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Bernie Torme is touring UK, promoting his latest solo album Flowers & Dirt. Metal Express Radio talked to him, and it’s an interesting interview. He spoke about how he joined Gillan band, how he left, and quite a few things inbetween.
Or listen directly (mp3, 69MB).
Thanks to Classic Rock for the info.
I’ll see your Highway Star hotel and raise you a Purple street, says Rudie Rutjes. In the town of Lent, which is just north of Nijmegen in The Netherlands, there is a new neigbourhood with streets named after rock bands. And there it is — tucked neatly between Pink Floydstraat and Queenstraat — the venerable Deep Purplestraat.
Other places of interest discovered after some idle googling:
Ah, well… I need to get a life 😉
Don ‘played with everybody and his dog’ Airey teamed up with his Gary Moore’s band mate Neil Murray, along with Vinny Appice, contributing to a cover of Gary’s track The Loner. The track will appear on Will Wallner and Vivien Vain new album The Battle Of Clyst Heath. Press blurb also mentions that the album “draws heavily from British hard rock influences such as Rainbow, Thin Lizzy and Deep Purple”.
You can preview another track from the album, The Wars Of The Roses, and judge said influences for yourself:
The Battle Of Clyst Heath is due out tomorrow, November 11, via Wormhole Death Records.
It’s a slow news days and the weather in my heck of the woods is miserable, so every little bit of even mild amusement helps. Jeroen van Aken sent us this photo of a hotel sign where he stayed in Thailand:
All European dates previously announced for late 2015 (apart from two Swiss ones) have been confirmed by Deep Purple’s management.
Full details in our calendar.
There have been quite a few venue changes since the California Breed European tour was first announced back in August.
Munich show has been moved to Theaterfabrik, Nuremberg show will now take place in Wiesbaden, Berlin — at the Postbahnhof, and Cologne — at the Gloria Theater. Another show has been added to the UK leg: Planet Rockstock festival on December 5.
Full details in our calendar.
In other news, Glenn Hughes revealed in a recent interview that Jason Bonham will not be returning to California Breed in foreseeable future.
Ian Gillan was featured on this week’s edition of a Brazilian podcast Wikimetal. His interview starts at around 11 minute mark into the show and lasts for about 10 minutes.
Thanks to BraveWords for the info.
A complete press conference in Mexico City was posted on YouTube. With the questions varying from very interesting, to mundane, to borderline insulting, with much lost in translation, it is interesting to see the band summoning their collective wits to turn the proceedings into something entertaining.
Thanks to Chava Rock for sharing the video and to Nigel Young for bringing it to your attention.
Apparently publisher of British tabloids Trinity Mirror has nothing better to do than pretend doing scientific work. Their “data unit” conducted a study of lyrics to over 6,000 songs by British and Irish bands:
Sentiment analysis involves picking out emotive words or phrases in a given text and placing them in context with the words around them to form an overall impression of the mood of the passage.
Afterwards, various publications of the concern jumped on it declaring a local artist as most something or another. Deep Purple were given the dubious honour of ‘most miserable lyrics’ by the GetWestLondon:
…Deep Purple’s songs are 67.8 per cent negative making them more miserable than Leonard Cohen.
Only 6.5 per cent of their material was deemed to be positive while the remaining 25.6 per cent was found to be neutral in tone.
Blood From a Stone and Nasty Piece of Work were two of 16 songs written by Gillan, born in Chiswick, to achieve a negativity score of 90 per cent – the highest that can be achieved.
The Smiths were likewise mentioned by the Manchester Evening News, while The Enemy was declared ‘ideal for caraoke’ by the Coventry Telegraph.
We would like to see the peer review of the study.
Thanks to Paul Gribnau for the info.
Ian Paice’s homage to Jon Lord became the subject of a cover feature for the French magazine Batteur. The feature appears in November 2014 issue (No. 285). If you have your subscription lapsed, the magazine can be ordered via journaux.fr (€5.90 + shipping).
Thanks to Max Sylvestre for the info.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing