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Haugesund photos

Rocktent, Haugesund, Norway
May 20, 2005

Silver tongue
Strange kind of woman
I got your number
Demon's eye
Bananas
Contact lost
Steve Morse's solo
Well dressed guitar
Don Airey's solo
Perfect strangers
Highway star
Space truckin'
Smoke on the water

...encore:
Speed king
Lazy

...on stage again:
Hush
Black night

I drove three hours to catch our boys in action again. The gig came quite as a surprise as they played Oslo last summer.
The warm up acts ranged from boring to horrifying as usual. Strange how it's so difficult to get decent warm ups for Purple in this country.
Anyway, both the band and the audience were in teriffic form. In fact the band was somewhat taken aback at the awsome response from the audience.
The setlist was the same as for the Swiss date, and it worked very well indeed. Of course I could always wish for more new/obscure stuff, but this set seems to balance things quite well. Playing new/obscure stuff at the start was a stroke of genius as the entire audience was quite worked up at this stage. Only when the majority started getting impatient did they bring forward the classics.
Highlight of the show: The amazing intro by Glover and Morse to Highwaystar. Simply outstanding!
All in all a great show, and nice to see the guys having so much fun on stage.
Peter Kjepso

This was my third Deep Purple live performance, the first was in Oslo 1998, (Abandon), and the second was Oslo on the Bananas tour, and this one in Haugesund was the best one! Fantastic.
6,000 people standing in the tent, rocking to Steve's amazing guitar, playing with Ian G. and the other gys, it was great!
The intensity of DP this night was amazing. They looked like 25-year-old rockers, and not like a band that's been in this game for 35 years!
Please, gys! Please come back!
Olav E Droenen

What an amazing night! The tent in Haugesund was crowded with about 6,000 people in great rock and roll mood and the band was in perfect shape.
They kicked off with Silver Tongue, and when they started on Strange Kind Of Woman the audience just exploded. The guys were really tight this night and it seemed that they enjoyed performing in front of the audience. Ian Gillan and Steve Morse were actually posing and making funny faces when people took pictures during the gig. And this is the first time I have seen Ian and Steve jumping up and down on the stage like kids. (This was my fifth Purple concert) And Steve once reached his guitar down so one of the lucky ones at the front row could touch the strings.
All the guys played very well, and Ian Gillan's voice was in great shape. He did not scream very much in the beginning of the show, but the last half he did it a lot, and he did it loud. His hair is growing long again and he was really slim so he will soon be looking like he did in the seventies. And he was headbanging too!
I think the highlights of the night were Demon's Eye and Lazy, much because of the really tight playing and Ian's great voice.
The guys went off stage after Smoke On The Water and played Speed King and Lazy as encores. After that they left the stage again and came back once again, this time for Hush and Black Night. They all looked amazed because of the great audience, and they really gave the audience what they wanted. Steve also jammed a lot with the audience during Black Night.
You can see a few pictures on the website of the local newspaper: http://www.haugesunds-avis.no/
Sigurd Pettersen

Deep Purple in my home town!
If somebody had told me that in 1972 that Deep Purple was going to play in Haugesund, a town at the south west coast of Norway, I would have laughed.
The first time I heard a Deep Purple record was in 1970, Deep Purple In Rock. I thought it was the best produced rock record in the world, the songs, the sound - fantastic.
Before the concert in Haugesund I've heard Deep Purple live two times before, in Oslo in 1998 and in Drøbak in 2000. I also have a lot of records (LP's and CD's), videos and DVD's with Deep Purple, so I knew that it was a good band. The band started the show in Haugsund with Silver Tongue (a good choice). Steve Morse started with heavy guitar riffs, then the the rest of the groove, bass, drums and keyboard joined in - full lights in different coulors - then Ian Gillan appeared on stage in a white suite. Gillan started singing: "Well I'm standing here on a moving station...", and the show was on. The crowd more or less exploded.
The band had a good sound during the whole show, Gillan was good as always, Ian Paice with steady and good drumming (a special and a very good drummer, no doubt about that), Don Airey with a fantastic organ sound and good playing (of course). In his solo he put in the local song, "Amanda from Haugesund", the crowd sang along.
Earlier the same day, I was outside the tent during the rehearsal, what a good sound in the bassguitar. But during this show I was impressed by Morse's guitarplaying, fantastic, probably the best guitar player I have heard on stage for the last five years (yes, I've heard Blackmore, Steve Lukather and Johnny Winter on stage the last five years).
The crowd was digging Purple from the first guitar riff to they ended the show with Black Night. Deep Purple's playing was very good, but I think the crowd was making Deep Purple even better. It looked like Deep Purple was enjoying themselves during their show in Haugesund. Deep Purple with Jon Lord in 1998 was good, and they played different songs from the album, Abandon, but the show in Haugesund was better, the band was tighter, played better and had a better sound.
It was a good choice of songs, but I personally prefer Fireball, Woman from Tokyo, Rosa's Cantina and '69 instead of Hush and Demon's Eye- a longer set is probably the answer.
I may be old, but when we are talking about Deep Purple I feel I'm a teenager again. I must admit that I was at the hotel the band was staying at and got autographs from Ian Gillan and Ian Paice. The Purple fans in US and Canada can look forward to a fantastic show. And I look forward to their new record and next concert in Norway.
Hans Birger Vikse (Haugesund)

Media:
Haugesunds Avis - review - promoter's profit - under age audience - press conference