Martin Ashberry has started a project of enormous proportions, which goal is to catalogue not only all Purple concerts, but include descriptions of all corresponding audio and video live recordings (including bootlegs), document setlists and support acts.

Anyone who has specific recollections of setlists for the shows they’ve been to are cordially invited (nay, begged) to let me have them, should they feel so disposed. It covers 1968 to the last gig performed.

Deep Purple Live Index now includes setlists for 284 shows [368 at the time of this writing — Ed.], based on live tapes, reviews, official releases etc., and will increase in fits and starts as I get down to it. So far, the bulk of the sets are 84-87, 94, 75-6 and some other odds and sods. I’ve listed around 2,100 shows in total so I’m not even at 15% yet (and some of them will never be known, I imagine) but if you’ve anything to contribute, please click down through the individual line-ups and, if there’s a ‘Click!’ in the link column of a gig you’ve been to, feel free to check and let me know. If there’s no ‘Click!’ and you have the setlist, I’m open to any incoming information.

Trivia fact: Of the 284 shows I’ve documented so far, the set list had 95 variations for the main set or encores.

You know when you start something that’s really far to big to ever finish but you just can’t help yourself….?

Cheers for now,
Martin

Martin’s contact details can be found on the front page of his site. Go there, check it out and if you have anything to contribute, please get in touch with him.

Bernie Marsden’s Party in the Paddock is back for a third time!

After a two year rest the event is back with a bang and a great lineup featuring:
Roger Daltrey (The Who)
Zak Starkey (The Who)
Don Airey (Deep Purple)
Adrian Smith (Iron Maiden)
plus members of Marillion, The Earth Band and a host of world class musicians and bands playing for charity.

The event is to be held at West Well Farm Barton Road Tingewick Buckinghamshire MK18 4BD

Tickets cost £60 and include the following:

* Pig Roast or Veggie Option
* Dessert
* Drinks (Wine, Beer, Lager, & Soft Drinks)
* Live Music
* Great Musicians

The evening starts at 8pm on Friday 19th September 2008 and ends at at 12.30am

Tickets are very limited and selling fast so visit the website:
www.partyinthepaddock.co.uk to get yours now for what promises to be an amazing evening of music.

The two previous events have raised more than £50,000 for charities and with this years lineup even greater success is hoped for.

Thanks to Mark Smith for the details

Change in lineup – Sep 10
Unfortunately Bernie has just reported a lineup change: no Adrian Smith due to other commitments but we now have more Marillion members playing an acoustic Marillion set (Steve Hogarth, Steve Rothery and Pete Trevewas). Everything else remains as was! Very few tickets left now!

Jon Lord has published a new piece of music on his website. Titled Air on the Blue String, the piece – which is a work in progress – was partly inspired by classical musicians’ ability to improvise and blends blue(s) notes with a classical theme.

Air on the Blue String was first performed and filmed at Zermatt Unplugged in Switzerland in April. Watch it on JonLord.org.

Another one from the vaults — Stormbringer performed live in Germany some time in 1975. Although recording quality is far from great, the band is on fire. This recently surfaced clip also gives hope that there might be a better (and even longer!) tape sitting on a dusty shelf somewhere…
Continue Reading »

Jon Lord’s official website is offering the chance of winning two tickets to see Deep Purple at this year’s Sunflower Jam in London on September 25.

Forming just one part of a star studded charity event, Deep Purple will be joined by special guest Jon Lord for a few numbers.

Other artists at the event will include Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson, Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman, Whitesnake guitarist Micky Moody and others.

Enter in the competition for two tickets by answering a few questions on Jon Lord’s website, JonLord.org.

Read more about the Sunflower Jam.

Goldmine magazine has a feature article on David Coverdale, complete with an extensive interview covering everything from The Government to Good To Be Bad, including his Purple years:

I left Purple after the show in Liverpool. It was so f**king embarrassing. I did not want to be part of dragging Purple into the mud, the details of which I don’t really want to go into right now because it would involve personal critiques of several of the members. The circumstance was I left and was asked to keep it quiet until some of the members had decided what course to pursue. But I was an emotional wreck at the end of it. Drugs had come in in a much more overt way, and it was awful to turn around and see some of the founding members playing with their heads down out of shame. I just went, ‘F**k it; I’m out of here.’ I just couldn’t do it anymore. I didn’t want to be part of the demise of the legacy of Deep Purple. Deep Purple was an unbelievably beloved band and still is in Europe.

Read the rest of it at goldminemag.com.

The are more developments in the Fall tour schedule:

• All Russian dates in October are now confirmed.
• Another gig has been confirmed for Israel: Caesaria on September 18. Please note, that the September 7th show in Caesaria has disappeared from the tour dates list on both official sites, despite the claim by Jerusalem Post that it is going ahead. So far, this leaves us with 3 confirmed shows in Israel (Sep. 8, 9 and 18) and one unconfirmed (Sep. 7)
• The gig in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia on Sep. 5 also had disappeared from the official listings. However, we have an unconfirmed report that it is being rescheduled for September 7. We are trying to verify this story.

Please report of any developments in the local press to our news crew.

This concludes our mix of fact and rumour for today.

Thanks to Jerusalem Post, deep-purple.ru and deep-purple.com for the info.

Some time in late July, Paicey spoke to the Jerusalem Post, who have just published his interview in anticipation of Deep Purple’s visit to Israel:

When Roger and I play together, it’s like second nature. We don’t even have to think about it. When something’s about to happen, we know about it, even if we don’t know exactly what it is that’s going to happen. Sometimes it’s in relation to just one note and the way it’s played, and you react immediately in the same way, two musicians locking in.

I wouldn’t want to pontificate because usually my way is the wrong way – except for me. I don’t play the bass pedals the right way, I don’t hold the sticks the way they should be held. What I try to do is give information about drumming so a young drummer will have an idea of what he’s getting into.

Read the full inerview.

Thanks to Blabbermouth.net for the info.

Roger contemplates the end of the tour leg:

If you think I’m going to sit here and look for words of complaint about the rapid passing of time, you’d be right. I realise that the precious time spent with my mother before she passed away took a large chunk out of the year but even so, I find myself looking at September coming around when I had barely kissed goodbye to January.

Read the whole message at rogerglover.com. Ah, and in case you’ve missed it, there’s been a big Chiaroscuro update there.

My previous copyright rant sparked a lively discussion with Mike Eriksson who argued

Personally, I still buy my music and my DVD´s and I do not like all this downloading. If somebody, like this author, wants to give his stuff away for free, good. The problem arises when somebody wants his or hers work protected…

To which I’ve replied that artists who are actively fighting the free (as in free beer and as in free speech) sharing of their works are extremely shortsighted.

Ars Technica has a report from the frontline trenches of the music business (if you go there, make sure you read both parts). The report hails the times they are a’ changin’, where “from distribution to promotion to actually making money, indie bands are doing more than just getting by without the major labels—they’re actually thriving” with the help of not only such services as Tunecore, CD Baby and the venerable Myspace, but also using the power of, ahem, free downloads to promote their music:

Not only do many indie artists hate DRM, but they view P2P is a force to be harnessed, not something to waste energy fighting. The folks from Panda Riot recounted a story about their album showing up on BitTorrent and a number of other P2P networks—somehow, they found a site that listed how many times the album had been downloaded and they saw that it was relatively high. “At first, we were going to send a takedown notice, but then we decided to keep it up and see what happens,” Cook said. So… what happened?

“Well, our sales doubled.”

To anybody who is following the copyright debate here in Canada, this should not come as a surprise. In 2006 Canadian Recording Industry Association (which comprises Canadian subsidiaries of the Big Four labels) commissioned a study on the effects of digital piracy on their bottom line. The big labels being what they are, of course concluded that we need new draconian laws to protect their business models and enable their wet dream — so that customers would have to pay repeatedly for the same product. However, the study contained some very interesting numbers, which led to the following analysis from Prof. Michael Geist (University of Ottawa, School of Law):

In summary, CRIA’s own research now concludes that P2P downloading constitutes less than one-third of the music on downloaders’ computers, that P2P users frequently try music on P2P services before they buy, that the largest P2P downloader demographic is also the largest music buying demographic, and that reduced purchasing has little to do with the availability of music on P2P services.

Coincidentally, free sharing solves two major problems on both sides:

• On the musicians’ side — the biggest problem is not piracy, but obscurity. Even for well established bands like our heroes, vast majority of the people who have not bought Rapture of the Deep are not those who downloaded it illegally, but those who haven’t even heard that Deep Purple have a new album out.
• And on their, errm, consumers’ side, the biggest problem before the advent of free downloads was very low availability of the “try before you buy” concept as applied to music.

That’s why I am still convinced that the artists who oppose to free distribution of their works have every right to do so, but it is extremely shortsighted to do so.

Not every right that you have should be exercised all the time.