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2010-01-30 – Ian Paice – La Coruña
| Who | Ian Paice |
| When |
Saturday, January 30, 2010
20:00
-
All Ages
|
| Where |
La Coruña, Spain
|
| Other Info | Performing with a Deep Purple tribute band Hush drum clinic at 10 pm; show starts at 10.30 pm tickets €20-25 |
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
I think that, if I should give this concert a title, it should be “We’ve been (a strange kind of) mistreated”. And, I know, I should explain why.
Ian Paice & Hush were to play in both Vigo (where the second oldest DP’s fan club is placed, with their own “Hush magazine” and all) and A Coruña this weekend, and I wanted to be at the latter one with some friends. So I bought some tickets, which were a bit more expensive than what was said in the adds due to some supposed “management expenses”, but that’s something that only has to do with the record store were I bought them, so it’s as easy as never coming back to that store. Anyone living in A Coruña knows what store I’m talking about so I won’t post its name here.
The next weird thing was that the tickets were written in both Spanish… and Italian (?!) …or so, since we decided that even the Italian parts were not correctly written. A funny thing anyway 😀
And then the kind of strange thing. We were told (as here on thehighwaystar.com is written) the concert would begin some time around 23:00, with a previous “drum clinic” at 22:00. That’s what the tickets had written on them, and it’s almost exactly what we could read about this show here at thehighwaystar.com. But, guess what, there we were at 21:45 and a really small queue of about 10 people were waiting, with absolutely no signs whatsoever of anything happening inside (the place has some big glass windows, so you can see the inside very easily), actually the lights were off.
It was strange, and then someone said he had talked to one of the venue’s managers and that nothing would happen until midnight, which was a few minutes confirmed by another one who went and talk to some other venue’s staff. What’s more, there would be no clinic at all. And what’s even more, some said that last night at Vigo had been kind of an outrageous event: no clinic neither, being late and that Paice himself had only played about five songs and gone home. So we feared something like that happened here.
But after some few drinks in a near bar everything went much better ;D. At some minutes to midnight we were again queueing at the door, and we could see Mr. Paice from the outside checking the sound (or so). Right at midnight doors were open and we were in. Half an hour later they began playing… and damn they play good.
Gaetano Salustri at the bass was great, always there, though he never made a solo. Also played as a translator to the singer ;D. Marco Palazzi at the keyboards was really good at his solos and “being there” with the rythm, though he almost couldn’t be heard at some points, mostly at the beginning, but this happened also with the guitar, played by Danilo Antonini… and for God’s sake, what a way to play. They three were really good, particularly the guitar player. I must, I mean, I MUST say they played some songs included in the legendary “Made in Japan”, and they simply nailed it. I mean it. Improvisations included.
And then we have the singer, which was fun, a real impersonation of the manners of Ian Gillan, and a real match for his voice as a tribute band. I don’t expect anybody to have Gillan’s voice some 20 or 30 years back, but Andrea Strappetti really made me not missing Gillan too much ;-). I can’t say too much about their “official drummer” as they called, since he played just a few songs at the end, with his own drums, having kind of a duel between him and Ian Paice. It was fun, I’d never seen a drummers’ duel live before, and sounded good.
And finally Mr. Paice. I would try and say something new about this guy but… after more than 40 years playing around… I guess there’s not much I could tell to describe it. It was simply perfect. He had come to conquer and he did it. No previous clinic we had paid for? it doesn’t quite matter, we attended a master class in live execution of drum playing.
It went mad when people started some kind of chants (showing our “we’re having fun” mood) between two songs, and he just improvised the sound with the drums, making us all follow him for a little while.
In the end, right under two hours of Deep Purple’s essence, played by a few guys who love music and play music as much as they love it.
I would repeat it tomorrow if it couldn’t be today.
January 31st, 2010 at 22:07il mio assolo e’ stato fatto su “hush”
February 1st, 2010 at 09:30@gaetano salustri I must say I’m sorry. The thing with “Hush” is something pretty much like the thing with “The Highway Star” (only that this was the opener) and some others. I was so into the music, kind of dancing (if dancing can be redefined as jumping and moving around in pseudo-epileptic ways) and singing that I, let’s say, took it as whole and didn’t notice it. But one friend of mine says it was a short but really nice solo.
By the way, I loved the bass at “Perfect Strangers”, and for the love of God, there were some songs that if you stood still (if possible) for a little while, you could feel the rythm of the bass in your legs coming as vibrations through the ground. At some point in the final “Smoke on the Water” I thought something like “it burnt down the gambling house” could really happen there ;-).
I really mean this: you nail it. I will be more than happy if you ever come back near and cand go and see you, with or without any DP member, since I truly recommend you to any DP fan. Truly.
February 1st, 2010 at 21:54muchas gracias
February 3rd, 2010 at 16:40