performed yesterday to an influential audience. Renowned metal-fan, Russian president Dmitri Medvedev listened to Kotipelto’s gig with excitement and according to Ilta-Sanomat magazine didn’t let the man off the stage after three songs.
Kotipelto says, that an assistant gripped his sleeve when he was leaving the stage and asked for one more song. By then Kotipelto had already played Stratovarius hits Hunting High And Low and Black Diamond and Deep Purple’s Burn. According to Kotipelto the president wanted an encore and got Rainbow’s song I Surrender as an extra.
Timo Kotipelto got an invitation to perform for the president a week and a half ago. He committed to the unusual gig, if he only found a guitarist to accompany him. Kotipelto joined with former Sonata Arctica guitarist Jani Liimatainen and Matias Kupiainen from Stratovarius: “I thought, that lets do this special thing and play with two guitars.”
Stratovarius’ cover of I Surrender from their compilation Intermission (2001)
buy it from Amazon:
Thanks to Blabbermouth and Stratovarius.com forum for the info.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
“According to Kotipelto the president wanted an encore and got Rainbow’s song I Surrender as an extra.”
Oh yes sure,
April 24th, 2009 at 10:16perhaps under the serious threat of Putin ..
PLAGIATISN like COVERAGE – Make money with other flowers.
April 24th, 2009 at 13:35OTR is a lot better… RAINBOW origianlly the best of all.
Well, since the song is written by Russ Ballard, also Rainbow’s version is a cover 😉
April 26th, 2009 at 21:20Nope!
My boy never recorded the track. He did perform it live though, but thats different. He kept his publicity rights but put it on the market so Rainbow still claims it as their original recording, but not their composition.
He recorded ‘Since You’ve Been Gone’ though, but no need to check it out due to it’s inferiority.lol!
April 29th, 2009 at 08:29I’m not quite sure I get it, does a tune belong to the one who happened to tape it first? Say Ballard actually would record I Surrender, would that then be a cover version, making the writer a follower?
April 30th, 2009 at 09:49Good question, Kimmen. It gets even more interesting when you consider that the only recording of “I Surrender” involving Mr. Ballard himself is done by another band, German power metallers At Vance, with Ballard as a guest…
If you have Spotify, the track can be found here:
http://open.spotify.com/track/4HmrOzHkDF6cBOXj1vjUmm
April 30th, 2009 at 10:17BTW, the Stratovarius album mentioned above also contains a cover of Rainbow’s “Kill the King”.
April 30th, 2009 at 10:21Stratovarius did those two Rainbow songs justice, albeit staying very close to the originals and therefore adding nothing new to the arrangements , but still…Kotipelto is a good metal singer, good floorball player & a nice guy to have a drink with. Yep.
Kippis from Finland, rock on Purple-people
April 30th, 2009 at 19:04Cool, I like their versions of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons even better though. (I wonder who made the first recording of that work, making the rest of the orchestras around the world followers, plagiarists and coverbands.)
May 1st, 2009 at 14:35