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:
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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.

British band Alabama 3 has a cover of Smoke On The Water posted on their web site (Flash plugin required). Strictly speaking, it’s not really a cover, it’s a new song with new lyrics and melody, with the familiar riff featuring throughout. The track is for their new album, which according to their manifesto

will be created and disseminated without interference from labels, shops, manufacturers or distributors — a virus transmitted directly to the people

Three tracks are posted on their web site each month with the fans being invited to vote for the one that makes it on the album.

To the wider audience, Alabama 3 might be better known for their track Woke Up This Morning, which opened every episode of The Sopranos for many years. Don’t expect any hard rawk in there either.

Thanks to Kevin Dixon for the info.

Back in February 2008 Jon Lord did two shows in Hagen, Germany. This interview was apparently recorded at around the same time. “The Older Statesman of Rock” talks about music:
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Those of you who follow our weird covers semi-permanent section, have seen many a weird thing 😉 . But a high school brass band doing Purple medley must be a first. Lots of Japanese girls (that rule) playing music we all love and this time they don’t hide their faces:
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Ian Gillan will appear on Off The Record with Joe Benson radio show tonight, April 12, at 11 p.m. Eastern Time. The show is syndicated and is carried by many radio stations across USA and Canada, some of which also broadcast online.

We apologise for such short notice.

Thanks to Sean Willoughby for the info.

There’s been a number of updates on Caramba!

• A new Caramba TV special, in which Gillan introduces a member of his family:
  
• A new wordography: Better Days from One Eye to Morocco. Big Ian promises to make this into a steady stream of the Moroccan lyrics’ wordographies.
• A new photosession (looks like Morocco too).
• A new batch of Q&A: Questions I would like to ask myself.

Thanks to Steve Campbell for the info.