What night! A legend closing the South America 2008 Tour.

9.30 p.m.: Gillan, Glover, Paice, Morse & Airey. Sold Out, Sound good (7.5/10) and Purple 10/10!

First time in my country, I travelled 400 miles but, this night was something like a dream turns reality! The set list was very similar to Brasil, Argentina, Ecuador …. A big surprise: Don Airey´s keyboard solo including “Alma Llanera”.

Long Live Deep Purple .. Thanks Mr. Gillan, Glover, Paice, Morse, Airey

Set List:
1)Pictures of home
2)Things I´ll never said
3)Into the fire
4)Strange kind of woman
5)Rapture of the deep
6)Mary long
7)Kiss and say goodbye
8)Steve Morse´s solo (including Little wing, Back in black, Sweet home Alabama, Sweet child of mine)
9)Well dressed guitar
10)The battle rages on
11)Lazy
12)Don Ayrey´s solo (includin Alma Llanera)
13)Perfect strangers
14)Space trucking
15)Highway star
16)Contact lost-Smoke on the water

Encore:
17)Hush (introduction: Green Onions)
18)Drums solo
19)Bass/drums- Bass solo
20)Black Night

The concert ends at 11:23 p.m.

I´m flying in a Purple dream

In a recent interview to the Billboard magazine David Coverdale unveiled plans for retrospective anniversary releases:

Also upcoming for Coverdale will be a remastered three-disc set to mark Whitesnake’s 30th anniversary, which he says will “embrace the beginning right up until now — including some Coverdale/Page and solo Coverdale material.” A live Whitesnake DVD is in the works as well.

Thanks to Blabbermouth.net for the info.

Deep Purple’s concert in Quito started at 21:10 local hour. The first 20 minutes of the concert were plagued with sound problems, fortunately they were remedied.

The set was full of all time classics: Space Truckin’, Mary Long, Into the Fire, Pictures of Home, Lazy, Black Night. The highlight of the concert in my humble opinion: the moment when they played Perfect Strangers, just FUCKING awesome. The Battle Rages On, also sounded very, very good.

Steve Morse is a real pro, even if he is not from the hard rock background, he played extremely well, tight and precise. They returned for an encore (Black Night and Hush).

There were moments at the concert that was like been in the Budokan at Tokyo 1972. You had to be there to believe it. Deep Purple are rock dinosaurs? No way! They are in an unbelievable musical form.

At the end of the last year we have started discussion about the state of the music business where a lot of people lamented demise of the physical medium as a primary way of distributing the music.

Nine Inch Nails have recently released their new album Ghosts I-IV which success may indicate the way of the future for other bands. The album is self-financed, self-produced and self-released. It is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial ShareAlike license, which gives the fans freedom to do anything they want with the music short of selling it. The music, essentially, is free for anybody who wants it.

How are they planning to make a living by giving away their music? Let’s see.

It’s a four-part album available in several forms:

• Part 1 (first 9 tracks) can be downloaded for free from the NIN website. And because the album is released under a very permissive license, the whole album can be absolutely legally downloaded from your favourite file sharing network.
• $5 gives you download of all 36 tracks DRM-free in very high quality MP3 or lossless FLAC, plus a 40-page PDF booklet.
• $10 gives you 2xCD set in a six panel digipack package with a 16 page booklet.
• $39 will get you a 4x vinyl edition which will be released in early April.
• $75 gives you a “deluxe edition” which comes in a hardcover fabric slipcase containing 2 audio CDs, 1 data DVD with all 36 tracks in multi-track format, and a Blu-ray disc with all parts of the album in high-definition 96/24 stereo and accompanying slideshow.
• And if all that wasn’t enough, there was also a $300 “ultra-deluxe” limited edition package, which had a run of 2500 copies and as of today is sold out.

How did the album do commercially so far? The band have grossed $750,000 in a space of three days after the March 2 release. Without record company backing them up, without a major marketing campaign, etc. Although their bold move made rounds on the Internet and was even subject of a story in New York Times.

So, no, shift to the digital music won’t deprive fans from the ability of getting something to hold in their hands if they really want to.

And with the talk of a new album, I hope somebody in the Purple camp is reading this and taking note. Because I’m not buying the same music twice again. Particularly not a few months after I bought it the first time.

While being in Lima, Peru Ian Gillan gave an interview pieces of which appeared today on Bloomberg’s newswire. The interesting bit is about the band’s plans:

This is a three-year tour and finishes in Russia and then Germany in November. I guess we’ll have Christmas off and then I hope we shall then go into the studio and make another record and do it all over again.

With all due respect, anything that Gillan says should be taken with a grain of salt. But here you have it — no studio work is planned for this year.

Read more of the interview here.

Thanks to George Kikonishvili for the info.

Doogie White, who has recently parted ways with Yngwie Malmsteen, came to the rescue of a Purple tribute band at a charity gig in UK:

Disaster was turned to triumph for another local act on the night after Deep Purple tribute band the Purple Project from Newbury lost their lead singer after developing laryngitis.

At the last minute the band called up Doogie White, lead singer from Rainbow, a band set up by Deep Purple’s guitarist Ritchie Blackmore in 1975, and Mr White gave the audience a performance to remember.

Ah, and the real news here is that Rock of Ages is running an auction of celebrity memorabilia, with the top prize of a private lesson with Ian Paice. The auction, which is running on eBay, closes on Sunday, March 9, at 8.15pm (UK time). Place your bids now!

Thanks to getreading for the info.

Update (March 16th): the auction for lesson with Paicey has raised £789. Congratulations to the very generous winner kyethedog!

In the new installment of his Notes from the road Steve Morse talks about Mexican food, Hammond tuning, justifiable homicides, bureaucracy on the home front, the same abroad, and politics (or not).

Read all about it here.

Thanks to Daniel Bengtsson for the info.

All European tourdates that we had posted for the summer are now officially confirmed. In addition to that, Montreux is confirmed for the closing day of the festival — July 19, plus a couple of French festivals and one in Belgium.

See them all in your tour dates list (and to all of you who got in touch asking for the return of separate listings for each band, it’s on our to-do list, please be patient). Please email us with any local updates, missing or incorrect info, etc.

Thanks to Tatti Oscarsson for the info.

I’m from Barcelona and I was on holiday in Argentina when I discovered a DP show in the classic Luna Park Stadium and, of course, I decided to go.

It was the best DP show I’ve ever seen! Perfect in the beginning, with Pictures of home, including the final musical passage of Child in Time, continuing without stop into Things i never Said, Into the fire (yes! perfectly played) and Strange Kind of Woman.

Simply spectacular – the reaction of the Argentinian public, the very best crowd I’ve ever seen, that launched the five men on stage to a continued climax and happiness.

A very heavy version of Mary Long, with a strong guitar, and much correct plays of Rapture of The Deep and The Battle Rages On. A very well done Contact Lost and the typical battle between Steve and himself, crying his guitar and going directly to the Riff Tribute: Sabbath, Kinks, Who, Zeppelin, Guns N’ Roses, Ozzy… the audience was shocked a lot and Mr. Morse gave them what they wanted! It finished with the Well Dressed Guitar, but we could change the mane for one night to a well-done guitar. Simply perfect!

Mr Airey’s solo was another highlight of the night, organ classics, also star wars and another classics from the keyboardist, but the best was the tango he played for the audience, who became literally crazy with an Astor Piazzola classic song.

Perfect Strangers was played with the perfection that one of the best rock songs need and we were transported to the battery of Machine Head classics one by one. an incredible Lazy, a heavy-metallic Space Truckin’, so strong performed…

..and the two best of the night:

Highway Star was exactly what it had to be, the best Purple song (sorry, but I like it more than Smoke On The Water) and in Buenos Aires they played it incredibly well. A perfect combination between Glover and Morse came to the intense rhythm of the song (like a lorry down a highway). Beginning with an absolute climax, they took the song to an infinite crescendo, a perfect organ and guitar solos and a final exctasy that only can be continued with Smoke on The Water, played very clear and without mistakes.

One minute off of the stage, and because of the crowd they returned so fast to play an incredible Hush, with Paice playing drums (also a solo) like a machine-gun. The best was yet to arrive: the audience began to sing Black Night just 30 seconds before the band, like if they knew that it was to be the last of the day.

About the musicians nothing to add to what every fan already knows: Glover was happy as a child, Airey was clear and feeling very comfortable. Morse was simply Morse, nothing to add. Paice was… better than in the seventies. Gillan was the Gillan that we need: the chief (or in Spanish: el Amo).

So, the absolute best DP show I’ve ever been to or seen, in one of the best Purple cities in the world: Buenos Aires is not only the capital city of Argentina, you must know this!

I was born in 1972 and I only was able to see DPp shows in my home town, Barcelona. First with Satriani, after for the Abandon tour, with Morse, from who I think that’s completely different from Blackmore, but also completely perfect for Purple. And two times with Airey, the best keyboardist for the modern Purple. What I mean is that the line-up is less important than the sound, and it’s for me very amazing to see that DP sounds better every time I go to a new concert. Like good wine, my favourite rock group is better as the years go by!

Thanks, Airey, Gillan, Glover, Morse, Paice, finally I’ve the perfect Purple show in my mind!

SOLD OUT!

SUPORT GROUP : La Carga

SET LIST
O1-Picture Of Home (with a bit of Child in Time)
02-Thing I Never Said
03-Into The Fire
04-Strange Kind of Woman
05-Rapture of The Deep
06-Mary Long
07-Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye
08-Steve Morse Section / Contact Lost / “The Riff Parade” (paranoid/Crazy Train/Can`t Explain/Whole Lotta Love/You Really Got Me/Sweet Child in Mine)
09-The Well Dressed Guitar
10-Battle Rage On
11-Lazy
12-Don Airey Section /Mr Crowley /Libertango/Ragtime/Death March of Star Wars and others
13-Perfect Strangers
14-Space Truckin’
15-Highway Star

ENCORE
16-Smoke on the Water
17-Hush (Ian Paice Solo)
18-Black Night