[ d e e p P u r . p l e ) The Highway Star

Review: Deep Purple, 08/06/1999 Dresden

I'm back from the show in Dresden and wanted to give some quick impressions.

Venue was kind of an Amphitheater, maybe 4000 people.

Show started half an hour late, as they experienced problems with the custom on the Czech border, equipment arrived two(!) hours late (a big applause for the crew, who worked a miracle).

Support act was a rock act called "Lenny Wolf's Kingdom Come" or something, great rock with blues influences, they will (as I have heard) be the support act for the rest of the German tour.

Light show was a weak point, the lights were hanging way too low and were irritating to both the audience and the band.

Same setlist as Heppenheim and Weissenfels, so I won't repeat it.

Same goes for the performance, you can copy-and-paste the Weissenfels review...

So just the things different from Weissenfels, saves time ;-)

Gillan was better than in Weissenfels, better and more screaming, also the vocals/guitar duel was more interesting.

Lord with even more fire than before, longer and more enthusiastic solos, incredible performance.

Now for some tidbits: - Jamming: "69" is coming along well, the middlepart, based on "The Mule" and "Paint it Black", is used for some free improvisation by the band, different every time up till now. Same goes for "PoH", which shows DP at their best; they start and end with "PoH", but the middle part doesn't bear any recognition to the studio version anymore and changes from night to night.

- Paiceys drum solo: At a very fast part he used only one arm, holding the other one up in the air, waving into the audience...

- During "A Parade" Steve lost his pick, which I did only see but didn't hear since he just switched while playing to a different style and didn't miss a note...

- Gillan had another little discussion with a security guy, who was smoking in front of the stage. Ian, disturbed by the smoke, just pulled the cigarette out of the hands of the guy and threw it away. The guy (who probably had heard stories :-) quickly went away and wasn't been seen for the rest of the evening...

This must be enough for now, see you in Hamburg.

Christian Rutz


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