Royal Albert Hall gig review Sat 25 Sep 1999

London is a great place...lived here all my life, and I can't predict the movement of mere mortals....this somehow explains why I was stuck in traffic, and why it took me an hour to travel the 12 miles from my house to the Royal Albert Hall. Managed to find a parking space (right outside the building) and made my way up to the circle where I was going to sit. First thing I noticed was that everyone around me were NOT speaking English...OK, Russian, Greek, German, you name it they were there, but got to my seat just as Ronnie Dio appeared on stage.
Missing the two first parts (The Malcolm Arnold composition and the two JL songs from "Pictured Within"), I was expecting Dio to thrill...and he did... After my initial giggles of seeing him next to IP's bass drum and being dwarfed by it, he gave a sensitive reproduction of "Sitting in a dream" from the BB album, and threw himself into "Love is all" which comes out of itself live, whilst a studio version sounds like a kids' nursery rhymne in comparison.

"Via Miami" and "That's why God is singing the blues" were Gillan's solo contributions to the evening, and personally I thought the weakest part of the gig. Probably due to the fact that they followed 2 songs more appropriate to this sort of event, to me they seemed out of place, although Gillan's performance was very solid.

"Night meets light" and "Take it to the top" were from Morse's stable, and I was waiting for this to be "Another Joe Satriani concert" (those who have ever been to a JS concert should know what I mean), but I was pleasantly surprised. Not being familiar with SM stuff, I expect all guitar instrumentals to be the same, but SM's performance by him and his band was filled with complexities and texture which made me really enjoy it.

"Wring that neck" closed the first half...but no guitarist...RB's part were replaced by a horn section giving this DP standard a more jazzy feel, and it worked well, but i was slightly grateful that they didnt keep it to "Scandinavian Nights" lengths!

OK, now for the concerto itself. I have to make one MASSIVE complaint, and it had nothing to do with the people on stage either. There were a minority of the audience who decided to show that their shoe size really is bigger than their IQ, by shouting stupid stereotypical Heavy Metal comments out at the most inappropriate times. I think some of the audience saw this as a DP gig, and miss the point completly..I mean you dont shout for "Demon's eye" in the middle of a very quiet violin part do you now? If the performance was average, it would have ruined the entire night. Some so called fans are so narrow minded, they like music with distored guitars and that's it. Deep Purple have always been about more that this, and it's those loud prattish fans that give us true DP fans a bad name. But as for the performance itself...polished is the word I would use. Technically perfect, and performed EXACTLY how it was meant to be performed. The hecklers really got to Jon Lord, and when IG came on stage to re-assure him, the hecklers started again, but JL is a total professional, and there are a hell of a lot of bands that could learn from just that one performance.

Finally the "shades of DP" section at the end. The main thing that I noticed was that IG didnt seem to be firing on all cylinders, why I dont know, just seemed subdude, during and between songs. The orchestral background for the 4 songs were varied... "Ted the Mechanic" was good, "Watching the sky" lost something tonight and the LSO didn't find it, "Sometimes I feel like screaming" worked well, but "Pictures of Home" was fantastic, and worked well, I hope they use that in the CD and push up the LSO a little in the mix, it blew my socks off. Finally a bit of cheese to end the night in the form of "Smoke on the water" with Dio and Gillan duetting...difficult concept to understand, but it seemed to work pretty well... Closing to a massive standing ovation from the crowd, so much so that they didn't go home, and two men near the stage were winding the crowd out so that so much noise was being made, it would have drowned out the orchestra easily. 15 minutes of this caused IG to come out to the stage say "Thank you, but Jon Lord is being sick in the toilet" to bring the night to an end... A weird evening, but a most enjoyable one.

Andy Kyriakides, Deep Purple fan for 10 years
London
UK

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