Being a SCAdian, it is only inevitable that I should have become acquainted with the music of Blackmore's Night. My wife had purchased some of their CDs some time ago, possibly at a Pennic years ago, and thanks to those CDs, I have been wearing the bits off of a spot on one of my hard-drives, as a day almost never goes by without me listening to their songs.

For those of you not familiar with Blackmore's Night, it is a band which was formed in the mid-90's by Richie Blackmore (of Deep Purple and "Smoke in the Water" fame, as well as Rainbow) and Candice Night. Their music is a combination of Renaissance and Rock, or as Richie puts it, it is "Renn and Roll". As such, it is in a niche pretty much all its own, but which can I feel potentially appeal to a very wide audience. I have even pointed some of my friends who are more into other music such as hard rock, techno, Euro-pop, and such, and the comments I got back were that they really liked the songs.

When you listen to their songs, you may notice that they often borrow a theme from other songs we know, but then will overlay it with something to make it all their own. No plain sampling for this band! I do know that their songs can go from the playful ("3 Black Crows"), to somewhat sad ("Hanging Tree"), to serious ("The Times They Are A Changin'"), or to romantic ("Be Mine Tonight", "All Because of You", or the wistful "Ghost of a Rose"). With very few exceptions, they are all songs which will reach deep inside you to make their emotions felt.

Links:

• The Official Richie Blackmore and Blackmore's Night Website
• Blackmore's Night on MySpace
• "Smoke on the Water" on Wikipedia.

  
  

• Find Blackmore's Night on Amazon

  
  

• A blog interview with Candice Night on litpark