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A lot of presto for your vivace

Classical musician Amy Shafer (we’ve previously featured her take on Child in Time) listens to the Concerto for Group and Orchestra — well, the 3rd movement to be precise — and gives her analysis, praise, and critique of Jon’s opus. It is always interesting to see a fresh look on a familiar piece of music, […]

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Spotting a bargain

British tabloid Daily Mail has published a curious document — it is a price list, dated January 1969, from a London-based booking agent to hire various bands to play a function at The Queen’s College in Oxford. The most expensive band on the list is Fleetwood Mac at £500 a night, which the paper claims […]

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Laden with mystique and compulsion

A review of the Hallelujah single originally published in New Musical Express on August 2, 1969, was posted by Geir Myklebust in his blog Music History for Those Who Are Able to Read. Due to the brevity of the review, we take the liberty of reproducing it here in full. This is a review of […]

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Like a donkey

We’re not sure where this is from and we don’t know who did the interview, but here it is — Jon Lord talking about the original performance of Concerto for Group and Orchestra. Enjoy!

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From matings of giant pandas to mafia funeral

British paper The Guardian has published a retrospective of their coverage of heavy metal “from its inception almost 50 years ago”. The interesting part are the reproductions of two contemporary reviews of seminal Purple performances: the premiere of the Concerto for Group and Orchestra and the California Jam. Attempts to unite European “classical” music with […]

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Essener Pop & Blues retrospective on Rockpalast

German TV show Rockpalast will be showing on March 28 a 4 hour retrospective on the Essener Pop & Blues Festivals held in 1969 and 1970. The broadcast is touted to include excerpts from the shows, contemporary TV reports, and concert specials. Footage of Deep Purple performing in 1969 is known to exist, so fingers […]

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Essener Pop und Blues revisited

Longer clips from the Internationales Essener Pop und Blues Festival in October 1969 have surfaced on YouTube. We posted the first instalment before, but those are no longer available. The new clips have about 10 minutes of Mandrake Root and 7 minutes of Wring That Neck with better sound. Thanks to Igor Gillan-fan for posting […]

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Purpendicular and Concerto to be reissued

The seminal Purple album of the past 20 years — Purpendicular — will be reissued on CD on June 16th in the UK on an independent label Cherry Red Records. We have not been able to obtain from the label any clarification regarding whether it will be remastered or not, but my money is on […]

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Internationales Essener Pop And Blues Festival

Two new video fragments of the early Purple in full flight have surfaced on YouTube. Shot at the Essen Grugahalle in Germany on October 11, 1969. It was the Internationales Essener Pop And Blues Festival and other acts on the bill included Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream, Nice, and Hardin/York. We hope more of this footage […]

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P2

Nigel Young provides some background for this, ahem, unusual piece of cinematography:

It is the bizarre, avant garde and arty film, P2, by Werner Schretzmeier and Juergen Schmidt-Oehm…

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