Yesterday, October, 25, the band opened their European tour with the first show at the Atlas Arena in Łódź, Poland. Quite a few surprises in the revamped setlist: two new tracks saw a live premiere — a guitar instrumental apparently intended to replace Contact Lost in the set, and another track, perhaps written for a new album. That’s along with Après Vous returning as a set opener, Battle Rages On back in the setlist, and a return of a Bananas tour live favourite Silver Tongue.

Video highlights of the set:

Thanks to Deep Purple Italia (which received a facelift and has been relaunched a couple of days ago) for the info and yoshin1979 for the video.

The world is not exactly inundated with books detailing the story of Deep Purple. Chris Charlesworth’s Illustrated Biography had been pretty much the only source for decades, but it’s been out of print for a very long time, and nowadays is not considered terribly accurate. The text has been updated by Simon Robinson into the mammoth 200-page booklet accompanying the 2002 Listen Learn Read On box set, which itself is now out of print. Which leaves us with just one title still in print: Smoke on the Water: The Deep Purple Story by Dave Thompson. Not exactly a cornucopia. The Road of Golden Dust by Jerry Bloom is aiming to fill this gap at least partially.

Jerry’s credentials, of course, include publishing More Black Than Purple fanzine, organizing the 2008 convention, writing numerous liner notes, and working in various capacities with Glenn Hughes and Nick Simper. His two previous books — Black Knight, an unauthorized Blackmore biography, and A Matter of Fact, a collection of Purple anecdotage — are thoroughly researched and have been well received.

The Road of Golden Dust covers history of the band starting from the very beginning up to (roughly) the end of 1976. There are couple of pages outlining what happened afterwards, but the subtitle is The Deep Purple Story 1968-76, and the author sticks to it. However, the period that is covered, is covered well and, as it became the norm for Jerry, is throughly researched. Apart from Tommy Bolin and Rod Evans, every member of the band has been interviewed over the years by him personally. And when memories start to fail (and they do more often than you think), he turns to documents for evidence.

The only criticism I can think of is while the book takes time to explain the younger readers how the ticket sales worked before the Internet, it fails to explain to non-British audience some realities of life in the country. For example, the phrase “he failed his eleven-plus and missed out on attending grammar school” have sent me googling for what the hell are eleven-plus and grammar schools, contemplating the pros and cons of meritocracy vs social mobility in the process (yes, attention span is short in this one ;-).

The book is fairly easy to read, and at 175 pages (excluding discographies) is not overly burdensome. One can debate the merits of committing discographies to paper in this day and age, but look at them as a free bonus.

And I sincerely hope that this book will be followed by another volume or two on the more recent history of the band. Now, this is where the gaping hole is so large, one can do aerial acrobatics in there.

The Road of Golden Dust is being released by Wymer on October 26. You can order your copy from Amazon UK (Kindle edition available in the US) or directly from the publisher.

The first two more or less credible dates for Blackmore’s foray into rock have surfaced.

German company Shooter Promotions have announced that he will headline the two Monsters of Rock events in the country: June 17 at the Lorelei Freilichtbühne (open air amphitheater in picturesque settings on the Rhine) and June 18 in Bietigheim-Bissingen near Stuttgart. His appearance is billed as Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, complete with Rising logo and artwork. However, there’s still no word who else will be in the band.

Tickets for both events go on sale November 6.

Shooter Promotions is a well established agency operating out of Frankfurt, and have organized concerts by Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, Joe Satriani, and many other well knows acts.

These dates have yet to be confirmed by Blackmore’s management, so proceed with extra caution.

Thanks to Lutz Reinert for the info.

Several of our readers have commented encouraging other people to participate in the Hall of Fame voting.

Here’s why this is a bad idea.

It seems that many people are still under the impression that the winner of the fan ballot is automatically inducted into the hall. This is not the case. The the fan ballot counts as just one extra vote among 600 Jann Wenner cronies industry insiders, or whoever gets to vote (they don’t tell us):

The Top Five Nominees as voted by the fans count for one ballot entry, which is weighted the same as individual ballot entries submitted by members of the international voting body.

The fan ballot, with all those tens of millions of fans behind it, counts the same as the vote by that gentleman who still thinks that Deep Purple are a one hit wonder. As such, it bears very little influence on the final result. The main reason fan ballot exists is to drive web traffic to their website (which equals advertising revenue). So, by voting you are actually putting money into the pockets of the very same people who ignored our favourite band for 20 years after it became eligible, and then nominated and snubbed them twice after that.

And this concludes our public service announcement.

Another preview track — Kayla — from the upcoming second Flying Colors live DVD, once again in 4k video:

Second Flight: Live At The Z7 is due out on November 13, 2015.

Roger Glover checks in with an update on his website:

Those were the words on a famous poster at a time when posters seemed to matter, in the late 60s. Here in 2015, posters are old hat, summer’s gone and winter’s coming on. And that’s that.

Life has been packing and unpacking itself over the last several months. Life. One forgets to value it when events, pressures, schedules, responsibilities, etc. impinge on ones appreciation of the greatest gift… waking up. Still here.

Continue reading on RogerGlover.com.

It’s that time of the year again — time for Deep Purple to get snubbed by a certain Hall of Fame. The band’s name has appeared on the nomination ballot once again, and Classic Rock reached out to Ian Gillan for a comment. His response came in most unambiguous terms:

I have no respect for them. They’re the kind of people that having seen A Hard Day’s Night decided that The Monkees would be America’s equivalent to the Beatles. They’ve no idea what goes on in the big, wide world outside of their self-arbitrating surroundings.

To me, those people are bloody arrogant and rude. I’ve heard that somebody on their committee dismissed us as one-hit wonders. I couldn’t figure out whether that hit was Hush, Kentucky Woman, Black Night, Strange Kind Of Woman, Child In Time, Perfect Strangers, Knocking At Your Back Door or perhaps even Smoke On The Water.

I’m very grateful for the other bands and artists that stood up for us with a view to our induction – that’s nice of them. But I wish that the Hall Of Fame had had the discretion to ask us first. It’s now become a debate in which we are too late to have the final word.

I’m sure that my mum would have been pleased and it all sounds very grand, but just take a look at who’s in it. I once wrote a song called No Laughing In Heaven which was about not wanting to go to heaven due to the company I’d be keeping, and with a few exceptions, the Hall Of Fame is pretty much the same thing.

Thanks to Classic Rock for the info.

In September Joe Lynn Turner performed an acoustic set at one of the more unusual venues — Perama Cave near Ioannina, Greece. His backing band for this gig were George Gakis & the Troublemakers, and they have posted a professionally filmed video of the performance.

Thanks to BraveWords for the info.

Purpendicular, a Purple tribute band which released an album of original material back in March, has some news for you.

The good news is that the band has secured a three album deal with Borila Records and said album — This is the thing#1, previously only available directly from the band — will be re-released for worldwide distribution and will be available on Amazon, HMV, etc. The bad news is that for one reason or another the label insisted on dropping one track — Off My Trolley — from the album, and that track had Don Airey and Steve Morse as guest musicians. Which still leaves contributions from Ian Paice and Roger Glover in. And the album itself earned quite a praise from our readers. So not all is bad. 😉

Band: Purpendicular
Title: This Is The Thing #1
Label: Borila Records
Released: October 16, 2015
EAN: 4260276940080

Promo videos for the album:

Crazy:

Somebody done it (live in Germany, featuring Ian Paice):

Purpendicular are embarking on another extensive European tour, with Ian Paice appearing on some dates in 2016 (further details to be released December 3rd)

15.10.2015 Spain Pamplona
16.10.2015 Spain Vitoria (tHis is the tHing#1 worldwide release party)
17.10.2015 Spain Santander
18.10.2015 Spain Gijôn
06.11.2015 Germany Schortens
07.11.2015 Germany Grossenwoerden
21.11.2015 Austria Tegernbach
04.12.2015 Belgium Verviers
08.01.2016 Germany Ulm
09.01.2016 Germany Straubing
22.01.2016 Germany Thiersheim
05.02.2016 Switzerland Rubigen (Bern)
26.02.2016 Czech Republic Brno
27.02.2016 Czech Republic Plzen
04.03.2016 Germany Melle- Buer
05.03.2016 Germany Bad Lippspringe
11.03.2016 Denmark Frederica
12.03.2016 Denmark Aalborg
17.03.2016 France Paris (Vaureal)
18.03.2016 France (Riom) Clermont Ferrand
20.03.2016 Germany Burgrieden
26.03.2016 Germany Neurupinn
28.03.2016 Switzerland Basel
01.04.2016 Finland Tampere
02.04.2016 Finland Helsinki
03.04.2016 Finland Vaasa
21.04.2016 Poland Krakow
22.04.2016 Slovakia Bratislava
23.04.2016 Slovakia Martin
13.05.2016 Bulgaria Blagoevgrad
14.05.2016 Bulgaria Plovdiv
11.06.2016 Germany Stuttgart (Affalterbach)
16.09.2016 Germany Hamburg
23.09.2016 Netherlands Enschede
24.09.2016 Netherlands Sneek
04.11.2016 Germany Torgau
05.11.2016 Germany Ebersbach
03.12.2016 Belgium Verviers

A silent auction raising money for Help Calais & Help Refugees adding to their fantastic support in the refugee crisis. This auction is running alongside ‘Jungle Aid London 4 Calais’, a variety night taking place at The Philbeach Hall, Earl’s Court on October 23rd 2015, with some items that may be of interest to Deep Purple fans.

– A private guitar lesson with Steve Morse in London on December 3rd
– 2 x tickets to see Deep Purple at the O2 on December 3rd + two signed posters
– A signed rare Deep Purple merchandise banana vibrator from the Banana’s tour!!

Appearing on the night will be Papa Le Gal, fronted by Grace Gillan.

More details http://www.jumblebee.co.uk/jungleauctionlondon4calais