[% META title = 'Tour Reviews' %]

Holy crap! :-)

I'll be honest, I went to the concert almost solely to see Dio. Don't get me wrong, I wanted to see Deep Purple too, but I wasn't too familiar with a lot of their songs. Dio definitely rocked, but the audience did not. They sat on their asses the whole time, cheered a little... and I was stuck in the sixth row lower bowl, so I was told I needed to sit down so the people behind me could see. Dio only played for an hour, which is about how long both of the headlining bands played for to my suprise.

I was pretty excited to see Deep Purple, afterall they are legends. Unfortunately I can't remember all or even most of the songs, but looking at the other set lists that people posted, I do know it was somewhat if not totally similar. It was something like this:

Fireball ~ Into The Fire (riff)
Woman From Tokyo
Ted The Mechanic
Lazy
Well Dressed Guitar
Knocking At Your Back Door
Black Night
Don Airey's keyboard solo
Perfect Strangers
Speed King
Smoke On The Water

encore:
Hush
Highway Star

A few of those may be wrong. Deep Purple definetly rocked the house, even though the crowd wasn't much more receptive to these legends than they were Dio. They still put on one hell of a show. We were treated to an instrumental song that hadn't yet been recorded called The Well Dressed Guitar, as well as a variety of classics and a few newer songs.

The highlight for me was the song Perfect Strangers and what lead up to it. We were treated to a great keyboard solo by the one and only Don Airey, who threw in a few bits and pieces from past music projects like Ozzy's song Revelation. I knew that this could only be leading up to the famliar intro to my favorite Deep Purple song. We got one hell of a light show with this one too.

The whole band was full of energy on stage. It was sure one hell of an experience, and they're all great musicians (although I couldn't hear the bongos at all).

About 30 minutes into the set I realized, holy crap, not only am I watching Deep Purple, but I'm also watching the former keyboardist for Ozzy and a former Black Sabbath vocalist.

It was a great night for some legendary bands. I'm sure as hell gonna get my Deep Purple collection started...

Travis S.

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