Perfect Strangers of Finland are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the club with a Purple Night event on February 3, 2023 at the On the Rocks bar in Helsinki. There will be food and drink, and of course, music — two tribute bands: a Whitesnake one and a Dio era Black Sabbath one. Both bands will also be playing selected Purple gems.

What: Purple Night
When: Friday, February 3, 2023; doors open 19:00, show starts at 20:00
Where: On the Rocks, Mikonkatu 15, 00100 Helsinki, Finland
Tickets: €15 in advance at Tiketti.fi, €18 at the door

The venue has capacity for 350 people, and we’re being told that 100 tickets have already been sold.

Thanks to Jari Kaikkonen for the info.

Ritchie Blackmore pays tribute to the late Jeff Beck:

First met Jeff Beck around 64-65 and it was a session where we were both playing guitars and Jimmy Page was producing. I couldn’t believe how incredible he was, not only with his technique but his sound too. I became a fan of his ever since. He could reach up into the stars and make magic with his playing. His choice of notes were always absolutely perfect.

This whole thing is a shock. We shall always remember Jeff as the best rock and roll player.

Thanks to Blabbermouth for the quote.

A recent post on Something Else blog makes the case that the often overlooked Who Do We Think We Are? deserves at least another listen. The train of thought departs from:

It’s often accepted without reservation that Deep Purple’s Machine Head is one of the essential entries in the hard-rock canon of the early 1970s. From the tightly arranged opener “Highway Star” to the mutant blues of “Lazy” and the intergalactic jam-out finale of “Space Truckin’,” the album’s seven tracks were well recorded, well played, and fit the profile promoted on album-oriented rock music stations that seemed to be multiplying exponentially along the FM radio dial.

And arrives to the conclusion

In the end, this LP is of a piece with the other three by the Deep Purple Mark II configuration: not as perfect as In Rock and not as successful as Machine Head, but more focused than Fireball. If for no other reason, Who Do We Think We Are? has to be respected for its own particular version of grace under pressure.

Take a look at the path travelled in between on Something Else.

By the by, the album itself is celebrating 50 years these days. Happy birthday!

The news of Jeff Beck’s passing prompted us to chase down the rabbit hole for the possible family tree connections. Cozy Powell, of course, got his proverbial feet wet in the Jeff Beck Group. And Tommy Bolin played his last concert opening for Beck. The Bolin/Beck connection actually goes quite a bit deeper. It was Tommy’s guitar work on Billy Cobham’s Stratus that inspired Beck to pursue fusion on his 1975’s Blow By Blow and 1976’s Wired albums. And they actually did jam together on at least one occasion.

Says description to the Youtube video below:

28 minute jam at Glen Holly Studio 1976.

Tommy Bolin- Guitar / Jeff Beck- Bass / Bobby Berge- Drums.
[…]
Bobby Berge relates: “Jeff Beck was in town playing a gig at a venue called the Starlight Bowl in Burbank, CA. Since Tommy knew Jeff was in town doing this gig, he got in touch and invited him over to Philip Polimeni’s Glen Holly Studio. We first jammed for a half hour or so with Tommy on bass and Jeff on guitar, then took a little break and started again with Tommy on guitar and Jeff on bass. We lost the first jam with Jeff on guitar though because Philip recorded over first jam somehow, he recorded the second jam over the first one.” Jeff Beck played the Starlight Bowl on June 12, 1976, so the BBB jam was recorded close to that date. This audio is a fresh restoration and mastering done in June 2008 by John Herdt, the source audio was Bobby Berge’s well-worn cassette.

The second part, with unknown saxophone and keyboard players:

Thanks to Gary Halverson for the heads up regarding the sad news.

Ian Gillan’s wife Bron has passed away late last year. We have decided not to discuss it on our pages out of respect for the family privacy. Now Ian is ready to talk about it in public with a Dear Friends message on his website.

Dear Friends,

I wish you all a splendid and enjoyable year ahead; Two Thousand and Twenty Three could be an improvement, if you really go for it.

Things are looking up, as King Harold said at the Battle of Hastings.

I’m pulling the arrow from my eye whilst trying to follow the light and, getting back on my feet whilst struggling to walk with half of me missing.

My darling wife, Bron, died of heart failure on Saturday 19 November, 2022, in Exeter Hospital.

It’s taken some weeks until I could find the words to dignify her publicly.

Continue reading on Caramba!

Thanks to Gary Halverson for the heads-up.

The Dead Daisies recap their most eventful year of 2022 Continue Reading »

The latest issue (#35) of the Rock Candy magazine has Long Live Rock’n’Roll as the cover story, with a 10-page feature inside (you can preview it here). Also in the same issue: 4 pages on Ritchie Blackmore himself, plus another 4 pages on Joe Lynn Turner.

Individual issues and subscriptions are available in both digital and dead tree form from the publisher.

Thanks to our editor emeritus Benny Holmström for the info.

After a couple of years of the pandemic induced hiatus, we not have more or less concrete tour dates for 2023. This is our traditional annual preview.

Steve Morse will kick off the new year with participation in the G4 Experience in Las Vegas on January 3-7. He also has a handful of dates booked in the Northeastern States at the end of February. These will be the first Steve Morse Band performances in quite a while.

Ian Paice will continue playing with tribute band Purpendicular. They have three dates booked in Sweden at the end of January. All other joint shows have been postponed until September, ostensibly due to the drummer being engaged elsewhere.

Deep Purple themselves will resume touring in February with a couple of warm up shows in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Then off to Florida — first on a cruise sailing from Fort Lauderdale on February 13, returning on the 17th, followed by another couple of shows locally. They will perform 4 dates in Japan in mid-March. There are so far very much unconfirmed appearances with the “touring festival” Masters/Monsters of Rock in South America in April, headlined by KISS and Scorpions. Fun fact: the show on April 30th in Santiago, Chile, will be held at the same stadium where the lighting tower infamously collapsed in 1997. The band will then move on to the annual tour of European open air venues starting in June.

Happy New Purple Year, everybody!

The official YouTube channel for the band has posted 50 live tracks from selected 1971/72 bootlegs. Those are tagged as a Live Archive 1972 Vol. 1 playlist and said archive includes:

• Dagenham 19/02/1972
• Royal Albert Hall 04/10/1971
• Wolverhampton 20/02/1972
• San Bernardino 28/01/1972
• New York 31/08/1972
• West Palm Beach, Florida, 14/07/1972
• Leeds 29/09/1972
• Quebec City 06/04/1972 (with Randy California on guitar)

Thanks to Tobias Janaschke and Bo Olsson for the heads up.

Bristol 24/7 has a positively glowing illustrated review of the last gig of the Dead Daisies/Graham Bonnet UK tour held in town this past Thursday, December 15, 2022.

Graham Bonnet was always the unlikeliest looking hard rock star. At a time when those filthy herberts of Motörhead were winning over pimply metalhead teenagers, the clean-cut singer was taking Rainbow into the UK top ten with All Night Long and their cover of Russ Ballard’s Since You Been Gone.

Now fronting his own band, the older and greyer 74-year-old Bonnet still rocks the collar’n’tie and shades look. Reaching those notes is obviously a strain for him, however, and he occasionally looks as though he’s about to burst a blood vessel. Interestingly, he makes no attempt to flog his latest solo material, serving up a set dominated by the Rainbow and Michael Schenker Group classics on which he sang.

Continue reading in Bristol 24/7.