We have received more information from Cleo Records regarding upcoming Rainbow live releases from the 1979 tour. As we’ve reported previously, the Denver show will come out on vinyl on May 12. This will be the first of the three releases, followed by the show from Long Island, November 30, 1979, and Chicago, October 12.
The Long Island vinyl release is pencilled in for September. A 3CD box containing all three shows should come out around the same time. Chicago vinyl will appear later on.
These soundboard recordings were widely bootlegged, but Cleo’s releases are the first ones properly licensed from Blackmore. Unfortunately, they could not obtain the master tapes, so the audio is “remastered from the best sources that we could find”.
Bernie Marsden has been awarded a honorary Master of Arts degree by his home town University of Buckingham. The presentation speech delivered by Professor John Clarke lists Bernie’s numerous achievements, from scoring a #1 US hit with Here I Go Again, to his recent charity work.
We all at The Highway Star would like to extend our warmest congratulations.
Perfect Strangers of Finland will be holding their 7th Purple Night event on Friday, May 29, in Helsinki, Finland. This year it will be dedicated to Ritchie Blackmore, who has celebrated his 70th birthday a couple of weeks ago. Doogie White will be a special guest of the night, performing Purple and Rainbow classics with local musicians.
Rock City Radio Show Berlin will air an interview with Ian Gillan on Sunday, April 26, between 17:00 and 18:00 CET. The interview was recorded on March 26 when Ian played the Rock Meets Classic gig in Berlin. The presentation of the show is in German, but Ian is not overvoiced.
Rock City Radio Show Berlin broadcasts online and worldwide. You can listen to it at alex-berlin.de.
There appears to be a new Rainbow release coming out seemingly out of the blue. It is quite simply called Denver 1979 and is due on vinyl on May 12. This seems to be legit as it’s being released on a small but respectable independent label Cleopatra Records out of Los Angeles. The label had in the past few years released Tommy Bolin’s Zephyr remix, Captain Beyond reissues, as well as a number of tribute albums where Purple family was widely represented (we’ve covered many of them).
Track list:
SIDE A
Eyes Of The World
Love s No Friend
SIDE B
Since You Been Gone
All Night Long
SIDE C
Lost In Hollywood
SIDE D
Man On The Silver Mountain
Long Live Rock N Roll
Amazon description states that it’ll be a “gatefold holographic foil jacket with 3 different colored vinyl options – red, green or blue (limited 1000 copies each)”.
There is no further information available at this moment, but we’re trying to contact the label to obtain some.
If it is what we think it is, it’s a widely bootlegged soundboard recording of a show at the Music Hall in Denver, Colorado, on November 16, 1979.
Greek blog Rock Overdose interviewed Ian Gillan and posted the proceedings. His answers sound like he wasn’t completely enthusiastic about the questions, but here’s what he had to say about the current state of the new album:
We don’t have any plans worth talking about yet, but at the same time yes we are in process. We have had two writing sessions already but there is not a single song. However there is plenty of music.
He also confirmed that Bob Ezrin will be producing the next album as well.
Ian Gillan was interviewed by German radio SWR1. This being radio, the interview is overdubbed, which makes for extremely frustrated listening because it sounds like was an interesting one.
Ever since Coverdale announced the Purple album and Purple tour, many of you have wondered — what about a keyboard player? Well, now there is one, and his name is Michele Luppi. He’s Italian, he’s a multi-instrumentalist, and he also sings (seems like a prerequisite for being in Whitesnake these days).
Here’s a medley of covers done by his own band (including Here I Go Again and Is This Love). He’s the singer/bass player here:
And here is an example of him on the piano:
Unfortunately, he does not appear to be a particular Hammond afficionado, so do not expect anything too too Lordiesque live.
A couple of Purple tunes could be heard in the movie theatres recently.
Mistreated was featured in an animated fantasy musical by LucasFilm called Strange Magic, sung by Alan Cumming:
A cover of Hush (or is that a cover of a cover?) has been spotted in a British action comedy flick Kingsman: The Secret Service. It’s not credited on the soundtrack, so we have no idea who’s performing. The song can be heard on the trailer (starts at 1:42):
Thanks to Andrey Gusenkov and Tracy Heyder for the info.
Whitesnake have announced further European tour dates. The tour will start in Moscow on November 8 and conclude with the previously announced UK dates in December. Perhaps rather fittingly to Coverdale’s latest endeavours, on November 22 the tour will stop by the Hala Pionir in Belgrade, the same stage where he fronted Deep Purple on the first night of the Mk III final tour some 40 years earlier.
![[hand]](/hs-pics/portraits/hands/gillan9.jpg)
![[face]](/hs-pics/portraits/faces/mcbride6.jpg)
We have received more information from Cleo Records regarding upcoming Rainbow live releases from the 1979 tour. As we’ve reported previously, the Denver show will come out on vinyl on May 12. This will be the first of the three releases, followed by the show from Long Island, November 30, 1979, and Chicago, October 12.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing