Audio Fidelity will be re-releasing the four remastered Mark II studio albums as a box set this December. These are not the anniversary remasters, but the ones done by Steve Hoffman exclusively for the label. They contain no bonus tracks, just the same material as the original albums. The target audience are audiophiles not satisfied with the audio quality of the anniversary remasters, completis collectors, and the lovers of shiny things 😉

The four albums have already been previously released by Audio Fidelity separately as limited editions, and fetch a pretty penny at secondary markets. Priced at $130, this is a reasonable opportunity to pick up all four of their remasters for those who don’t have them.

Thanks to Vladimir Drybushchak for the info.

Back in 1998 Glenn Hughes appeared as a guest vocalist at three shows of the Marc Bonilla & Friends project, which also featured guest appearances of Keith Emerson. Now Varese Records is releasing a double CD set from these concerts billed as Keith Emerson, Glenn Hughes, & Marc Bonilla — The Boys Club: Live From California, The Complete Concert, which is due on September 3.

Track list

Disc 1

1. Afterburner
2. Long Journey Home
3. Hoedown
4. Whiter Shade Of Pale *
5. Cover Me *
6. Close To Home
7. Creole Dance
8. Honky Tonk Train Blues
9. White Noise
10. Nutrocker

Disc 2

1. Tarkus
2. Fanfare For The Common Man / Rondo
3. Dreams *
4. Middle Of A Dream *

Keith Emerson: keyboards
Glenn Hughes: vocals (*)
Marc Bonilla: guitar

Mark Bonilla’s band:
Mick Mahan: bass
Joe Travers: drums
Ed Roth: keyboards
Mike Wallace: guitar

Bob Birch: bass

The press release does not mention when exactly this was recorded, but Glenn’s tourography states that the three concerts in question (albeit with none of the setlists matching the tracklisting exactly) took place on:

• January 17, 1998 — Billboard Live, West Hollywood, CA
• May 14, 1998 — Palookaville, Santa Cruz, CA
• May 15, 1998 — Maritime Hall, San Francisco, CA

Most likely, this is the West Hollywood performance on January 17 (sans Black Box, Town Without Pity and Rock Candy with Ronnie Montrose guesting) as it was the only one where Middle Of A Dream was performed.

Thanks to BraveWords for the info.

The Sunflower Jam is releasing a double DVD with highlights of the 2011 and 2012 events. The DVD will be released on September 16 with preorders open starting August 20.

Track list

Disc 1 — The Sunflower Superjam 2012

1. Ain’t No Telling – The Temperance Movement
2. Behind Blue Eyes – Bruce Dickinson
3. Black Night – Bruce Dickinson
4. Elected – Alice Cooper
5. Emerald – Bruce Dickinson
6. I Want To Know What Love Is – Alfie Boe
7. Lessons In Love – Mark King
8. Pictured Within – Steve Balsamo
9. Rock n’ Roll – Alfie Boe
10. Sails of Charon – Uli Jon Roth
11. School’s Out – Alice Cooper
12. Since You’ve Been Gone – Brian May & Kerry Ellis
13. Smoke On The Water – Ensemble
14. Something About You – Mark King
15. This Wheel’s On Fire – Sandi Thom

Disc 2 — The Sunflower Superjam 2011

1. Bohemian Rhapsody – Newton Faulkner
2. Born To Run – Danny Bowes
3. Bourée – Jon Lord
4. Eleanor Rigby – Rick Wakeman
5. Good Golly Miss Molly – Gary Brooker
6. I Just Want To Make Love To You – Margo Buchanan
7. It’s Not As Big As It Was – Jon Lord & Rick Wakeman
8. Life on Mars – Newton Faulkner
9. Midnight Blues – Joe Bonamassa
10. Pictured Within – Steve Balsamo
11. Smoke on the Water – Deep Purple feat. Bill Bailey
12. The Ballad of John Henry – Joe Bonamassa
13. The Thrill Is Gone – Joe Bonamassa
14. Whiter Shade of Pale – Gary Brooker
15. Freedom Jazz Dance – Brian Auger
16. Born Free – Brian May & Kerry Ellis *
17. I Loved A Butterfly – Brian May & Kerry Ellis *
18. Substitute – Margo Buchanan *
19. Help Me – Sandi Thom *
20. November Rain – Sandi Thom *
21. Only Friend – The Temperance Movement *

* — bonus tracks from the 2012 Superjam

Preorder PAL or NTSC versions.

Two months after earMUSIC re-released the Copenhagen show on CD, a DVD re-release of the same show is in the pipeline.

The DVD offers the same music content as the CD release, including the three live tracks (“Strange Kind Of Woman” / “Smoke On The Water” / “Space Truckin’”) from Hofstra University 1973 and is basically a re-issue of the “Live in Concert 1972/73″ DVD.

The Copenhagen show was filmed by Danmark Radio, Denmark’s national radio and television station in black and white and offers a good picture quality, missing a few details which is fine regarding the age of the recording. It shows a young and energetic DEEP PURPLE that could be visually compaired to the DEEP PURPLE performing on “Doing their thing”, with a long haired Ian Gillan in an incredible sweater (Would be great to see THAT in colour!). During the bands perormance it’s clearly visible that the camera crew wasn’t sure what to expect, showing the “wrong” musicians during several solo spots.

The Hofstra clips are filmed in colour and show an optically changed and grown up band – especially Ian Gillan looks very different with cut hair and beard. The highlight of these bonus tracks is “Smoke On The Water”, the only known video recording of this song performed by the original MK II lineup.

The DVD leaves out the ”Live in Concert 1972/73″ bonus “Burn” (which would be somehow misplaced on a MK II recording), but adds “Deep Purple & The Music Revolution”, a stunning 11-minute gem as additional bonus: a very serious documentation about pop culture, taken from an unknown source (likely Swiss TV) featuring the young Claude Nobs and some band members of DEEP PURPLE not willing to discuss thoughts like if their music is consumated like Coca Cola. Overall – as Ian Gillan summarizes – “Music is fun”.

Goldmine magazine has inducted Deep Purple into their own private Hall of Fame (no relation to the snubby one). Noting that “there have been 14 different members of Deep Purple, including four different lead singers, […] members coming in and out more than once…”, by means of a rather convoluted process the 14 have been reduced to 9 actual inductees: Ritchie Blackmore & Steve Morse (guitar); Jon Lord & Don Airey (keyboards); Ian Paice (drums); Ian Gillan & David Coverdale (vocals); Roger Glover & Glenn Hughes (bass). That leaves out Nick Simper, Rod Evans, Tommy Bolin, JLT, and Joe Satriani.

[Update Oct 1] Nick Simper and Rod Evans have been uncluded as well.

Before the concert in Gävle on August 10, Steve Morse spoke to the Swedish national radio and got a language lesson in the process:

Thanks to Joel Peterson for the info.

Martin Popoff did an interview with Bob Ezrin for BraveWords:

I didn’t come into this thinking that I had a mission. I came into this a little bit reluctantly, thinking that they were looking to me to make a contemporary rock album with Deep Purple, which I didn’t feel was appropriate, or could be done in an honest way. But when I met with the guys, after seeing their live show, and seeing especially the big jam that they do in the middle of the show, which was just masterful, virtuosic… after seeing that, and meeting with the guys, I realized that there was that original essence of Deep Purple that people hadn’t heard on record in a long time, and that if they wanted to do that sort of thing, I was really into doing it with them. And I think it was Roger who actually used the phrase, ‘put the deep back in Deep Purple,’ which was music to my ears, if you’ll forgive the pun. So once we figured that that would be the mission, then I was interested. I was interested in doing an album that didn’t have to tick all those boxes that modern records have to tick, that didn’t have to have the big single, that didn’t have songs that were four minutes or four minutes and 20 seconds and no longer. That didn’t have to restrict the length of solos, that didn’t have to watch what it talked about, and try to conform to current trends and fashion. So you know, they said they didn’t want to do that either, and so there we were, on the same page, and ready to rock.

Read more on BraveWords.

On May 22 Bob Ezrin received another honour when he was named the Honorary Fellow of The Royal Conservatory in Canada.

Undoubtedly riding on the success of the 2012 Freeze Yer Ass Canadian tour, the band will commence 2014 touring in February in Scandinavia. 3 4 dates have surfaced so far: February 4 in Oslo, 5th in Bergen, 6th in Stavanger (very unconfirmed), and 11th in Copenhagen. Tickets for Oslo, Bergen and Copenhagen will go on sale August 16 at 10:00. There are indications that the gigs will be all reserved seating. If this is the case, interested parties would be wise to book early to secure good seats. Ticket links are in our calendar.

Warning: these dates have not been confirmed by Purple management, so the usual disclaimers apply.

Thanks to Bjørn Sund for the info.

The Classic Rock Awards polls are now open and our boys are in the running in two categories that you can vote for:

• Now what?! is shortlisted for Album of the Year
• Machine Head 40th anniversary is shortlisted for Reissue of the Year

As far as we can tell, any red blooded creature of 16 years of age with an email address is eligible to vote. Results will be announced on November 14 at the Roundhouse in London when Black Sabbath will receive their Living Legends award.

Cast your vote now.

Born Again has turned 30, and black-sabbath.com is celebrating the anniversary with an extended article, which includes the cover art story straight from its author Steve Joule, among many other things:

OK let’s put this baby to rest once and for all. The Black Sabbath ‘Born Again’ album sleeve was designed under extraordinary circumstances; basically what had happened was that Sharon and Ozzy had split very acrimoniously from her fathers (Don Arden) management and record label. He subsequently decided that he would wreak his revenge by making Black Sabbath (whom he managed) the best heavy metal band in the world, which, of course they are but back then in the early ’80′s they weren’t quite the International megastars that they had been in the ’70′s. His plans included recruiting Deep Purple vocalist Ian Gillan, getting Bill Ward back in on drums and stealing as many of Sharon and Ozzy’s team as possible and as I was designing Ozzys sleeves at the time I of course got asked to submit some rough designs. As I didn’t want to lose my gig with the Osbourne’s I thought the best thing to do would be to put some ridiculous and obvious designs down on paper, submit them and then get the beers in with the rejection fee, but oh no, life ain’t that easy. In all I think there were four rough ideas that were given to the management and band to peruse (unfortunately I no longer have the roughs as I would love to see just how bad the other three were as sadly my booze and drug addled brain no longer remembers that far back), anyway one of the ideas was of course the baby and the first image of a baby that I found was from the front cover of a 1968 magazine called ‘Mind Alive’ that my parents has bought me as a child in order to further my education, so in reality I say blame my parents for the whole sorry mess. I then took some black and white photocopies of the image (the picture is credited to ‘Rizzoli Press’) that I overexposed, stuck the horns, nails, fangs into the equation, used the most outrageous colour combination that acid could buy, bastardised a bit of the Olde English typeface and sat back, shook my head and chuckled. The story goes that at the meeting Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler were present but no Ian Gillan or Bill Ward. Tony loved it and Geezer, so I’m reliably informed, looked at it and in his best Brummie accent said, “It’s shit. but it’s fucking great!” Don not only loved it but had already decided that a Born Again baby costume was to be made for a suitable midget who was going to wear it and be part of the now infamous ‘Born Again Tour’. So suddenly I find myself having to do the bloody thing. I was also offered a ridiculous amount of money (about twice as much as I was being paid for an Ozzy sleeve design) if I could deliver finished artwork for front, back and inner sleeve by a certain date. As the dreaded day drew nearer and nearer I kept putting off doing it again and again until finally the day before I sprang into action with the help of a neighbour, (Steve ‘Fingers’ Barrett) a bottle of Jack Daniels and the filthiest speed that money could buy on the streets of South East London and we bashed the whole thing out in a night, including hand lettering all the lyrics, delivered it the next day where upon I received my financial reward. But that wasn’t the end of it oh no, when Gillan finally got to see a finished sleeve he hated it with a vengeance and hence the now famous quote “I looked at the cover and puked!” Not wanting to sound bitchy but over the years I’ve said the same thing about most of Gillan’s album sleeves. He also allegedly threw a box of 25 copies of the album out of his window. Gillan might have hated it but Max Cavelera (Sepultura, Soulfly) and Glen Benton (Deicide) have both gone on record saying that it is their favourite album sleeve.

Read more on black-sabbath.com.

Thanks to Nigel Young for date correction.