One of the biggest (if not the biggest) heavy metal festivals in the world — Wacken Open Air — has just concluded this year run and has announced that next year lineup will include a headlining performance by Deep Purple. In 2013 the festival will run on the weekend of August 1-3. Weekend passes are already on sale.

The exact day when the band will perform at Wacken has not been confirmed yet and will be posted in our calendar as soon as it’s available.

Thanks to Marco Kupfer for the info.

Total Abandon will be released on vinyl by Back on Black label some time in September this year. So far, we have not been able to obtain any further details on packaging, bonus tracks (if any), etc.

Thanks to Alex Chornyy for the info.

In his recent interview to The Boston Phoenix Lemmy reveals this curious bit of anecdotage:

…Jon Lord was to a large extent responsible for me being in rock and roll. He was in a band called the Artwoods years ago, with Ronnie Wood’s brother Arthur. They were sort of a jazz-blues band, I guess. They played at the place in Wales where I was living, this dingy little boozer, and I was talking to Jon and, like an idiot, he gave me his address in London. So of course I went down there and he wasn’t there, but he was living at Art’s mother’s house where Ronnie Wood, who was in a band called the Birds, was living and they let me crash on the couch. I woke up and I’ve got all the Birds standing around me going, ‘What are you doing on Mom-mom’s couch?,’ all poking me with this terrible cockney rabble.

I never forgot that Jon — a complete stranger, and I’m some kid — gave me his address to come down to London and see him. I often told him thanks for that. I saw him late last year in a hotel in Germany in Cologne. He was over there doing some orchestral stuff, and we talked in the bar for awhile. . . . I’m glad I saw him, since he’s since departed.

Thanks to Blabbermouth for the info.

Steve Morse and Joe Lynn Turner both took part in the Supertramp tribute album Songs Of The Century due for release on August 14 via Cleopatra Records. Steve contributed for The Logical Song (together with the original Yes keyboard player Tony Kaye), while Joe sang on Bloody Well Right. Other guests on the album include Annie Haslam, Rick Wakeman, Chris Squire, John Wetton, Tony Levin, Robby Krieger, Peter Banks, Geoff Downes, and Jordan Rudess. The album was produced by Billy Sherwood.

Thanks to Blabbermouth for the info.

Japanese blog Muse on Muse has two interviews with both Steve and Neal Morse of the Flying Colors project:

Muse On Muse: All of your guitar solos, especially the one on “Kayla”, are very beautiful and match the songs perfectly. Are your solos improvised, or do you make them prior to recording? Please tell us about your approach to guitar solos.

SM: The solos are improvised. I do several at one time, and keep erasing the worst one. When I get one that I like, I listen and fix some parts that could be a little better. Usually, I will keep the ones that accidentally have little melodic sections that surprise me. In the end, I will probably quote something from these solos such as Kayla, since they are melodic. However, thinking back on that one, I intentionally referred back to the intro melody in the solo since I felt it wasn’t brought back enough during the song.

MM: What are your future plans with FLYING COLORS? Do you have plans for another album?

SM: Yes, I’m sure we do. At the moment, we haven’t even done our tour yet, and everybody has busy schedules, so we don’t know when that will be, but we all love the product of this chemistry and want to do more, I’m sure.

Read more in Muse on Muse.

Flying Colors embark on a short tour this September. Check the details in our calendar.

Thanks to BraveWords for the info.

Tommy Bolin Memorial Fund has opened a new official website dedicated to Tommy: tommybolin-official.com. It has much of what one would expect from it (an RSS feed for updates would be nice though) and is well worth a visit.

The Tommy Bolin Memorial Fund is a charitable foundation in memory of Tommy run with active participation of his brother Johnny. They have been involved with all the archive releases of the past few years and also organize the annual Tommy Bolin Festival in Sioux City, Indiana.

While being in Italy, Ian Paice played on July 29 not a particularly widely publicized gig (at least, we didn’t know about it) with a local Pink Floyd tribute band, for a change:

Ian will do a few more appearances in Italy next month: on August 3 in Arba (Pordenone), on 4th in Cercemaggiore (with JLT appearing on the same bill), and on the 24th in Marghera near Venice.

Thanks to Nigel Young and Andrey Gusenkov for the info.

429 Records is preparing a Tommy Bolin box set The Definitive Teaser — a three-CD collection featuring a remastered version of his classic album along with two CDs of outtakes and alternates. The project is produced by Greg Hampton and Johnnie Bolin.

Along with the three-CD Teaser box set, 429 Records will release a five-CD set, The Definitive Teaser Collector’s Edition which will also include the two-CD deluxe version of Great Gypsy Soul — a collection of Bolin songs recorded by a roster of players (including Steve Morse and Glenn Hughes) who signed on to pay tribute to Bolin. Both The Definitive Teaser and Collector’s Edition will be released on July 31.

The Definitive Teaser track listing:

Disc 1

Teaser Remastered

1. The Grind
2. Homeward Strut
3. Dreamer
4. Savannah Woman
5. Teaser
6. People, People
7. Marching Powder
8. Wild Dogs
9. Lotus

Disc 2

Alternates and Outtakes

1. Teaser
2. Flying Fingers
3. Cookoo
4. Wild Dogs
5. Chameleon

Disc 3

1. Crazed Fandango
2. People, People
3. Smooth Fandango
4. Marching Powder
5. Homeward Strut
6. Oriental Sky (Lotus)

Thanks to Blabbermouth for the info.

Two new video fragments of the early Purple in full flight have surfaced on YouTube. Shot at the Essen Grugahalle in Germany on October 11, 1969. It was the Internationales Essener Pop And Blues Festival and other acts on the bill included Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream, Nice, and Hardin/York. We hope more of this footage exists somewhere and that one day we’ll be able to see all of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM8T4TgVHaY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAiJ3LRN7oU

Thanks to niceclips2 for posting the video and to Andrey Gusenkov for bringing it to your attention.

Classic Rock Magazine has a new interview with Ian Gillan focusing on his Ian Gillan Band years:

Why the jazz-rock-fusion direction?

I don’t know exactly, it was all a bit chaotic. To start off with we didn’t really have any direction at all, because nobody knew what they were doing.

Of course, my hero Johnny Gustafson was in the Ian Gillan Band. I didn’t know him as a bass player at first; I just admired his incredible voice. He was in the Big Three and The Merseybeats; he was a bloody awesome singer. We also had Ray Fenwick on guitar and Mark Nauseous [Nauseef], the drummer.

The only problem with that was that they were all Weather Report fans. That’s where the jazz came from.

I listened to Clear Air… the other day when I knew I was going to do this interview and it’s an interesting album. The music’s quite mental and there are no boundaries at all, because no one really bothered to set them.

But my Christ, there’s not one backbeat from beginning to end on the entire record.

Read more in Classic Rock.

Thanks to Andrey Gusenkov for the info.