Glenn Hughes played a Deep Purple set with the boys from Norwegian tribute band ‘Come Taste The Band’.

Glenn was in excellent shape and in good humour. I have seen this band a couple of times before, and they are pretty good. This is the best I have seen them, and it looked as if Glenn got the best out of them.

I saw this as a good chance to hear some good MK 3/4 songs, and it turned out to be a very fun and memorable night. Of course the original is better, but I think it`s great that Glenn did this as part of his “summer holiday”

Extended solos from all in the band during the show, and nice to see and hear “the furniture” Hammond. Guitarplayer is a Blackmore authentic in his playing and Vidar the singer made some nice harmonies with Glenn.

Set list: (Might not be 100% correct order)
Stormbringer
Might just take your life
Mistreated
Sail away
Lady luck (Vidar from CTTB sang this, and very good too)
Gettin’ tighter
You fool no one
You keep on moving

encores:
Soul mover
Burn

Approx 4-500 people at the festival.

The Highway Star reader Craig Neely caught Dream Theater in Philadelphia recently – and came away with some interesting thoughts about Deep Purple. Read on …

My friend, Dave, and I saw Dream Theater for the first time on July 31, in Philadelphia, PA, USA. I was first turned on to them a few years ago when The Highway Star posted a link to a clip of them playing Highway Star at a gig.

Deep Purple is the best band ever.

On June 13 Deep Purple played at the Great Wide Open festival in a small picturesque town on Mühldorf in Bavaria, about an hour or so outside of Munich. It was a very enjoyable show, I’d even dare to say one of the best ones that I have seen (and I’ve seen my fair share). Here is a video of Hush to illustrate my point:

We have a new photo gallery from the show as well as from the one in Dortmund on June 10. Enjoy!

Thanks to SuperPurplefan for uploading the video and also to Helge for trying to help out.

Current Deep Purple’s front of the house soundman Gert Sanner gave a brief interview published by soundcraft.com. Among fairly technical things, he shares his memories of the recent Japanese tour:

Purple don’t use a set list, so I have to be on my toes all the time ready to make adjustments in a split second, the Vi allows me to do that.

Of course, the “don’t use a set list” bit is, ahem, a stretch of imagination as many here have witnessed the “not used” set list first hand.

There was a special moment in the 2nd Tokyo gig, when I had the biggest surprise, we’d just started ‘Perfect Strangers ’ and, unannounced, Jon Lord walked on stage and started playing keyboards, it all seemed a bit Spinal Tap mixed with Still Crazy, I certainly had to react fast to that!

Read more at soundcraft.com.

20 years ago, on July 8, 1989, a group of musicians gathered at the Metropolis Studios in Chiswick, London to make a benefit record to raise money for the 1988 earthquake relief in Armenia.

In early October this year Ian Gillan, Tony Iommi and Geoff Downes will visit Armenia together with Jon Dee who organized the original Rock Aid Armenia project. They will receive Orders of Honor from the President of the country, visit cities of Spitak and Gyumri that took the hardest hit 20 years ago, and attend presentation of the Smoke On The Water remix to be released via iTunes with proceeds going towards further relief projects in the earthquake zone.

A possibility of Big Ian performing a show with the local philharmonic orchestra is also being discussed. Gillan’s manager Phil Banfield released the following statement to the media:

Despite the busy schedule of Ian Gillan and Deep Purple, we are currently looking at the possibility of Ian performing his orchestral concert in Armenia. When Ian meets President Sargsyan in October he is hoping to be able to announce the date when he will be able to perform in Armenia.

Thanks to Dima Zykov and Mediamax for the info. Also, big boo to Mediamax for violating the terms of Creative Commons license.

In the latest installment of Caramba TV, Big Ian reports from his undressing room in Baalbeck:

Thanks to Steve Campbell from Caramba.

Audio Fidelity’s In Rock achieved a surprising chart success in the top sellers list of an online retailer CD Universe. As of July 29, it reached #2 interrupting a bevy of Michael Jackson’s albums.

Meanwhile this release is only at #325 in Amazon.com charts.

Thanks to JL from deep-purple.ru forum for spotting this.

Audiophile label Audio Fidelity has released on July 21 their own remastered version of In Rock on a limited edition 24 karat gold CD (yep, that’s real 24 karat gold instead of aluminum; which has nothing to do with sound quality, just longevity). Mastering for the CD was performed by a cult engineer Steve Hoffman. This release follows the original 7-track format with no bonus tracks.

The album can be ordered through Amazon:

Previously Audio Fidelity has released Who Do We Think We Are (2005, Gold CD, AFZ-027) and Live on the BBC (2004, SACD, AFZ-017), the latter comprised of the 1972 BBC recording better known as the second disc of In Concert 70/72 with two bonus tracks Hush and River Deep Mountain High.

Thanks to MuzikReviews.com for the info.

The concert on September 15 in Madrid, Spain, has been moved from La Cubierta to Palacio Vistalegre. Both are big modern arenas of similar capacity (10-15,000), so it is likely it has something to do with e.g. hall availability, rather than ticket sales.
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Lakselv, Northern Norway

The set list was the same as Copenhagen, but without “Wrong man”.

Paice is brilliant. Keeps the whole thing together with Glover, but no drum solo this night. Morse was also good, but no surprises for the die hard fans, but a lot of the show was new for most of the audience, and therefore he scored high during his solo spots.

Personally “Contact lost” sounded fresh, maybe because Steve has stripped it down somehow. Very clean sound from the guitar, and very tasty. Airey also did a fine job, but a little bit low in the mix, although during his solo spot he got a huge applause and “sing-along” when he played a traditional “joik” (Samiid Aednan, the same he did in Tromso 2006) Luckily, no “Star Wars”.

The four did an excellent job, and really showed what brilliant musicians they are, but it felt a little bit like they were on auto-pilot. Gillan was not good. He really struggles now, and a lot of people were dissapointed with him. He is a fantastic mid-range rock’n’roll singer, as he proved several times this night, but his days as a hard rock singer is over. He tries the impossible during “Space Truckin`”, “Fireball”, and “Highway star”, just to mention a few. I mean, keep it simple and change some of the songs.

Also, I dont`t like what they are doing to “Strange kind of woman.” Is there a Purple song that has been more modified and changed during the last ten years? This is a crowd pleaser, don`t wreck it!! A lot of “Gillanizing” this evening too, but that`s quite normal, isn`t it?

Conclusion: A good show with a lot of stunning performances, but Gillan (sorry…) didn`t match the other four.

DP went on at 10.30 P.M., and played til 11.50 P.M.