My friend, Dave, and I travelled from the US to the Sarajevo, Budapest, and Graz shows. They were all excellent, of course, and I see no need to rave about the band’s performance at each because they performed amazingly, as usual. I do want to point out some interesting aspects of each, though.

1. Sarajevo
a. Tickets cost the equivalent of $17 American.
b. It was the only show where the fans were subjected to a full body pat down search.
c. Tour merchandise was inexpensive.
d. Though vocalizing exceptionally well for every song, Ian Gillan said not one word to the crowd–and I am serious, not one word.
e. The setlist had one difference. Instead of The Battle Rages On, they played Knockin at Your Back Door.
f. The fans were wild, emoting like no other show that I ever attended.
g. It was almost surreal afterwards when we walked to downtown Sarajevo among the locals, joining them in their loud and raw Black Night chants of “oh oh, oh oh oh, oh oh, oh oh oh oh oh, oh oh, oh oh.”

2. Budapest
a. It was the first time that I saw a coat check at an arena.
b. The venue was new and very comfortable.
c. The sound was great.
d. I never saw so many people in business-type clothing at a rock concert.
e. Gillan tried hard to interact with the crowd, but I found them to be mildly unresponsive to him.

3. Graz
a. The acoustics in the venue were substandard in my opinion. I will not speculate about the cause.
b. I found the crowd to be mighty appreciative, especially as the program moved through its second half.
c. They offered the most memorable moment of my trip by having a gorgeous blond woman dressed in black with a purple sash around her waist play with the band on Rapture of the Deep and the last encore, Black Knight. She was awesome and added a flair to the music that I could never have anticipated. The show concluded with Steve and her dueling, responding perfectly to each other’s challenges. The visual was just as cool, because they faced each other at center stage with their long blond hair seeming like living pillars of virtuosity. It was the last part of our trip and it was a sight that I will never forget.

It truly is “all about the music.” Frankly, I cannot imagine a more worthwile investment of time and money than to have experienced these shows among the people of the locales.

I am proud of the band to have seen the intensity of emotions that they evoked and, conversely, to have felt the appreciation that the fans reciprocated to the band. Thanks once again to the band for making a part of my life very special, and to The Highway Star for allowing me to express these sentiments.

Craig Neely, Emmaus, Pennsylvania

Check out Metal Head Romania’s photos from the Bucharest concert.

And Metal Head Romania’s video from Bucharest:

Thanks to Morrison.

Great concert in Sofia, Bulgaria and I can give you setlist and some pictures:

01. Pictures Of Home
02. Things I Never Said
03. Into The Fire
04. Strange Kind Of Woman
05. Rapture Of The Deep
06. Woman From Tokyo
07. Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye
08. Steve Morse Solo -> Well Dressed Guitar
09. Knockin At Your Backdoor
10. Lazy
11. Keyboard Solo (Don Airey)
12. Perfect Strangers
13. Space Truckin’
14. Highway Star
15. Smoke On The Water

Encores:
16. The Battle Rages On
17. Hush
18. Black Night (special for Bulgarian Fans)

Tickets was sold out before one month ago, I found one very hard in the day of the show.

Gillan was in good condition, Steve too. Concert was filmed and I don’t know… maybe for upcoming DVD or for local TV, but is great.

Edwar

David Coverdale has posted this message somewhere on his band’s official site:

It is true that tour dates for 2008 are currently being put in place. We will likely start in New Zealand (Rock2Wgtn festival in Wellington) for a one-off in March. We are exploring the possibility of nipping over to Australia for a pint and a show, or two…but, at this time there is nothing positive to offer you. It looks very likely we will be having the distinct pleasure of returning to South and Central America in May, before starting our European run.

We have some absolutely splendid stuff planned… I can promise.

The U.S. still manages to elude us, for whatever reason, but, as always, we don’t take no for an answer… so, we are still working toward something in my adopted homeland later in the year. In fact, we will try to go anywhere and everywhere we can to present our music to those who want to be bitten by the snake.

The album is done and has been delivered to the record company as their Christmas present. We’re very happy with it, as I have reported to you throughout the year of creating it. I feel it has all the elements Whitesnake can offer, and hopefully a little more.

The new Whitesnake album will be called Good To Be Bad and is scheduled for release some time in the Spring of 2008. It has been announced that the drummer Tommy Aldridge has been replaced by Chris Frazier.

Whitesnake has also been announced to play in Europe for a string of summer festivals. Check our Family Tree tourdates for the latest state of affairs.

Thanks to Daniel Bengtsson and Blabbermouth.net for the info.

Jon Lord’s official website is previewing audio clips of Jon’s new CD, Durham Concerto, recorded with the Liverpool Philharmonics and to be released on January 28.

JonLord.org is also showing a three minute video from the world premiere of the Durham Concerto at Durham Cathedral on October 20.

Audio and video clips of the Durham Concerto at JonLord.org.

Deep Purple fans are a varied bunch. We come in all colours, shapes, forms and ages. We come to our site from all corners of the world. In the course of this year, no country spared interest in The Highway Star — from United States to Saint Vincent & Grenadines (ever heard of the latter? me neither).

Our server collects extensive statistics and we decided to take a look at what countries are in the lead. Not surprisingly, United States came at #1 (due to it’s sheer size), followed by Germany, UK, Italy and Canada. A much more interesting picture, however, emerged when we normalized the figures to the number of Internet users in each country (which varies wildly between 5% and 80% of the total population). We’ve cut off countries with less than 10,000 page views in the whole year, which left us with 51 remaining (plus grand total for the whole world).

Like any statistics, this should be taken with a grain of salt. Numbers for the Internet usage are rough estimates, particularly for less developed countries, and are very unreliable. Besides, ranking produced in such a way reflects not only the band’s popularity in a particular country, but also how widespread and well understood is English language, how often the people are willing to go on the ‘net for information and what is our “competition” in a particular country.

Having said all that, it looks like Finland is in a position to lay a very strong claim for the title of the HighwayStarest country of them all. 😉

And here are the results:

[TABLE=8]

Thanks to AWStats, GeoIP, and Internet World Stats.

Hyvää uuttavuotta to our friends from Suomi and Happy New Year to everybody!

Here’s a little something for you to remember the year of 2007 by.
Continue Reading »

Joe Lynn Turner did a couple of dates recently with an outfit known as Scrap Metal Band. Tracy Heyder was at one of the shows and reports:

On Dec. 15th, what turned out to be the ’80s rehash band known as “Scrap Metal” played at the Wildhorse Saloon, in Nashville, Tennessee. They called their show the “Jingle Bell Rock Party”. Not knowing anything about this band, I assumed it was a band headed by Joe Lynn Turner (since it was listed in the JLT Tour Update section in the Highway Star). I was wrong. Joe Lynn Turner was only a “Special Guest” along with Jimi Jamison (from Survivor). During the 2 hour gig, JLT only participated in 5 tunes.

It turns out that the actual band is made up of: Mark Slaughter (from Slaughter), Gunnar and Mathew Nelson (from Nelson), Eric Martin (from Mr. Big), and Kelly Keagy (from Night Ranger).

The first hour and a half was just the main band doing songs from each of the members prior band days with much gloating and bloviating in between tunes bragging about how great their song were in their day. They come across like an amateur “Cover Band”. The first guest was Jimi Jamison, whereby they covered a string of his tunes from “Survivor” such as Eye of the Tiger (Yuk).

Then came JLT. They introduced him as the singer for “Deep Purple”. I couldn’t believe my ears. Yes I know he sang on one Deep Purple LP, but that is hardly the main point of his career. To not pin him to Rainbow instead was way out of line. He strutted out and sang 2 songs: “Stone Cold” and “Street of Dreams”. Fairly good renditions of each, but he hammed it up so much you wanted to punch him or puke. Then he was joined by Jimi Jamison and they did the Night Ranger Tune “Rockin’ America”. They ran around trying to “Out Cool” each other. This was followed by a really bad version of “Jingle Bell Rock” where they brought on stage some of their kids and friends and they just butchered the song and continued to ham it up. Then as the closer was announced, I couldn’t believe my ears again…..”Highway Star”!!!!!! By far, the worst version of this song I’ve ever heard. JLT just ran around strutting and flicking his hair and screaming out the words as though it was his first and last time to ever hit the stage and came across like a teenager dying for attention.

All in all, I have to say………”Do Not Waste Money On This Show” if it comes to your town.

Tracy Heyder

Tracy’s pictures from the show:

Glenn Hughes has posted a new voice message on his Myspace page.
Glenn talks about his new solo album that is due in the spring, calling it his “greatest work” and describing it as “very, very funky” and “extremely soulful.” He also announces a live performance with Chad Smith that will take place on February 24, 2008 in Detroit, Michigan. Hughes also mentions that he will appear with Chad at the annual NAMM trade show in Anaheim, California on Friday, January 18, 2008, as part of a Sabian Drums event.

Thanks to Blabbermouth.net for the info.

Roger Glover has posted this year’s round-up on his website:

Of all the tours we completed this year, the reception we received in France was exceptional. In Paris, Gérard, our promoter, presented each of us with a “Gold Ticket” – a great looking plaque commemorating our box office achievement – we sold more tickets than any other band this year. I sincerely thank him and his staff. I’ve never seen anything like it before but it seems symptomatic of the way the business, at least our business, has changed. Live music rules!

Read the rest of December Words on rogerglover.com.

Thanks to Andrey Gusenkov for the info.