Firstly, thank you for all the kind words you sent. I’ve been knocked sideways by the great reaction to Now What?! I kind of knew it was good but you never really know until people get to hear it and are interested enough to send feedback. I raise a glass to you.
I’m now back home after a memorable festival tour with DP in Morocco, Bulgaria, Georgia and Romania, where yet again I’m reminded of the power of music and how it connects all of us. Listening to music is one of my favourite occupations. I was randomly investigating my music library the other night when I came across a song that called forth a memory.
She was going to a mining town
Way up north to do her show
I said ‘It must be cold up there’
She said, ‘It depends on who you know’ — Lyrics from Mitzi Dupree
by Deep Purple
They’re calling it the end of an era, the last strip show in Kamloops.
The Duchess, formerly the Village bar, will reportedly host the final revue Saturday. Those with a sociological bent say men have come to understand that watching women undress in public is inappropriate.
Maybe, but at one time exotic dancing was more popular here than hockey.
Some will remember Mitzy Dupree and her show at Bailey’s on Eighth Street in the ’80s involving ping-pong balls. I never saw her show (honest), but I remember the spirited competition among male reporters for the assignment of “covering” the story.
Her Kamloops engagement made Dupree so famous the rock band Deep Purple wrote a song about her for their 1987 album House of Blue Light. You can now get it as a ring tone for your cell.
On this tour Deep Purple have played two more countries they’ve never played before — Morocco and Georgia. Here are a few tidbits from the visit to Tbilisi.
DFWatch has reports of band’s arrival and the gig:
Next was the Subways, an indie rock band from England, followed by long-awaited Deep Purple, which played more than an hour and then came on for two encores. The band played well-known hits, and some newer song. During their set, Georgians were also given a rendition of their national anthem by Don Airey, which was met by wild applause and cheering from the crowd.
It seemed that many of the audience had come to listen to Deep Purple, because many left after their performance.
Press conference before the show:
Roger and Big Ian being mobbed while making exit from a local TV station:
Vincent Price has won Classic Rock Track of the Week spot, and by a landslide: it got 67.53% of the total votes. Tracii Guns’ League Of Gentlemen came in second place with 5.4%, Megadeth third with 2.88%, and David Bowie fourth with 2.82%.
Never underestimate the power of lingerie clad pole dancing nuns 😉
NJ.com has an interview with Candice Night and Ritchie Blackmore, full of family anecdotage and the story behind Carry on… Jon.
Candice:
We were in CVS and I said, ‘Autumn, what Easter card should we get for Daddy?’ And all of a sudden, she became Belle from ‘Beauty and the Beast.’ She said, ‘Don’t talk about my father that way! He’s a genius!’
But don’t tell Ritchie, or his head will get bigger. He’ll say, ‘See? I’ve been telling you that for years.’
Ritchie:
We were snowed in, in that blizzard (on Feb. 8). The engineer and myself, the producer, we had nothing to do. I said, ‘I have an instrumental that I’ve vaguely finished. Do you want to try it?’
I wrote it on the spur of the moment. I had a very melancholy kind of tune. Then I started thinking about Jon. I thought maybe we should do an organ part at the end, as a tip of the hat to Jon. Pat Regan is an accomplished organist. We put the organ sound on, and off he went. I guided him on a few things, like riffs and how Jon played syncopation with his right hand.
So it was a throwaway idea that turned into something. It was something to Jon, a way of saying thanks for the years. It’s hard to talk about, when someone says, ‘What did you think of Jon?’ I’d rather play a tune. We wouldn’t have put it on if we hadn’t been snowed in. Maybe Jon caused the blizzard.
A second Jon Lord memorial concert will take place in Warsaw, Poland, on July 20, at the Club Proxima. The band Made in Warsaw, comprised of members of Panteon, Night Mistress and few other Warsaw rock bands, will play over 3 hours of Purple music, including obligatory hits and some rarities that has not been played by the real band for a long time. Guest musicians will include singer Grzegorz Kupczyk and guitar player Piotr ‘plays Blackmore better than Blackmore himself’ Brzychcy.
The event will be in honour of Jon’s memory and is being organized by Łukasz Jakubowicz (Hammond player for Panteon) and vocalists Adam Panasiuk.
Tickets 12 zł in advance, 15 zł at the day of the show, available through online vendors.
Deep Purple opened the next min-leg of tour and they have included three new songs in the setlist: Vincent Price, All the Time in the World and Body Line. These were performed in Rabat and Kavarna, with the next night in Plovdiv reportedly Above and Beyond taking the place of Body Line.
It appears that the whole show in Rabat was filmed professionally with clips starting to appear on Youtube:
Bob Ezrin was interviewed by Los Angeles radio KLOS, with a good half of the conversation revolving around Deep Purple and Now what?!. Ah, and he also tells an anecdote how way back then he turned down an offer to produce none other but Made in Japan:
In a recent interview to Russian newspaper Kommersant Ian Gillan mentioned, among the usual, that the band is contemplating a special tribute to Claude Nobs during their visit to Montreux (they perform at the Jazz Festival on July 19). One idea being touted is to skip Smoke on the Water from the setlist on the main festival stage at the Stravinsky Hall and perform it separately, on an open air stage on the Lake Geneva shoreline, with fireworks and other bells and whistles.
Thanks to CV3591 from deep-purple.ru forum for the info.
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Message from Roger Glover:
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing