Celeste Center
Columbus, Ohio
August 5th, 2015

Last night was my 6th Purple show and while they are always good, I can say that without question it was the best show I’ve ever seen them do. It wasn’t perfect, but it was damn close.
The venue was a 10,000 seat multi-purpose, for lack of a better description, metal barn. It had a low ceiling, small stage and had about 6,000 elevated seats with the other 4,000 being floor seats. I’d estimate the crowd to have been 6,000 to 7,000 people. It was a mostly older crowd with a smattering of youngsters.
Musically, the band was tight as ever and the guys really played both with each other and off each other last night. Everyone had a smile on their face and you could really tell that they were having a great time playing. Everyone had a solo break and for me, Roger’s bass solo was the most fun. Well Dressed Guitar was also a standout and got a great crowd reaction.
Big Ian was in rare form last night. He stayed on stage with fewer breaks behind the curtain than I’ve ever seen. He was engaged with the band and audience and sounded the best I’ve ever heard him. He struggled just a bit hitting the high notes in Highway Star but otherwise he simply nailed it all night. I did note that he kept the range lower in Space Trucking but I think he simply played to his strengths, while keeping his voice in great shape for the entire show. He can clearly still hit the highs and did a lot of call and response with Steve. I was truly impressed by the range and strength his voice had last night. Simply superb!
My only disappointment with the show was that this set had more instrumental sections than any previous sets. Again, this is minor as I love the show of musicianship, but I found the breaks to be a little more than I like. To me, they disrupted some of the pacing of the set. That being said, my guess would be that breaks gave Ian a few more minutes to rest is voice and if that’s the case, it certainly paid off. Beyond a doubt this was the tightest, best gig I’ve ever seen. These guys are still on top of their game and still seem enthused by the reaction to Now What?!
As far as Now What?! goes, four songs were played from it last night, all with good crowd response. Hell to Pay, while I’m not a fan of big chorus on the track, got a great crowd response with a lot of people singing it back to the band. I’d guess that song stays in the set for a while.
The band played for roughly 1:45 minutes last night. The set list was:
Highway Star
Apres Vous
Hard Loving Man
Strange Kind of Woman
Vincent Price
Contact Lost
Uncommon Man
Well Dressed Guitar
The Mule
Lazy
Hell to Pay
Keyboard Solo
Perfect Strangers
Space Trucking
Smoke on the Water
Hush
Black Night

Would have liked to have heard something from Perpendicular but I have no complaints with the set list. I hope these guys continue on for a while longer yet. I can’t wait to see how they sound for my 7th show.

Deep Purple live at Hard Rock Casino (Sioux City, USA 2015-08-07)

Was all geared up to attend the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in nearby South Dakota when my biker buddy suffered a heart attack just three weeks prior to the event. Not being coordinated enough to risk riding a bike – I booked a flight to Sioux City and rented a car to meet him at Sturgis. Well, the “good” folks at the Buffalo Chip camp facility couldn’t find it in their hearts to either refund his tickets or transfer ownership of said tickets – they opted to grant him that very spot for next year. Lovely folks. Anyway, yours truly, being a Deep Purple fan, and unable to make the shows in California, purchased a ticket to the Hard Rock Cafe to see my heroes in Sioux City Iowa of all places. Granted, I, had a few days to kill and a rented car so I discovered a show by John Fogerty over in Bismarck, North Dakota and drove there to see him at the Bismarck Events Center. Lovely drive – lots and lots of corn. The Fogerty gig kicked ass – worth the trip just for that. Had two more days to kill so I drove to Minneapolis – lots and lots of corn.
Finally, Friday morning, drove to Sioux City, Iowa. You guessed it – lots and lots of corn. Checked into the Holiday Inn and found a pub that was serving all you can eat, fish and chips. A couple of beers and over to the gig. Coincidentally, John Fogerty’s gig, was a celebration of 1969 – the first time I saw Deep Purple was 1969. Worth celebrating, indeed! Black Oak Arkansas opened for Purple here in Sioux City – another coincidence, I saw Deep Purple at Winterland in 1972, and, yup, Black Oak Arkansas opened up that show, too. (For the purist- Bull Angus was also on that bill). Saw Deep Purple the year before and cringed my way through it as big Ian blew out his vocals in the first three songs. Glad to report that that wasn’t the case here. In fact, he sounded fantastic. Reminded me of the Bananas tour and those great gigs in San Francisco, LA and Las Vegas. A huge kudos to the sound guys – absolutely one of the best sounding gigs, ever! The stage setup, too, was fantastic and complimented the band, well. For those of us who have seen the band on multiple tours we can always debate the song selection – however, I totally get the need to play those “classic hits” for the US market. It is what it is. That being said, the lads played their hearts out and the audience in Sioux City responded in kind making for a magical evening. And, if this was Major League Baseball, they’d be testing Mr. Paice for steriods – kills on that kit like a guy thirty years younger. Whew!!!

review by Victor Martinez

Roger Glover was a guest of a recent episode of One On One With Mitch Lafon. The show starts with a chat with Alice Cooper guitarist Tommy Henriksen; Roger’s segment starts shortly after the 10 minute mark and although he sounds pretty tired, he soldiers for 30 minutes, talking about many things, from what he learned from Bob Ezrin, to waking up in a small town up in the Swiss Alps one day.

Thanks to BraveWords for the info.

The record company has published Space Truckin’ video teaser for From The Setting Sun… (In Wacken) and …To The Rising Sun (In Tokyo):

Both releases are due out on August 28 simultaneously. Both will be released in the following formats:

• CD+DVD
• Blu-ray (3D and 2D for Wacken, 2D for Tokyo)
• DVD
• 3LP
• Digital download

It appears that Wacken Blu-ray will be the first 3D video release for the band.

Thanks to Nigel Young for the video link.

Deep Purple live at Celeste Center (Columbus, USA 2015-08-05)

Last night was my 6th Purple show and while they are always good, I can say that without question it was the best show I’ve ever seen them do. It wasn’t perfect, but it was damn close.

The venue was a 10,000 seat multi-purpose, for lack of a better description, metal barn. It had a low ceiling, small stage and had about 6,000 elevated seats with the other 4,000 being floor seats. I’d estimate the crowd to have been 6,000 to 7,000 people. It was a mostly older crowd with a smattering of youngsters.

Musically, the band was tight as ever and the guys really played both with each other and off each other last night. Everyone had a smile on their face and you could really tell that they were having a great time playing. Everyone had a solo break and for me, Roger’s bass solo was the most fun. Well Dressed Guitar was also a standout and got a great crowd reaction.

Big Ian was in rare form last night. He stayed on stage with fewer breaks behind the curtain than I’ve ever seen. He was engaged with the band and audience and sounded the best I’ve ever heard him. He struggled just a bit hitting the high notes in Highway Star but otherwise he simply nailed it all night. I did note that he kept the range lower in Space Trucking but I think he simply played to his strengths, while keeping his voice in great shape for the entire show. He can clearly still hit the highs and did a lot of call and response with Steve. I was truly impressed by the range and strength his voice had last night. Simply superb!

My only disappointment with the show was that this set had more instrumental sections than any previous sets. Again, this is minor as I love the show of musicianship, but I found the breaks to be a little more than I like. To me, they disrupted some of the pacing of the set. That being said, my guess would be that breaks gave Ian a few more minutes to rest is voice and if that’s the case, it certainly paid off. Beyond a doubt this was the tightest, best gig I’ve ever seen. These guys are still on top of their game and still seem enthused by the reaction to Now What?!

As far as Now What?! goes, four songs were played from it last night, all with good crowd response. Hell to Pay, while I’m not a fan of big chorus on the track, got a great crowd response with a lot of people singing it back to the band. I’d guess that song stays in the set for a while.

The band played for roughly 1:45 minutes last night. The set list was:

Highway Star

Apres Vous

Hard Loving Man

Strange Kind of Woman

Vincent Price

Contact Lost

Uncommon Man

Well Dressed Guitar

The Mule

Lazy

Hell to Pay

Keyboard Solo

Perfect Strangers

Space Trucking

Smoke on the Water

Hush

Black Night

Would have liked to have heard something from Perpendicular but I have no complaints with the set list. I hope these guys continue on for a while longer yet. I can’t wait to see how sound for my 7th show.

review by Scott McNay

Phil Collen of Def Leppard fame has a side new project — a heavy blues band called Delta Deep. Their self-titled debut album sounds pretty good to these ears. But that’s not the reason we mention it here. And the reasons are twofold: first, David Coverdale had dropped by and sang on one of the tracks — Private Number; and second, the album closes with a cover of Mistreated (with guest vocals from Phil’s day job coworker Joe Elliott).

Delta Deep is Phil Collen (vocals, guitars), Debbi Blackwell-Cook (vocals), Forrest Robinson (drums, percussion), and Robert DeLeo (bass).

Thanks to Bengt Johansson for the info.

Back in 1970s Cliff Richard was hosting a TV show called It’s Cliff Richard. When the show was relaunched in September 1975 as It’s Cliff and Friends, the first episode opened with him performing Love Is All by Roger Glover and Eddie Hardin:

As you may have heard, Eddie Hardin passed away on July 23 this year.

Thanks to MrsPeetGallee for the video and to Nigel Young for bringing it to your attention.

This weekend the Rock Meets Classics performed at Wacken Open Air. Joe Lynn Turner was part of the gang, and they performed Stargazer in tribute to Ronnie James Dio:

Performers:
Joe Lynn Turner
Mat Sinner Band
Bohemian Symphony Orchestra Prague conducted by Bernard Fabuljan

Complete 86 minute performance of Rock Meets Classics will be available for your viewing pleasure from arte.tv until November (at least as far as my German goes). And I must admit, despite my scepticism towards these “cover bands on steroids”, it is a lot of fun. But then again, we already knew that Thunderstruck pretty much anything performed on cellos is a lot of fun, didn’t we?

Thanks to Martin Ashberry for the heads up.

Deep Purple live at Capitol Theatre (Port Chester, USA 2015-07-25)

My 21 1st Deep Purple show spanning 40 years this past Saturday evening at the Capital Theater located about twenty miles north of New York City. Offering a semi spoiler alert here. For those who wish to see the list see the Lewiston, New York review. Very good local three piece opening act came on at 7:55 and played strong power pop for thirty minutes. Our seats were next to the sound board so i asked the sound man ( who I had met two days earlier at the TODAY SHOW..more on that in a bit) what time Purple was coming on. He said 9:00. after a quick run to the mens room was back in my seat at 8:53 and the lights went down and intro music began at 8:55. Apparently I was not the only one caught by surprise. When Ian Gillan took the stage for Highway Star Steve Morse pointed to his watch and smiled. During the course of the first two numbers Ian shook hands with all of his bandmates, later explaining that he missed the ritual backstage hand shake they always do before taking the stage.
Having seen the set list in advance I have to say I was not looking forward to this as much as in the past, at least intially before the excitement built in the theater. Was very pleased that they did four songs from NOW WHAT, but would have gladly traded one of those for another Morse era song such as Ted the Mechanic or even The Aviator ( I don not count Contact Loss and Well Dressed Guitar as the are part of every show these days). The deep cut song was once again Hard Loving Man, and although it was a great performance, they did this number last year. Is it really necessary to do it two years in a row? Would love to have heard Flight of the Rat or maybe Place in Line or Rat Bat Blue.
All that said, it was a very energetic performance, more so than last year. Part of this might have been due to the proximity to Conneticut and having so many family and friends and management types there.
I was EXTREMELY fortunate to be one of the camera operators on the TODAY SHOW performance. A brief word about that. Was able to meet all of the guys there and they were VERY excited to play, even at such a strange hour, as Ian Paice said. They were thrilled with the set up and sound, and if you watch the performance you will hear an excellent mix ( and see some fine camera work:)
After the TODAY SHOW song was able to secure backstages passes for the Capital show ( we already had our tix). Talked to Roger briefly and my wife and I also had a lovely extended conversation with Steve, mostly about family and non musicial things. I did him about a future Flying Colors record and he said he would like to but it was a question of finding the free time for everyone.

review by Eric A. Eisenstein

Deep Purple live at Capitol Theatre (Port Chester, USA 2015-07-25)

Where to begin…Took the drive to Port Chester NY to witness yet another outstanding performance. My girlfriend and I met up with our friend Tony before the show. Had a late lunch, couple of cold ones then walked across the street to the venue. Heart pumping as usual. Anticipation! Why these guys aren’t in the Hall of Shame/Fame is beyond me. Deep Purple killed it!! It was non-stop.. Plowing through an awesome set which included 4 songs from the Now What CD. Fans roaring after every song. You gotta hand it to the sound engineers, those guys are amazing.. In one word, the sound was perfect!! Everything was clear and precise. Once Ian started singing, you knew we were in for a stellar show. His voice was in top shape!! Crystal clear! (again, hat’s off to the sound guys). I was so happy they played Apres Vous.. One of my favorite cuts from the new cd. The Mule…, Hell to Pay, Vincent Price.. The band was clearly feeling the love from the audience. All smiles… This could very well be their last tour of the States.. Go see them..You won’t regret it.. Now it’s off to the Foxwoods Casino in CT… See you there!!! Cheers!!

review by Johnny B