The accidentally on purpose freshly baked Reverend (who will be 102 years old next year) preaches the good word of music at the London Bass Guitar Show on March 1. Do yourself a favour — set aside 40 minutes and watch the whole thing. There’s a little prize at the end 😉
For the impatient: Answering the last question, Roger said that the band will do the next album “fairly quickly”. They hope to have a writing session this summer and back to Nashville at the end of the year or early next year.
Thanks to TC Electronics for filming (and posting) it and to Andrey Gusenkov for bringing it to your attention.
Roger Glover has been ordained as a Minister in the Eucumenical Church of Pragmatic Absolute, writes our long time contributor who happens to be a member of the church.
When we reached for a comment from Roger himself, he said:
I’m most definitely not quitting music. I’ve been thinking about a second career on the side for a while now. Being a spiritual person all my life, this looked like a natural progression of things for me.
Reverend Glover is now authorized to officiate wedding, baptisms, bar mitzvahs, handfastings, samskaras, and other sacraments. Requests for service bookings are now accepted for a nominal fee plus travel expenses (if applicable).
Ian Gillan sends a message about Deep Purple in Cyprus scheduled in May:
Dear Friends
There’s a bit of a hoo-ha going on about our forthcoming show in Cyprus, so here are some thoughts on the issue.
As it says in the Caramba disclaimer, my views are not necessarily those of the rest of the guys in Deep Purple. So, please take this as a personal opinion; IMHO as I used to say.
We – DP – have never been on one side or the other when it comes to performing music. I remember – during the cold war – hearing about visits to London by the Bolshoi Ballet and the top football teams from Moscow, also the Cossack dancers, and many other cultural exchanges between The West and The Soviet Union. The diplomatic and cultural side door was always open for art, entertainment and sport, no matter how frightening and confrontational all the rest of it was.
Don Airey was interviewed in Austria by the Mulatschag TV. Plenty of amusing anecdotage from his illustrious career. He also mentions that he has recorded an album of piano jazz pieces, which shlould be coming out later this year.
RockPages.gr has an interview that they recently conducted with Bernie Torme. No wonder that a large chunk of it is about his Gillan years:
Your career includes many and very significant collaborations. You are well – known from the period with Gillan. What does Bernie Torme feel for this period among all the other collaborations of his career?
Well…pride! When I joined the Gillan band I was unknown and by the time I left Ian I was a name in the industry. It was definitely a great band to be in. Ian was a fantastic guy to be in a band and I vividly remember our smooth collaboration. Ian never told anyone how to play and what to play. He let complete freedom to the musician and that’s evident to all the Gillan releases. It was an extremely democratic band…possibly quite anarchistic band (laughs)! In the end, there were a lot of arguments about…everything really but all these things belong in the past and I’d be more than happy to have a drink with all the guys from that band…great guys, indeed! I don’t think, though, that we will work professionally again as anyone has moved to different paths.
Enjoying a brief lull from the touring schedule, Roger Glover writes about his experience at the London Bass Guitar Show, as well as a few other random things:
In case youʼre interested Iʼve just made a fresh coffee and am ensconced before my computer, wanting to post something on the website, and wondering what it might be. As you may have noticed, Iʼm not one who cares to bleet or twog like some, several times a day even. Where do they find the time? My time is spent, as it happens, just like yours – second by second, hour by hour, etc… and itʼs a precious commodity.
But here we are with a dribble of minutes and Iʼm off the road, enjoying the unseasonably warm weather in Europe, at least the part of Europe I think Iʼm in.
American photographer Tom Franklin has published online several snaps he took at a Mark 1 show at Exhibit Hall at the Teen Fair in Phoenix in November 1968. Check them out.
The record company has published promo video for Sweet Tea – a track from the upcoming BCC4 inaugural California Breed album:
A promo feature with several quotes from Hughes accompanies the video release in USA Today:
We were there for 17 days, and we completely recorded it — here’s the kicker, all live onto two-inch tape. It’s the first time in my career where I sang the entire album, from tip to toe, live.
We recorded each track twice, drums and guitar, then I over-dubbed the bass on the comps of those songs. I sang the songs twice, and Dave comped my vocal tracks from each song, and we had a full, complete album.
On meeting Andrew Watt:
I saw this kid walking toward me, and he looked very much like I did in 1970 — long hair, had a really cool hat on. He spoke my language musically.
It’s not so much shredding guitar, it’s coming from Mick Ronson, it’s coming from John Frusciante, it’s coming from Jimmy Page. I thought, this would be really good if we could make a trio of this, and there was only one guy in mind to play drums. That was Jason.
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Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing