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

Karlsruhe review

Hello Purple world,
and greetings to some nice a.m.d-p people we met at Karlsruhe. But - sorry, Andi, Joachim and Ralf - I can't agree with your reviews of the Karlsruhe concert. The hall, bad acoustics, the silly procedure at the entrance (it's easier to put an H-bomb into Pentagon than to enter a DP concert with an umbrella...) - we simply cannot blame DP for these annoyances. Setlist disappointment? Well, we all knew the setlist before, still hoping for some of those surprises Big Ian talked about in an earlier interview. But let's face it: Nowadays DP will always disappoint half of their audiences, no matter what the setlist looks like. Yes, songs like Fools or Flight of the Rat would be true surprises for elder fans, while some of the younger ones - and there were plenty of them, including some ~10 - 12 years old boys - might not even recognize them. Yes, there could have been a little bit more improvisation within the new songs. But we can't have it all, DP played 18 songs, including 6 1/2 NEW!!! songs from /-\. To satisfy all DP maniacs, the concert would not have finished yet....

My personal impressions of this concert: DP as a band have not been this tight, precise, joyful for ~ 14 years. Old songs like SKOW (new arrangement), Hush, Lazy fit perfectly into the set. Gillan sings and screams like in the 70s. Yes, he has become even bigger - so have I (nobody would critisize, for example, BB King because of his weight, the music is the important thing) but who cares....

Yes, the concert was predictable at times, but apart from this, I found no weak minute from Hush to HS. Unfortunately, DMMH seems to have been permanently dropped and there was no second encore. Otherwise an enjoyable evening showing 5 exceptional musicians at their best. If only the concert would have been looooooonger....

Looking forward to Hanau....

Joachim Eichhorn

PS: Finally, one thing REALLY p***ed me off: The merchandisers charged 45,- DM for a t-shirt, 17,- DM for simple stickers, no mugs or tour books in sight ---> THANKS, BUT THANKS NO!


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