Tickets for the June Whitesnake shows in UK go on presale from January 16 9:00 am to January 18 8:00 am through Live Nation and Ticketmaster. Presale password is snakebite. Tickets will go on sale to the general public on January 19.

Whitesnake will be pairing with Def Leppard to co-headline their UK dates. We have no info yet as to who will play first and who second, but we imagine Def Leppard will probably be closing the show. Black Stone Cherry will be supporting them.

Perfect Strangers of Finland are celebrating their 10th anniversary with a Purple Night party on January 18th at 8pm at the Tavastia Club in Helsinki:

On Friday, 18th of January, 2008, we are celebrating our 10-year old club, and we are organizing a Purple – Rainbow – Whitesnake Marathon Night at Tavastia Club. We are very excited about the popularity of our Purple Night, there will be more than 40 Finnish top musicians on the stage.

Purple Night is party time both for the musicians, and for the audience. The aim is simply to have fun together. Deep Purple, Rainbow and Whitesnake are the favorites of many of the musicians, and they want to show their respect to these great classic bands. Tavastia Club is the biggest, the oldest, and the most famous rock club in Helsinki. Everybody wants to play there. (And Gillan and Dio have played there, too.)

Our party will go on all night long!

Here are some of the musicians on the bill (subject to change):

• Miki Henneken (Sentiment)
• Ancara
• Lotta Lené Band
• Fratres
• Dr. Purple

Hosts: Teppo Nättilä and Matti Rinne, both professional radio-DJ’s and founder members of PSOF.

DJ: Kristian Huovelin, the Father of PSOF

Tickets: 12 € / 14 € www.tiketti.fi

Further Information, Comments, Congratulations etc.:

Perfect Strangers of Finland (The Finnish Deep Purple Appreciation Society)
c/o Sirpa Hammar, president, Tel. +358-41-48 48 246
Otavantie 12 B 25, FI-00200 HELSINKI, FINLAND
info@psof.fi

We wish the Perfect Strangers of Finland a very happy birthday!

Thanks to Sirpa Hammar for the info.

Jon Lord’s Durham Concerto promotion seems to be in full swing in anticipation of the January 28th release date. His PR company has set up a Myspace page for the album, so that all you myspacers can add it to your friends list.

Thanks to Sylvia Ho from Albion Media for the info.

Ian Paice appears as a special guest of the first album by Italian singer from Florence Andrea ‘Ranfa’ Ranfagni. The album is called Little Hard Blues and was released on December 24, 2007. Other guests appearing on the album are Bernie Marsden, Tracy G (Dio), James Christian (House of Lords) and Roberto Tiranti (Labyrinth). You can listen to clips from the album at Ranfa’s myspace page. Order the album by emailing ranfamv@libero.it.

Track list:

1. Everybody knows (with Bernie Marsden)
2. Mars
3. Forget my boogie (with Ian Paice)
4. Just got paid (ZZ Top cover)
5. It will be not this blues (with Roberto Tiranti)
6. Who needs them?
7. May Day (with Bernie Marsden)
8. New baby (with Bernie Marsden)
9. Mrs. Hope
10. Little hard blues (with James Christian )
11. I learned my lesson well (with Tracy G)
12. Easy woman (with Bernie Marsden)

Thanks to Francesco from www.deep-purple.it for the info.

The slew of musical documentaries from Classic Rock Productions started flooding the market a few years ago. After buying a couple of them on DVD, I decided that it’s a waste of money. If you decided the same, there’s another option available now — you can download them from rockexpress.com for 3 GBP each. Their latest offering — a documentary about Burn — you can even watch online for free. This time, at least Glenn Hughes offers some input into a parade of talking heads. Other video materials include snippets from Doing Their Thing, California Jam, Leeds Polytechnic Project and Rises Over Japan.

In September 1995 the last incarnation of Rainbow started tour in support of the new album. The show on October 10 in Düsseldorf, Germany, was filmed for the Rockpalast. Sadly, it still awaits to see the light of the day as an official release. As bootleg collectors know, it’s probably far from being the best performance of the tour. But it definitely had it’s moments. Here’s one of them:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=_qbosxLx1f0

Glenn Hughes has published a studio report #2 on his official site:

I have just completed my new album… we are mixing @ the moment, and will be mastering in January… I’m always excited about recording new albums, the songs are personal to me, as they are constantly being shaped thru out the year… Well here goes..

Read the report and see pictures from the studio here.

Thanks to Daniel Bengtsson for the info.

Steve Morse will appear at the NAMM show to do a signing session at the Engl booth on Saturday, January 19th at 1 pm. 2008 NAMM show will be held at the Anaheim Convention Center in California and Engl will be in Hall E, Booth 1454.

Thanks to Daniel Bengtsson for the info.

Rumours were circulating for a while that a South American Deep Purple tour is in the works. Recently DPAS reported that Paicey had to cancel an appearance on February 28 in UK citing that he will be touring with Deep Purple at the time. Now, the first dates started trickling in. So far they are very unconfirmed.

See the dates in our tour central. Please send us any updates and ticket info.

Thanks to Mike McBain for the Last.fm link and to Oscar Garcia Verastegui for the Peruvian promo clip.

This is not really directly related to anything Purple, but we never said that this blog would be. 😉

A must-read article on wired.com: David Byrne talks about the state of music business. Personally, I don’t care much for his music, it’s not my cup of tea. But I care for the state of music business because I care for music in general. David is a smart guy and he’s been around the block in this business a couple of times. And when he has to say something, it’s good to listen.

What is called the music business today, however, is not the business of producing music. At some point it became the business of selling CDs in plastic cases, and that business will soon be over. But that’s not bad news for music, and it’s certainly not bad news for musicians. Indeed, with all the ways to reach an audience, there have never been more opportunities for artists.

The fact that Radiohead debuted its latest album online and Madonna defected from Warner Bros. to Live Nation, a concert promoter, is held to signal the end of the music business as we know it. Actually, these are just two examples of how musicians are increasingly able to work outside of the traditional label relationship. There is no one single way of doing business these days. There are, in fact, six viable models by my count. That variety is good for artists; it gives them more ways to get paid and make a living. And it’s good for audiences, too, who will have more — and more interesting — music to listen to. Let’s step back and get some perspective.

Read more about it in the David Byrne’s Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists — and Megastars.