Dixie Dregs will tour the States in March, reuniting the lineup that recorded their first major label album — the 1977 Free Fall — Steve Morse and Rod Morgenstein will be joined by Allen Sloan, Steve Davidowski, and Andy West. 8 dates in total have been announced so far, starting with Atlanta on March 3, 2018 (and already sold out), and finishing on March 24 in Chicago. The tour is billed as The Dawn of The Dregs.

Blackmore camp has announced two Rainbow dates in Russia: April 8 in Moscow and 11th in St. Petersburg. Judging by the promo picture of the band, the lineup is apparently the same as 2016 and 2017 shows.

Full details for the upcoming shows are in our calendar.

The sixth Jon Lord memorial concert will be held in Warsaw, Poland, on October 26. This year Doogie White will be a special guest of the event. He will be joined on stage by a variety of local musicians, including Polish heavy metal band Turbo and keyboard player Andrzej Zieliński from Skaldowie.

This will be a charity event — proceeds will go to the benefit of Antek Pańczyk, a 6 year old boy with spinal muscular atrophy. His dad will also perform on stage.

What: VI Jon Lord memorial concert
When: October 26, 2017, at 20:00
Where: Klub Proxima, ul. Żwirki i Wigury 99, 00-001 Warszawa, Poland
Tickets: ticketpro.pl and ebilet.pl.

And once you are at it, be sure to check out Child in Time from the last year event with Tomek Struszczyk on the vocals:

Thanks to Łukasz Jakubowicz for the info.

On Thursday 16 November, Radio 2’s Jo Whiley will welcome Deep Purple into the BBC Radio Theatre for a very special In Concert performance!

Tickets will be drawn at random, to UK residents only, and Photo ID will be required!

Full details here

If you cannot view Deep Purple’s new video for The Surprising, you probably don’t live in the United States, Germany, France, Italy or Switzerland.

These countries have been given first dips on the video together with prominent media coverage earlier today, October 4.

In Germany, Stern were able to show The Surprising video exclusively to their readers, while in France, Italy, the United States and Switzerland other media did the same.

Ultimate Classic Rock, USA
Le Matin, Switzerland
Le Parisien, France
Virgin Radio, Italy

On October 5, the new video will be made available for everybody to watch in every territory.

This is all part of Deep Purple’s record label earMUSIC’s concerted effort at garnering as much attention as possible for three new releases: the 2CD Gold Edition of the InFinite album, the stand alone Blu-ray edition of the From Here to InFinite documentary and the 3LP vinyl The inFinite Live Recordings, Pt. 1. Read more details.

This time earMUSIC has created an animated cartoon video showing Deep Purple looking forward while honouring their past. In the video, the band’s studio albums are all represented, and you’re challenged to spot them all as the video plays. But is one album missing? See for yourself when the video is released in your country.

The record company has announced today that the Gold edition of the most recent Deep Purple album inFinite will be one of three new releases on November 3 this year:

The 2CD updated Gold edition of inFinite will include a second CD with 80 minutes from the Hellfest performance produced by Bob Ezrin.

Secondly, earMUSIC will release the From Here To inFinite documentary on blu-ray with two hours of additonal bonus material; a new video for The Surprising (see above); 3 previously unreleased live videos from Hellfest (Time For Bedlam, Birds Of Prey and Smoke On The Water); some behind the scenes footage; movie documentary outtakes; interviews and an audio commentary by the band members.

The third release is the Hellfest tapes on 3LP vinyl titled The inFinite Live Recordings, Pt. 1. The vinyl edition will include two tracks that didn’t fit the CD edition; Hell to Pay and Don Airey’s solo.

Or Deoxyribonucleic acid as you may know it as. The building block of everything living now is being used in a new process to store information for future generations (and life forms?!).
As part of the program Twist Bioscience and Microsoft are storing historic performances by the likes of Miles Davis and Deep Purple at the Montreux Jazz Festival so that they may last the test of time and be preserved for years to come. ‘Smoke on the Water’ was the chosen track obviously….

Bill Peck, chief technology officer of Twist Bioscience says, “This is a very exciting project: we are now in an age where we can use the remarkable efficiencies of nature to archive master copies of our cultural heritage in DNA. As we develop the economies of this process new performances can be added any time. Unlike current storage technologies, nature’s media will not change and will remain readable through time. There will be no new technology to replace DNA, nature has already optimized the format.”

The ‘recordings’ will be stored within UNESCO’s ‘Memory of the World’ archive.
Earlier in the year the researchers showed that they were able to store recordings of a short movie, or an OS, using DNA.

One wonders how much musical information could be stored in the offspring of DP members….. 😉

You may recall earlier in the year we reported the rather unwholesome story of lawsuits, disappearing money and such like.
(for those that don’t : read it all here….)

Well today we can give an update to the story. Today, Monday 25th September the UK Insolvency Service announced that Dipak Rao has been banned from holding the position of company director after being found guilty of misappropriating at least £2m from the two companies responsible for the bulk of the back catalogue.

The Guardian reports

Dipak Rao, who worked for the band behind the hit Smoke on the Water between 1992 and 2014, has been disqualified for 11 years following an investigation by the Insolvency Service. It found he siphoned money into his personal accounts from two companies, Deep Purple (Overseas) Ltd and HEC Enterprises Ltd, between 2008 and 2014.

The 69-year-old, who lives in Worcester Park, south-west London, concealed what he had done by ensuring that the transactions did not appear in financial accounts and restricted access to the companies’ bank statements, the Insolvency Service said. He resigned in November 2014 as a director of both firms – which control the copyrights of many of the band’s recordings – before they went into administration in January last year.

Sue Macleod, the Insolvency Service’s chief investigator, said: “Rao misappropriated company funds, causing detriment to the company and its creditors, to his own personal benefit.”

Deep Purple live at Riverbend Music Center (Cincinnati, USA 2017-09-10)

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was witness to what might be Purple’s last show in North America. The September 10th show will go down in my memory as the best of my 8 Purple shows and not because it was the possible last show, but because of the ferocity of the bands performance, the set list and the crowd enthusiasm. Additionally, and I hate to call them this, but the “supporting” acts were headliners unto themselves.

Edgar Winter performed a brief set with the songs you’d expect along with a few you wouldn’t. Freeride opened the set and Frankenstein closed it with some Rolling Stones, blues and a tribute to his brother in between. Mr. Winter defied his years with a performance full of showmanship, great vocals and incredible musicians in his backing band. While not a big Winter fan, I can say that he won me over and if I ever get a chance, or if you ever get a chance, go see him perform. He is a multi-talented musician and performer and clearly enjoyed performing on stage. At his age of 70, I can’t imagine he would continue to do this if he wasn’t having fun and it clearly showed during his set.

Alice was up next and what can you say about Alice that hasn’t been said? His performance was excellent, his band was tight and he had a great set list as well. Not really any surprises from him and his show and song list was very similar to what I saw when he opened for Motely Crue last year. The crowd was enthusiastic, his stage props and antics keep the show moving and Alice himself was clearly still at the top of his game even at age 69. Again, I think at this age, he is doing this because he loves to do it, not because he has too. As an added bonus, Edgar Winter, Edgar’s guitar player, Doug Rappoport and Steve Morse all played on the show closing “School’s Out.” It was an over the top show closer after an exceptional performance. To be honest here, Alice was so good that I wondered how Purple would fair afterwards. Between the stage show and the overall performance, it pulled a lot energy out of the crowd and Purple’s flash comes from their music, not props.

Those fears were put down quickly when Purple took the stage. The stage by the way, was backed by what appeared to be the fuzzy underside of several large mattresses and a large video screen. Once the stage was illuminated however, those mattresses were suddenly icebergs and was a nice nod to InFinite artwork. As the band walked onto the stage, the crowd roared as the opening notes of Highway Star announced their arrival. The opener was simply blistering. At 72, we all know that Gillan doesn’t have the voice he once had. That said, he killed that song and his ability to hit those high notes was the best I’ve heard in several years. In fact, his voice was strong and his range excellent over the course of the entire show. I’ve seen shows where he struggled for the entire show or parts of it, but other than needing to catching his breath during a few words of the second song, Fireball, he was damn near flawless. I’m a big Gillan fan and while I can easily overlook any vocal issues due to his age, this night he proved that he continues to be one of the best vocalists out there at any age.

The set list was Highway Star, Fireball, Strange Kind of Woman, Uncommon Man, Lazy, Knocking at Your Back Door, Pictures of Home, Perfect Strangers, Keyboard Solo, Time for Bedlam, Space Truckin’, Hush and Smoke on the Water.

No real surprises with the set list but to me Fireball, Knocking and Space Truckin’ were the highlights. Uncommon Man and Time for Bedlam were nice additions but as expected brought the crowd down a bit. They songs did a get good reaction from diehard DP fans and I thought Time for Bedlam worked very well live. Would have also loved to have heard Hip Boots and or All I’ve Got is You but I’m greedy. As far as Space Truckin’ goes, I believe that is a song that they have performed at every DP show I’ve seen and it is usually a song were Gillan struggles a bit. This night, while not Gillan of old, he did very well and hit high notes without struggling or causing his voice to suffer for the next verse. Simply superb.

I should also point out as per other shows on this tour there was no encore. They did bring out the aforementioned Doug Rappoport to join them on Smoke on the Water. It clearly wasn’t rehearsed prior and it was nice to see Airey, Morse and Rappoport noodle as they led into Smoke. What was also cool was that Rappoport was clearly thrilled to be playing with Deep Purple on that iconic song. He was all smiles, mugging and enjoying the moment. At one point, he pointed to his arm and showed that had goosebumps from playing with those guys.

The rest of the guys were of course tight and right on. Paice was a workhorse and I really enjoyed his playing. While I’m not a drummer, I think the best compliment I can give him is that I noticed Edgar Winter’s drummer sneak on stage and sit behind Glover’s amps. He sat there for roughly half the show and simply watched Paicey play. That was very cool to see.

Glover was in the pocket all night, very engaged with the crowd and very energetic. I noticed that he sang along and occasionally, when he would hit the low note during a bass run he would mouth the words “boom.” Clearly this is a guy that still enjoys what he is doing. My wife also swears that he made eye contact with her and smiled at her. I didn’t see it and can’t verify it, but she won’t forget it even if he was actually looking 4 rows behind her.

Morse and Airey were both fantastic as always. Both had smiles on their faces for the entire show and seemed to enjoy being on stage with their bandmates and the interactions they had both musically and personally while playing. This is clearly a band that likes each other and still likes to play. The music and their performance that night showed it.

What also seemed clear to me that night, is that this is a band that has reached their creative peak. This clearly isn’t the 1970’s version of Deep Purple and I’m not sure that is fair to compare the two. This version has two different members and a lot of years behind them. What I do see is that band that has made some of their best music of any era with Now What?!! and InFinte. Both are superb and show a band that is still honing their craft and moving it forward. This is also a band that reached a creative peak some 40 years earlier and then reached it again while staying true to their roots and moving the music forward.

I know there are various opinions on the band but I urge you that if you get a chance to go see them on this tour by all means do it. Purple clearly aren’t who they used to be, but they are who they are and right now, they are a hell of a band. They are also a hell of a band that at some point will call it day. I hope we get one more album out of them and they tour for a few more years because these guys are still on top, still creative and clearing enjoy playing and to paraphrase Ian Gillan, “they might not have made their best album yet.” I believe that and I believe that once these guys call it a day, we’ll never see another band of this caliber in our lifetime.

Go see Deep Purple on this tour if you can and tell me I’m wrong afterwards….. if you can.

review by Scott McNay

Deep Purple live at Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre (Maryland Heights, USA 2017-09-08)

Deep Purple’s performance last night in St. Louis was by far the best of the four Purple shows I’ve seen in recent years, and by any standards superb; if it’s the last time I ever see them live, then I’m happy. Having read earlier reviews, I was a little worried that I would be so impressed by Alice Cooper’s show that Purple’s would seem mediocre by comparison. The Alice Cooper show was undoubtedly an extraordinary spectacle, including a beheading illusion, a huge Frankenstein’s monster, enormous balloons thrown into the crowd, and many explosions. The four guitarists kept charging back and forth across the stage and then striking manic rock star poses; it was a wonder there were no collisions. So Alice was fun, but musically there wasn’t much there, at least for people who couldn’t replay the songs in their heads (which the fans who had a great time presumably could).

But it was clear almost immediately Purple started that they were simply in a different class. I actually loved that they played so many songs from Machine Head (HS, L, SOTW, ST, POH) because they did it so damned well. It brought back memories of the first time I heard those songs, so many decades ago, and the thrill I felt then. The sound was excellent: you could really hear the pitches, each instrument sounded right, and no instrument was too high or too low in the mix. The band was tight and energized, and, as it has always done at its best, combined immense raw power with a speed, grace, and agility that put the earlier acts to shame. The guys also excelled individually. Paicey’s drumming was brilliant—as energetic as anything that came before but married to finesse and excellent taste. Don was dazzling, working some Gershwin into his big solo, and including some synthesizer work that made me feel a bit sorry for Edgar Winter, who had played some synthesizer in the warm-up act. Steve made the classic riffs sound really heavy, but he made music out of them too; again a contrast with earlier in the evening. Highlights from the show for me were the start of Space Trucking, which was electrifying, Uncommon Man, which they rocked up a little, the dueling solos in Hush, and Time for Bedlam, which sounded just as massive as I had hoped it would; but really every song was excellent. I was pleased that Pictures of Home and Knocking At Your Backdoor made it into the set. Gillan was in pretty good voice, and he certainly didn’t let the side down. My only quibble is that Strange Kind of Woman wasn’t replaced by something else—Hip Boots, perhaps? Gillan’s high-speed story-telling is no substitute for the back and forth with the guitar of his younger days.

review by Andrew Melnyk

I have been a long time fan of Deep Purple and seen many many shows. When I heard that they were playing Toronto with Alice Cooper and Edgar winter I jumped at the chance to take a road trip from Montreal to see them again for perhaps what might be the final time (gulp)… The venue is an outdoor amphitheatre located on the water’s edge and right beside the CNE amusement park. First things first…we got there almost three hours before showtime and there was absolutely no parking available whatsoever. I was told that the amusement park was doing it’s last weekend before closing for the fall and winter. All I can say was it was brutal. We did park and ended up walking for about 30 minutes to get to the venue. Oh well, it’s Deep Purple right?

The venue has a capacity of 16,000 according to their website. I doubt it was sold out (I could be wrong) but there were a few empty seats for sure. I must admit I was a little surprised that Deep Purple was paired together with Alice Cooper. I have also seen Alice many times and his show (theatrical effects and all) are a hard act to follow by any band. Nonetheless I kept an open mind. Edgar Winter was great. He did a short set including Free Ride, Tobacco Road and my favorite Frankenstein. His set was tight, his voice and musicianship were strong and his touring musicians were excellent. A great opener that was much appreciated by the crowd who’d already arrived in good numbers.

Next was Alice Cooper. I don’t know what to say really except that he was fantastic. His set included his classic hits like Billion Dollar Babies, Cold Ethel, School’s out and No More Mr Niceguy. He too surrounds himself with stellar musicians and his set left the crowd on their feet wanting more I must admit I had read a lot of reviews on this tour and there were reports of people leaving after Alice or getting bored watching DP and leaving etc etc. I also noted that Ian Gillan’s voice was rough through a few of the shows thus far. This was clearly not the case with Toronto. The opening song was..yeah you guessed it…Highway Star. Ian Gillan was smiling and his voice was on. The guys were laughing and smiling and I knew it was going to be a great set. There was a lot of energy both on the stage and in the crowd. Whatever was bugging Ian Gillan’s voice was gone and that was a great thing. Fireball immediately followed Highwaystar. The sound wasn’t very good for this song but the song was great to hear bad sound and all. Strange Kind of Woman was next and then Uncommon Man. I gotta say I like Uncommon Man but it totally killed the momentum the band had built up to that point. The pace picked up again with Lazy, Knocking and Pictures of Home. All three songs sounded great. Ian Gillan thanked the crowd for sending such positive vibes. At one point he went on one of his unintelligible talking rants with Steve Morse. He seemed to go one for at least a minute or two without pausing for air…..and Morse was laughing his head off all the way through it Next was Don Airey’s keyboard solo and into Perfect Strangers, Space Trucking and Time For Bedlam.
The band closed out the set with Hush and Smoke on the Water. There was no encore or rather no gap between Hush and Smoke.

I think it would have been fitting to give the crowd a chance to cheer DP back onto the stage one last time but it was not to be. I guess perhaps curfew had something to do with it because the show ended at 11 pm. I have been a fan of DP for many years and also, fortunately, a friend of Roger Glover for more than 30 years now. We were fortunate to see Roger, as well as Steve Morse and Don Airey after the show. Ian Gillan (no surprise) was not there nor was Ian Paice at the aftershow meet. Roger said that he loved playing in Canada and that he wanted to come back next year (great news indeed). I asked him about the tour and how he was holding up during their ‘ Long Goodbye ‘. Roger said he was pleased to be out with Edgar Winter and Alice Cooper. He also said that it was indeed their last ‘go around ‘ but that they don’t know when or where that final show will be. I asked him about if he was looking forward to any future projects. He said he will always be involved in music in some way either writing, performing and producing but for now he was enjoying the road again. Steve Morse and Don Airey were very gracious, signing things and taking photos with everyone there. After about 30 minutes or so the band had to make tracks so we did as well.

Final thoughts…: there were no band member introductions during the show nor were there any ‘ thanks for supporting us ‘ or ‘ it’s been great ‘ etc etc from the band with the exception of Ian GIllan thanking the crowd at the end as he always does. I think neither the band nor the audience wanted to think about the finality of it all, at least I know I didn’t. I am sure that the idea of this last tour is not something they want to think about, especially since their tours typically go on for more than one or two year or more. All I can say is I am grateful to have known such a great band in all its’ incarnations. I appreciate all of their music over the years and am glad they can still bring it to us live in a great way. . If you like Deep Purple then consider going out and giving them a last a send off to remember. It really is the last goodbye. Rock on everyone and long live Deep Purple.

Danny N
Montreal, Quebec
Canada