Deep Purple in Tirana, Albania on March 4, 2007.

Deep Purple played a sold out gig on March 7th at Palaraschi in Parma, Italy, in front of almost 4.000 people.

The setlist was exactly this one:

Intro
Pictures of Home
Things I Never Said
The Battle Rages on (they played it during the soundcheck… Maybe for the first time!)
Strange Kind of a Woman
Rapture of the Deep (dedicated to “Menny”, italian fan and Gillan’s friend)
Fireball
Wrong Man
Steve Morse solo – The Well Dressed Guitar
When a Blind Man Cries
Lazy
Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye
Don Airey solo – Perfect Strangers
Space Truckin’
Highway Star
Smoke on the Water

Encore:
Hush (Ian Paice solo)
Black Night (Roger Glover intro)

In the “options” list there was also Into the Fire (I think they played it in Albania, March 4th, instead of “The battle..”), Vavoom: Ted the Mechanic, and Sometimes I Feel like Screaming. We know ’cause we saw the “official” setlist near the mixer.

They said Gillan was a little bit sick after the show, that’s why he show up very late in the backstage. But he was very kind with all the fans waiting for him.

Anyway, it was a very powerful, solid, great show.

See a couple of pics in small resolution. A lot more will be added soon in the site image gallery.

Now they’re going to the Deep South of Italy: two dates in Sicily (first time ever), one in Puglia and one in Calabria. Then, rest of Europe.

Moreover, Steve Morse is doing two guitar shows, one in Rome and another one in Palermo (Sicily).

Cheers
Francesco
Deep Purple Italia

Here is the selist Deep Purple played in Parma, Italy, March 7.

Pictures Of Home
Things I Never Said
The Battle Rages On
Strange Kind Of A Woman
Rapture Of The Deep
Fireball
Wrong Man
Steve Morse Solo
The Well Dressed Guitar
When A Blind Man Cries
Lazy
Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye
Don Airey Solo
Perfect Strangers
Space Truckin’
Highway Star
Smoke On The Water

Encore:
Hush (with Ian Paice solo)
Black Night

In the “options list” were “Into The Fire”, “Ted The Mechanic” and “Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming”, but they weren’t played at this gig.

Thanks to Deep Purple Italia for the information.

The last issue (issue 147, Feb 07) from a Brazilian magazine called Backstage has Steve Morse on the cover.
Thanks to Albertino Viveiros for the information.

Iceland maybe a small nation, but not without it’s passions. We’ve been informed that May 27 show in Reykjavik is already almost sold out and Deep Purple has sold the most tickets by single band in Iceland beating bands such as Metallica, Roger Waters, Foo Fighters, Led Zeppelin, Incubus, Bryan Adams, Iron Maiden and many more.

Thanks to Simsmiðurinn for the info.

Deep Purple family extends far and wide and one of it’s members is in need for help.

Gordon ‘Gungi’ Paterson, long time sound engineer for Deep Purple, Rainbow and a host of other bands was diagnosed with cancer last year and needs assistance. A website has been set up by his good friends in the entertainment industry to assist Gungi and his family in their time of need. Visitors to the site can simply send their well wishes or participate in prize raffles, the prizes having been donated by famous musicians.

The website set up to assist Gungi is called www.friendsofgungi.com. This is not a scam. Fiona Apple and Tears For Fears will both be doing benefit shows to help him out. Go there and see if you can help out.

Thanks to Rob Fodder and Danny Nichols for the info.

David Coverdale has become a U.S. Citizen. On Thursday March 1 he raised his right hand in Reno, Nevada, and swore to the U.S. Constitution. He has been living on the north shore of Lake Tahoe for the past 22 years (that’s since 1985, for the mathematically challenged of us). I’m no lawyer, but to the best of my knowledge this means that he had to get out of British citizenship as UK doesn’t allow it’s citizens (or are they subjects?) to acquire passports of another country.

Thanks to Reno Gazette-Journal for the info.

As we announced earlier, Blackmore’s Night are featured in issue 53 of the Renaissance magazine. Ritchie is on the cover and there is an extended interview with both him and Candice. You can subscribe and order back issues on their web site, although issue 53 is not in the back catalogue yet.

In other news, several new Blackmore’s Night fan sites are now operating:

• http://www.blackmoresnightukfanclub.com/
• http://www.blackmoresnight.no/
• http://www.blackmoresnight.com.br/

UK Fan Club site has a long way to go in terms of filling it with the content, but already has a lively forum. Norwegian site has an English section which is so far empty, Brazilian site is all in Portuguese. Being linguistically challenged in both languages, I can’t comment on the contents of either. Nevertheless, we wish them all good luck!

Thanks to Mike Garrett for the info.

The new Joe Lynn Turner’s solo album Second Hand Life will be released in Europe by Frontier Records on April 20. The album features a track co-written by Ritchie Blackmore and Roger Glover called “Stroke of Midnight”. This one is probably a from the sessions for a follow-up to Slaves And Masters. Joe also collaborated on the songwriting for the album with Jim Peterik (ex-Survivor), Bob Held, Karl Cochran (Ace Frehley), and Martin Briley. Karl Cochran also played guitar and bass on the album, Bob Held bass, Gary Corbett keyboards and Michael Cartellone (ex-Damn Yankees, now with Lynyrd Skynyrd) drums.

Second Hand Life track listing:

01. Love is Life
02. Got Me Where You Want Me
03. Second Hand Life
04. In Your Eyes
05. Blood Red Sky
06. Stroke of Midnight
07. Over the Top
08. Cruel
09. Sweet Obsession
10. Love Is On Our Side
11. Two Lights (European exclusive bonus track)

You can check out audio samples at Frontier Records.

Thanks to Blabbermouth.net and Frontier Records for the info.

We have reported yesterday that Gillan is unhappy with BMG re-releasing the Birmingham NEC 1993 show on CD. The plot thickens. In an interview conducted by BBC he said that the album was re-released without his knowledge. BMG immediately announced that they are withdrawing the album, all the grand total of 2,000 copies that were printed and distributed.

Many questions remain unanswered as to why nobody protested when the NEC show was released years ago as the Come Hell And High Water video (so in fact it’s a re-re-release). But the cynics between us say that the UK tour is coming up and Gillan has his own DVD and solo album re-releases to sell.

And there’s no such thing as bad publicity…

UPDATE: You can listen to the whole interview in it’s entirety from the BBC here. Two points there:

1. Gillan’s position makes much more sense than his individual comments taken out of context and plastered on the net (like we are guilty of doing ourselves). He also categorically denies that this is a publicity stunt designed to attract attention to the upcoming UK tour.
2. Our own THS editor Rasmus Heide was interviewed alongside Big Ian. Cheers to Rasmus!

We will try to negotiate with BBC to be able to post the interview here.

Thanks to BBC and Reuters for the info.