from Don’s record company, Mascot Records:

07/16/08 M- Don Airey Tour Cancelled

The recently announced tour of Don Airey has been cancelled due to his busy touring schedule with Deep Purple.

Off course the tour will be rescheduled, we’ll keep you updated on any news regarding Mr. Airey.

The ones I remember:

Pictures of Home (with a bit of Child In Time)
Things I Never Said
Into the Fire
Strange Kind of Woman (with duet between Ian & Steve)
Rapture of the Deep
Demon\’s Eye (nice replacement)
Contact Lost
Steve Morse Solo
The Well Dressed Guitar
The Battle Rages On
Don Airey Solo
Perfect Strangers
Space Truckin’
Steve Morse and Glover Jam
Highway Star
Smoke on the Water

Encore:

Hush with Ian Paice Solo
Roger Glover Intro
Black Night

Very nice evening with the band in top form.

Introduced by one of the most boring shows I’ve ever seen (by Andy Timmons), the guys hit the stage at about 22.20 P.M. Not so good in the beginning, the P.A. balancing got o.k. very quickly.

Every one seemed in excellent shape, big Ian sung as good as usual, but let me tell you this: Paicey played the best drumming ever, in dozens of Purple shows I’ve seen in the past. We got a drummer for the next 40 years!

The only little disappointing thing was about the tracklist which hasn’t been changing that much in the last 2 years. At least, “Things I never said” it’s about to become a live classic so….

No doubt I’ll be there next time, but then we all want a new studio record!

Nick Simper will perform in Austria in November this year with the local band called Nasty Habits. They will play a special set of Deep Purple Mk1 numbers.

Shows booked so far:
November 14 — Orpheum, Graz
November 16 — Viper Room, Vienna

We’ve been informed that more dates in Germany are in the works.

Thanks to Peter Brkusic for the info.

VH1 Classic in North America is airing a show called Seven Ages of Rock (which was co-produced together with the BBC). The fourth episode Never Say Die is about hasrd rock and heavy metal and features Deep Purple along with Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Mötley Crüe, Ozzy Osbourne and Metallica. The Purple part is mostly about Smoke On The Water. It had clips of the band miming to Black Night, Copenhagen’72, Hofstra University’73 plus casino burning down, interspersed with Gillan and Glover interview bits.

If you didn’t catch it on cable, here’s the relevant piece of the show from youtube (while it’s still there):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZmnFOs0jdk

Thanks to Brad DeMoranville for the info.

The wonders of high speed rail, joys of private jets and the fury of nature — read all about it in the latest installment of Steve Morse’s Notes from the road.
Continue Reading »

it seems the weather had other plans when Deep Purple were about to hit the stage in Zaragoza on the first night of the European tour this summer, here’s what Ian Gillan had to say about it:

Deep Purple – 11/07/08 Zaragoza
As we were about to hit the stage the gig here was blown out by a storm that arrived without notice.

Did I say a storm? It was a tempest of biblical proportions.

Sorry we didn’t get to perform for you but the damage to stage and equipment was so bad that it was impossible.

Some of the crew (not ours) were injured and we’re waiting for reports.

I hope you are all ok!

We always try to get through these things, but for reasons of safety it was called off by the promoters.

Needless to say we look forward to seeing you again sometime in the future.

Cheers from all of the band, ig

and thinkSPAIN.com reports:

Violent storm wrecks rock fest

Last night’s Monsters of Rock festival was washed out by a violent fifteen-minute wind and hail storm that also disrupted the 2008 international exhibition cultural programme.

One spectator was hospitalised after being hit by a metal scaffolding plank, but was not seriously injured.

Around 7,000 heavy metal fans had been looking forward to a star-studded line-up, including the likes of Deep Purple, Thin Lizzy and Twisted Sister.

Organisers are assessing whether tonight’s concerts, including a performance by Iron Maiden, can be salvaged.

At the Expo site, the storm, which struck at around 10pm, forced the suspension of a joint concert by Estrella Morente and Dulce Pontes, also interrupting the Iceberg show.

We have received an unconfirmed report that both Israeli gigs on September 7th and 8th at the Hangar 11 in Tel Aviv have been cancelled. Instead, Deep Purple will play a gig on September 7th at a rather unusual venue — Caesarea Amphitheatre. This venue is located on the ruins on an ancient Roman amphitheatre that apparently still serves it’s original purpose. Israeli media also reports that the show will be recorded for a new live DVD and CD.

Did anybody else besides me thought of Live in Pompeii ?

Update (Jul 14): A second gig at the Caesarea Amphitheater has been announced, to take place on September 8.

Thanks to Adar Avisar and Ilya Ferber for the info. Photo: Michael C. Berch, Wikimedia.

Steve Morse will hold a guitar workshop at the Underground club in Köln on July 26th. The event is sponsored by Engl, who will be presenting their new E656 Steve Morse Signature amp. Entrance is free, but interested parties are advised to make reservations by contacting info@beyers-music.de or calling +49-(0)2327-3939 or +49-(0)221-2827540.

Underground: Vogelsanger Str. 200, 50825 Köln (Ehrenfeld).
Doors open at 15:00, clinic starts at 16:00.

We’ve discussed previously the state of music business and where it’s going. Music is not alone in this state of transition. Every form of art is.

In preface to his recent novel Little Brother, Cory Doctorow writes:

If I could loan out my physical books without giving up possession of them, I would. The fact that I can do so with digital files is not a bug, it’s a feature, and a damned fine one. It’s embarrassing to see all these writers and musicians and artists bemoaning the fact that art just got this wicked new feature: the ability to be shared without losing access to it in the first place. It’s like watching restaurant owners crying down their shirts about the new free lunch machine that’s feeding the world’s starving people because it’ll force them to reconsider their business-models. Yes, that’s gonna be tricky, but let’s not lose sight of the main attraction: free lunches!

Free lunches, yoohoow! Who doesn’t like free free lunches? (Yes, I know there’s no such thing…)

But what about all these people who create the movies, musicians who write and perform the music, writers who write the books, you ask? How are they going to make a living?

Well, Cory Doctorow is one of those folks who puts his money where his mouth is. He is an accomplished writer himself. You can probably find his books at your local bookstore (look in the sci-fi section). He also puts all his books online under a Creative Commons license that allows unlimited copying, sharing and derivative work for non-commercial purposes. So you can download them from his website instead of buying in the dead tree form, if you prefer so.

Here’s his rationale:

Giving away ebooks gives me artistic, moral and commercial satisfaction. The commercial question is the one that comes up most often: how can you give away free ebooks and still make money?

For me — for pretty much every writer — the big problem isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity (thanks to Tim O’Reilly for this great aphorism). Of all the people who failed to buy this book today, the majority did so because they never heard of it, not because someone gave them a free copy. Mega-hit best-sellers in science fiction sell half a million copies — in a world where 175,000 attend the San Diego Comic Con alone, you’ve got to figure that most of the people who “like science fiction” (and related geeky stuff like comics, games, Linux, and so on) just don’t really buy books. I’m more interested in getting more of that wider audience into the tent than making sure that everyone who’s in the tent bought a ticket to be there.

By the way, giving away books for free didn’t prevent Little Brother from getting on the New York Times’ best selling list.

How’s the novel itself? In one phrase: it’s 1984 in the 21st century. It’s not without it’s flaws — I think it’s too didactic in places and I don’t always agree with the author’s politics. And the happy end is rather deus ex machina-ish.

But after all it’s intended for teenagers and it does raise some very important questions:

The 17 year olds I know understand to a nicety just how dangerous a computer can be. The authoritarian nightmare of the 1960s has come home for them. The seductive little boxes on their desks and in their pockets watch their every move, corral them in, systematically depriving them of those new freedoms I had enjoyed and made such good use of in my young adulthood.

What’s more, kids are clearly being used as guinea-pigs for a new kind of technological state that all of us are on our way to, a world where taking a picture is either piracy (in a movie theater or museum or even a Starbucks), or terrorism (in a public place), but where we could be photographed, tracked and logged hundreds of times a day by every tin-pot dictator, cop, bureaucrat and shop-keeper. A world where any measure, including torture, could be justified just by waving your hands and shouting “Terrorism! 9/11! Terrorism!” until all dissent fell silent.

We don’t have to go down that road.

If you think he’s a tinfoil hat wearing paranoid guy, I can assure you he’s not. (Nick carefully adjusts his own tinfoil hat). All the technology he describes in the book is either already being used or a mere few years away. It’s just a matter of time before the events described in the book become technically possible. The plot is set in 2010, to give you an idea.

If you know a teenager with a gypsy heart and are scratching your head for a present, you can do a lot worse than giving this book. And some adults should read it too. Especially those, who are enchanted with the seductive little boxes. Or simply don’t understand the consequences of using them.

You can get the book for free or buy it.

This concludes my todays soapbox rant. Be free. Be paranoid. Don’t trust anybody over 25. Even Svante. 😉