António Freitas, host of long-running daily show “Alta Tensao” on Portuguese radio station Antena 3 and a contributor to the magazine LOUD!, has posted an interview he conducted with Gillan. Big Ian talks about One Eye To Morocco. The interview is in English and you can view the it at antoniofreitas.com (clip is right on the front page so far, look under “Hypertensão: entrevistas (interviews)”; and no, I have no idea how to turn off the annoying background broadcast). Stop the “Alta Tensão/RTP Antena 3 : Emissões” player on the right to turn off the background music (thanks to 69).

The interview is actually quite entertaining and at the end Ian gets talking about the state of the new Purple recording and into some hilarious anecdotage.

Thanks to Mike Garrett for the info.

A week after it’s release, the remastered Stormbringer didn’t make it all the way into the BBC Top 40, but landed at a quite respectable #2 on Top 40 Rock Albums UK chart, displacing Chinese Democracy by Guns n’ Roses.

Glenn Hughes apparently did some promo legwork for this release. His interview to the GTFM Rock Show on March 1 can be heard online (MP3, approx 8 minutes) at the Rock Of Ages.

Thanks to Bill Leslie and Mike Garrett for the info.

Recently we at The Highway Star were contacted by a person who was concerned that one of the comments on our site contains an untrue statement and asked if the comment in question could be removed. We refused to remove it, for a variety of good reasons, and offered our help in getting in touch with the author of the comment to sort things out.

Which got me thinking…

After our Bullets flying editorial was published, some of you started complaining that “if you have nothing good to say, say nothing” contradicts freedom of speech. No, it does not.

With freedom comes responsibility. Responsibility for your own words, for what you say. It doesn’t matter where you say it. It’s all the same Internet. It doesn’t matter if you’re hiding behind a nickname (putting a real name to a nickname is often a lot easier than many of you might think).

And everything that you say on the Internet stays there forever. One can remove something from a web site, but no one can “unpublish” something from the Internet as a whole. Even if we decide tomorrow to close the shop and destroy all the data on The Highway Star, it will make little difference. Everything you can see on our site has already been crawled, archived and indexed by Google, Yahoo, dozens of other search engines, by the Wayback Machine, and probably by thousands, if not millions, other less obvious places on the ‘net. Repeatedly.

Bruce Schneier (a computer the computer security guru) writes about this phenomena:

Welcome to the future, where everything about you is saved. A future where your actions are recorded, your movements are tracked, and your conversations are no longer ephemeral. A future brought to you not by some 1984-like dystopia, but by the natural tendencies of computers to produce data.

Increasingly, you leave a trail of digital footprints throughout your day. Once you walked into a bookstore and bought a book with cash. Now you visit Amazon, and all of your browsing and purchases are recorded. You used to buy a train ticket with coins; now your electronic fare card is tied to your bank account. Your store affinity cards give you discounts; merchants use the data on them to reveal detailed purchasing patterns.

Computers are mediating conversation as well. Face-to-face conversations are ephemeral. Years ago, telephone companies might have known who you called and how long you talked, but not what you said. Today you chat in e-mail, by text message, and on social networking sites. You blog and you Twitter. These conversations – with family, friends, and colleagues – can be recorded and stored.

Note: they are being recorded and stored. Bruce wrote that piece for the BBC and probably didn’t want to scare the wide audience too much.

It used to be too expensive to save this data, but computer memory is now cheaper. Computer processing power is cheaper, too; more data is cross-indexed and correlated, and then used for secondary purposes. What was once ephemeral is now permanent.

Your future has no privacy, not because of some police-state governmental tendencies or corporate malfeasance, but because computers naturally produce data.

To which I must add that police-state governmental tendencies and corporate malfeasance don’t exactly help matters either.

Cardinal Richelieu famously said: “If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged.” When all your words and actions can be saved for later examination, different rules have to apply.

(Go and read the whole thing, if you never paused and thought about it, it’s very illuminating. And yes, there are people who try to put a positive spin on these developments.)

Now, imagine 10 years from now your prospective employer judging you by the comments you have written on some music blog back in 2009.

We all here at The Highway Star value your privacy like our own. But the day will come when someone knocks on the door and we will no longer be able to protect you. And let’s be honest, we’re all human beings, with all the usual weaknesses. If we think your behaviour in the comments was less than commendable, we might be less motivated to fight for you.

With the lawmakers and judiciary increasingly meddling with the things they apparently do not understand, this day will come sooner rather than later. You’ll know that the day of reckoning has come when the innocent warning below our comment box changes to “You have the right to remain silent. Everything you say can and will be used against you in the court of law.” And the brave new world shall begin.

Behave yourselves, it’s in your own best interest.

Ian Gillan’s new solo album One Eye To Morocco will be released in Europe on March 6 and in the UK on March 23.

“It all started in Cracow, Poland, late December 2005.

In a café in where Oscar Schindler had been active during dark times in the mid-20th century, I sat across the table from my friend Tommy Djiubinski who was telling me all about it. He was deep into this amazing story when a woman caught my eye as she walked behind Tommy. Quite naturally I followed her graceful movement; I was drawn by her magnetism.

‘Sorry, what were you saying?’
‘Ah, Ian you have one eye to Morocco.’

This meant I was not concentrating on the matter in hand; I apologised and we carried on.
Later I was curious about the expression so Tommy gave me the full version…You have one eye to Morocco and the other to The Caucasus.

We could only guess the origins but agreed the epigram meant being distracted from the party line by the lure of something exotic. So I filed it away in Incomplete Proverbs, Vague Maxims or more likely Interesting Phrases.

Three years later, due to a family illness, there was an unexpected break in the Deep Purple tour schedule. I made some calls and we discussed making a new album. When we finished counting there were 38 songs in various stages of completion. Roughly half of these were discounted because they need too much work in the allotted time span, and the rest were put on the ‘Short List’.

There was one particular song, untitled and without lyrics, that I felt should be the nucleus of the project. The song was the criterion by which all the rest would be judged and so the process was made easier by having a yardstick or even an interesting phrase – Aha! ‘One Eye to Morocco’ became the title of that song, and the song became the title track of the album.”

Photo by © 2009 Tommaso Mei

Tracklisting:

Normal CD:

1. One Eye To Morocco
2. No Lotion For That
3. Don’t Stop
4. Change My Ways
5. Girl Goes To Show
6. Better Days
7. Deal With It
8. Ultimate Groove
9. The Sky Is Falling Down
10. Texas State Of Mind
11. It Would Be Nice
12. Always The Traveller

Ltd. Edition CD:
Limited digi-pack with CD with exclusive track: “Lonely Days”

12″ Vinyl Gatefold

7″ vinyl single (signed) & CD album

Finally the remastered Stormbringer arrives. A few Day One observations…

The 2LP is of course gorgeous with the colours brought out much better on the lavish gatefold sleeve which feels terribly luxurious. A really nice move. Thank you!

Sadly the fascinating rehearsal photos from Clearwell Castle are actually smaller on the vinyl bags than in the CD booklet. Check out the Blackmore and Lord stares. Also the revised and simplified Mk 3 logo on the front doesn’t fit the artwork as well as the original version which had more colour. Nit picks – discuss!

The vinyl remains unplayed yet, but the CD bonus tracks are an instrumental take of High Ball Shooter (previously available on the Listen Learn Read On box set?) and four new remixes by Glenn Hughes:

Ritchie’s solo in Holy Man sounds strangely subdued (Glenn will join Roger on Blackmore’s blacklist of disrespectful remixers!). You Can’t Do It Right features a crunchier bass and a more commanding opening synthesizer fill. Coverdale’s vocals are louder and come from a different vocal take altogether. Lord’s synth solo in the middle is louder (and excellently so!). There is an extra organ solo towards the fadeout and some weird guitar sounds that are more aimless dooddling than an actual solo.

Again, the guitar solo over fade-out of Love Don’t Mean A Thing sounds distant, while Hold On also features different and more raw vocal takes altogether from both Glenn and Coverdale. These are very nice and add a new freshness. Jon’s electric piano solo is also slightly louder – thank you!

Overall the remixes are mainly of interest in the vocal department. Glenn Hughes has brought out the vocals more (both his own and Coverdale’s), but at the expense of some of the other instruments. The choice of tracks to remix is both weird and highly predictable as they seem to be Glenn’s personal favourites.

They are not at all representative of the album, and allowing Glenn to remix just those four tracks gives the remastered album an uneven feel – and in choice and execution they perfectly illustrate the issues that originally made Ritchie pack his bags!

It’s unfortunate that not more unreleased historical material could be included. Coverdale nixed an early and very different take of Soldier of Fortune (shame!) so we are left to feast on Glenn Hughes’ questionable remixes and the quad mixes on disc two.

Anyway, the original album of course sounds wonderful, so the bonus stuff shouldn’t scare you away. 🙂

Almost a year ago Russian band Pushking started working on their new album called The World As We Love It (working title: Pushking Duets). The goal of the project appears to be essentially similar to Gillan’s Inn — re-record an album worth of old numbers with guest appearances from as many big name musicians as possible (although, in all fairness, I don’t think most of the guests ever heard of this band before, unlike of Gillan).

So far, with the help of producer Fabrizio Grossi they have secured contributions from an impressive list of rock luminaries — including several members and relatives of the Purple Family — Glenn Hughes, Joe Lynn Turner, Graham Bonnet, Matt Filippini, John Lawton, Udo Dirkschneider, Dan McCafferty, Steve Lukather, Eric Martin (ex-Mr. Big), Jeff Scott Soto, Alice Cooper and his guitarist Keri Kelli, Steve Stevens (Billy Idol), Joe Bonamassa, Jorn Lande, Eric Ragno, Stevie Salas, Steve Vai, Billy Gibbons and Paul Stanley. And the list keeps growing.

Basic tracks were recorded at the Matt Filippini’s studio in Italy, while various guests do their bits mostly in studios around Los Angeles.

The project will be ready, well, when it’s ready. You can follow the progress at pushking.eu.

Thanks to Kostya from deep-purple.ru forum for the heads up.

Nevsky Express TV has published a live video of Street of Dreams from the recent Over The Rainbow gig in St.Petersburg, Russia. The video is rather high quality and appears to be shot with two professional cameras. You can watch it on their web site. Further instructions same as the last time.

Thanks to Tatiana Marshanova for the info.

This April Deep Purple are going to make a stop in Moscow on the way from Japan to Poland. Today Russian promoters SAV Entertainment have confirmed that the band will play two gigs at the Club B1 Maximum on April 18th and 19th. Tickets are on sale. Please note, however, that both these dates are not yet confirmed by Thames Talent.

Thanks to deep-purple.ru for the info.

Classic Rock Revisited has a recently published interview with Don Airey, done by Jeb Wright. Don talks about his solo album A Light In The Sky, his life, his illustrious career over the years, and the circumstances of replacing Jon Lord:

Jeb: Was Jon an influence to you growing up?

Don: I always loved Purple and I loved what he was doing. Even though Jon is a virtuoso, it is what he doesn’t play that I love. Jon is the second best Hammond player I have ever heard, with Jimmy Smith being the best. I loved what Jon did on the early Purple albums but he changed his style when they did In Rock. The guy that really inspired me was Keith Emerson. He just blew me away and he still does. I was lucky enough to meet him a few years ago and I was charmed.

Read the interview at Classic Rock Revisited.

Thanks to Mike Garrett for the info.

Over The Rainbow management has issued a press release concerning ticket sales for the first 3 OTR shows in Belarus and Russia. It appears that out of the three shows one was oversold and the other two very nearly sold out.

• Minsk, Sports Palace: 4,000+ (capacity: 4,500)
• St.Petersburg, BKZ: 3,500+ (capacity: 3,727, all seated)
• Moscow, B1: 4,000+ (capacity: 3,000+)

Photo galleries: St.Petersburg, Moscow.

Thanks to Lisa Walker for the info, and www.darkside.ru and www.deep-purple.ru for the photos.