Musical tastes of the current Russian president Dmitry Medvedev have been well publicized. Undoubtedly, Finnish president Tarja Halonen was aware of this when choosing entertainment for the official state dinner this Monday April 20 in honour of Medvedev’s visit to Finland — she invited singer Timo Kotipelto and guitarist Matias Kupiainen (both from Stratovarius) and Jani Liimatainen (Sonata Arctica) to perform for the guests. After they performed two Stratovarius songs and a cover of Burn, Medvedev demanded an encore. Voice.fi reports:

Singer Timo Kotipelto performed yesterday to an influential audience. Renowned metal-fan, Russian president Dmitri Medvedev listened to Kotipelto’s gig with excitement and according to Ilta-Sanomat magazine didn’t let the man off the stage after three songs.

Kotipelto says, that an assistant gripped his sleeve when he was leaving the stage and asked for one more song. By then Kotipelto had already played Stratovarius hits Hunting High And Low and Black Diamond and Deep Purple’s Burn. According to Kotipelto the president wanted an encore and got Rainbow’s song I Surrender as an extra.

Timo Kotipelto got an invitation to perform for the president a week and a half ago. He committed to the unusual gig, if he only found a guitarist to accompany him. Kotipelto joined with former Sonata Arctica guitarist Jani Liimatainen and Matias Kupiainen from Stratovarius: “I thought, that lets do this special thing and play with two guitars.”

Stratovarius’ cover of I Surrender from their compilation Intermission (2001)
buy it from Amazon:

Thanks to Blabbermouth and Stratovarius.com forum for the info.

On arrival for the brief visit to Moscow, an extremely tired and jetlagged Big Ian gave an interview on April 17 to Nevsky Express TV. Here are the excerpts from his stream of consciousness on his solo album, quantum theory, religion and human nature:

Further instructions on operating nevex.tv’s player are just like before.

Thanks to Tatiana Marshanova for the info.

A new attempt on the Guitar World Record will happen on the German TV show Fernsehgarten on May 10th. We have covered the previous two records, both set in 2007 and both featuring Smoke On The Water: 1,802 players in Leinfelden, Germany and 1,721 players in Kansas City, USA. The new attempt will be made on live TV at the ZDF-Fernsehgarten studio ground in Mainz. Ian Gillan has assured his participation by telephone call once again.

The organizers would like to invite everybody who can hold a guitar to come to Mainz on May 10th and participate in the new attempt at Guitar World Record by playing Smoke On The Water:

You are not only helping us to win the World Record, you also have the unique chance to be aprt of a live TV show, meet other stars and — if we are successful — you can call yourself a Guinness World Record holder afterwards.

The invitation is of course for all other guitarists as well. Please forward this message to all you know and who can play guitar or are at least able to hold a guitar correctly. This is not about perfection or beauty, it is only the registered number of people that counts. It is important to have as many participants as possible in Mainz, as on May 1st a similar attempt takes place in Poland during the “Thanks Jimmy” (Hendrix) Festival (but they play “Hey Joe”). The organizers already had more participants last year, but due to a formal mistake Guinness didn’t accept the record. This time they won’t do the same mistake again, so they are a real competitor (we don’t call it a threat but a challenge) for us, the founders of the GWR. And we are the ones that have the official support from Deep Purple. So we are reliant on every single participant, and on every promotion we can get, especially mouth to mouth propaganda. So please forward this to as many people as possible, even if you will not attend yourselves.

The TV show runs from 11am to 1pm, I guess, the record attempt will appen at about 12:30, before that the registration (plan enough time for that!)

The latest news about the GWR can be found on our homepage www.gitarrenweltrekord.de. There you can also download the tab of the new song. It is really easy to play (that’s what it was written for), wven for beginners (like me).

We would be really glad, if you would come to Mainz (together with a few mates). A DP fan meeting can be arranged.

Thanks to Helge Andreas Mayschak for the info.

And the prize for best Made in Japan choreography goes to (drum roll) Mette Ingvartsen. Her 50/50 solo performance is described as

…extreme and spectacular expressions as a physical practice rather than through psychological motivations. Movements deriving from clearly coded situations, like a rock concert, an opera or a circus number are processed until they obtain a certain kind of deformed expressivity. It looks like affects rather than emotions, except no one knows what affects look like…

And what better music is out there to epitomize a rock concert as “extreme and spectacular expression” than Made in Japan. How does it work for an avant-garde ballet? As difficult as it may be, try to keep an open mind and see for yourself (warning: the video is potentially not safe for work).

One this is for sure — you’ll never listen to that drum solo the same way again. 😉

Rockpages.gr has a rather interesting interview with Graham Bonnet. While undoubtedly it was prompted by his resurrection of Alcatrazz, a good half of the interview is about the Rainbow days:

Rockpages.gr: After a couple of solo albums you flew to France to audition for Rainbow. You got the job by singing the Deep Purple classic “Mistreated”. Describe to us the whole experience…

Graham Bonnet: I didn’t know about Rainbow at all…I didn’t have a clue about them! I knew Deep Purple but I certainly didn’t know about Rainbow at that time. Roger Glover got in touch with me and asked if I wanted to come to France to audition for the band. He added that they had already auditioned 79 singers (laughs)! I had nothing to lose…so I bought a couple of Rainbow albums and flew to France. I wasn’t into rock at that time…I preferred more R&B stuff…like Stevie Wonder and of course The Beatles…my favorite band ever. I wasn’t so much into Purple or Zeppelin because I preferred the singing side of a record and not so much the technical aspect of a song. Anyway, when I started singing “Mistreated” I was so loud they started laughing immediately because the microphone wasn’t even on (laughs)! When I sang a little bit with the microphone on, they said after a couple of minutes that the job was mine! It was that simple…

Read the rest of the interview.

Thanks to Yiannis Dolas for the info. Video is from Munich 1980, thanks to blackmore5555 for uploading.

It is Easter weekend in Russia and Moscow fans are celebrating it at the B1 club, where Deep Purple are playing two gig in a setting unusually intimate for a Purple gig in that country. The two setlist surprises on Saturday were Ted The Mechanic and Fireball being back. While a better and more complete recording is yet to surface, enjoy these clips:
Continue Reading »

The first video clip of Smoke On The Water from Tokyo on April 15 2009 has surfaced on YouTube. As we previously reported, it features Deep Purple with special guests Jon Lord and Yngwie Malmsteen.

The camera work is rather poor (unless you prefer to watch the ceiling and the lighting rig!), but the audio is decent and Jon Lord is clearly audible taking a couple of solos – not in the least a fiery one towards the end of the song.

The clips opens with Yngwie Malmsteen and Steve Morse trading guitar licks for a couple of minutes before the band kicks into the song. Malmsteen seems to attempt a Blackmore style solo at first before lapsing into something more his usual style.

In a recent interview to the Spanish The Metal Circus, Joe Lynn Turner (among other less gregarious things) took a pot shot at Coverdale:

…recently I heard on the Internet that David Coverdale was using all kinds of tapes. Well, I was in Finland [in June 2008] with Graham Bonnet and we were on the same festival [Sauna Open Air] as Whitesnake, and I couldn’t believe he was using these tapes — for lead singing! Not just backgrounds, but lead! And I was… My mouth was open. I was like, ‘What the fuck, David?! You can’t do this. You look so stupid, so foolish.’ And everyone is complaining about this. No, I’m singing live. This is what you get; that’s it. . . I’m not trying to talk shit… This is true. Everybody sees this. . . I couldn’t believe it, because he [David] was always one of my favorite singers. To use tapes for a lead vocal… I can understand backgrounds if the [rest of the bandmembers] don’t sing. But for lead?! You’ve gotta be kidding!

You can listen to the interview here.

Coverdale was quick to respond to this in no nonsense terms:

I have no idea what the hell the daft bugger’s talking about.

I do not, have not and will not use tapes of my voice to mime in concert. My band and I perform and sing live in concert. Yeah… we’re that fucking good! What a total prick.

We had these rumours in Germany last year while we were on tour with Alice Cooper and we actually had a journo [Frank Thiessis] sit out at the front-of-house mix to verify the rumours were unfounded.

You can read both Coverdale’s response and Frank Thiessis’s story from the German edition of Metal Hammer in Geoff Barton’s blog at Classic Rock Magazine.

Now, I’m not a big fan of either JLT or the hairspray incarnation of Whitesnake, but let’s try to dig down to the truth here.

The arguments that Coverdale is miming to a vocal soundtrack basically boil down to the fact that vocals can be heard even when his microphone is away from his head “down at the waist level”, as can be seen on numerous videos from the last year tour:

The above video is from the Sauna Open Air festival in Finland that JLT refers to.

Now, let’s take a closer look at what’s happening with David on the current tour. This better quality video of Lay Down Your Love is from Frankfurt, November 28, 2008:

First of all, nobody argues that David’s voice is, ahem, not what it used to be. As you can see and hear, he makes a heavy use of backing vocalists. In fact, there are 4 back vocalists on stage (two guitar players, bass player and keyboard player). And then there were reports from last year that there are two more backing vocalists behind the curtains. That’s a grand total of 6 throats helping out Coverdale during the show.

Second, Whitesnake’s Front Of The House sound engineer Bradley Johnson explains the audible vocals when David’s mic is far from the sweet spot:

I work extremely hard to accommodate David’s mic technique. I endeavour to make every syllable and nuance of his vocal heard no matter how far the microphone strays from the sweet spot. Getting a vocal mic audible over a juggernaut guitar rig when it is three feet from a singers mouth is no small task… Some nights I win, some nights i do not… As far as running tracks live… ludicrous.

David has always sung this way. His microphone has an extremely high input level, which makes it possible that the voice is still heard even from a huge distance.

I have my finger on the gain control during the whole show to make David’s vocals sound as constantly as possible.

David used this very unorthodox mic technique for a very long time. Look at this video from 1997:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5dXvcrksDc
I think nobody would argue that Coverdale was miming at this acoustic show, yet his voice is crystal clear even with the mic far away. (And if you’re a fan of the bluesy side of Coverdale’s singing and still don’t own the Starkers In Tokyo DVD, run and get it now.)

Last but not least, our own man Svante (and he’s a sound engineer himself) was working at the Sweden Rock Festival last year, had a chance to inspect Whitesnake’s sound setup and to monitor their sound feed during the show. To cut a long story short, he had found absolutely nothing suspicious.

When faced with a choice to believe either JLT or Svante, I choose Svante any day 😉

Thanks to Blabbermouth, monstersandcritics.de and Classic Rock for the info, and to all the uploaders for the video material.

Last night, on April 15, Deep Purple were joined onstage by original keyboard player Jon Lord and Swedish speed shredder Yngwie Malmsteen at the International Forum in Tokyo.

Jon Lord played two songs with the band – Perfect Strangers and Smoke On The Water. Yngwie Malmsteen only guested on Smoke.

This marks the third time Jon Lord has guested with the band since leaving in 2002 – the first was Wembley in 2004 and then the Sunflower Jam in London last September. (This photo is not from Tokyo.)

Thanks to the Bunnies.

In case any of you had any doubts, now even Glenn Hughes says that he can’t see a Mk3 reunion happening. In his April 11 interview to The Classic Metal Show he says:

You know, David (Coverdale) and I have been discussing this with Jon Lord for the last three years. It’s been on the table, off the table, on the table, off the table. David and I had a long discussion three months ago about doing it one more time. It wouldn’t be a good time to do it in the next year, but there are a lot of things that may stop it from happening. So I’m telling you guys here on the phone tonight that I can’t see it happening. I don’t want to donate any more of my time to doing this. All across the world, the same questions are there. “When are you guys going to get back together?” I can’t see it happening, and I don’t think about it anymore. You guys just asked me the question. I never think about it. It’s not part of the thought process anymore. For many, many reasons, it won’t happen. It’s a shame, because the fans would have loved to see it, but then again, I understand why Jimmy [Page] and Robert [Plant] probably won’t want it together. Let the legacy be intact. I don’t know if people will really want to see guys doing the same songs they did 35 years ago. I don’t know. I know there would be a lot of people, thousands and thousands of people every night that would pay to see this. None of us want to do it for greed reasons. We would want to do it for some kind of artistic revelry. I would want to do it for that reason. I don’t want to get up on that stage and just coast, put on the pipe and slippers and just yawn and get all that money. That’s not what I want to do. I want to give the audience a really, really good time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JweEC5vlSXA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMx0DGwLUfw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j02paQAvTdc

Thanks to Blabbermouth and Daniel Bengtsson for the info.