![[hand]](/hs-pics/portraits/hands/gillan2.jpg)
![[face]](/hs-pics/portraits/faces/gillan2.jpg)
Happy times in Angers
I’d already seen Purple in Rennes last year, but a colleague of mine missed the show – he was at a conference on the other side of the Atlantic. But this year Purple came to France *after* the conference, and I couldn’t let him go watch Purple 200 km away all by himself, could I?
We left on time, but unfortunately we were caught in a traffic jam behind an accident, so we were almost half an hour late for the show, and we missed the opening act almost entirely; it was Café Bertrand, a French rock band, like last year (lucky them!).
The show was even better that last year in Rennes; Purple itself was its usual terrific, but the sound was better, and we had a big screen on each side of the stage, and a bunch of cameras that were doing close-ups of the musicians. At last, I was able to seen Don Airey’s hands while he was soloing!
As I had already seen the show once, I decided I could sacrifice a few seconds of it and take notes of the exact set list, so here it is:
Pictures of Home
Things I Never Said
Into the Fire
Strange Kind of Woman (Ian Gillan & Steve Morse duet)
Rapture of the Deep
Mary Long
Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye
(Steve Morse solo)
The Well-Dressed Guitar
Battle Rages On
(Don Airey extended intro)
Lazy
Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming
(Don Airey solo)
Perfect Strangers
Space Truckin’
(Instrumental intro)
Highway Star
Smoke on the Water
[encores]
Hush (including Ian Paice solo)
Roger Glover solo
Black Night
Last year, we had a different order that included Fireball, Wrong Man and When A Blind Man Cries instead of Mary Long, The Battle Rages On and Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming (as far as I can remember).
For me, despite the fact that I love Fireball, it was even better, because I’m a huge fan of The Battle Rages On (I think I own all official records of the tour), and I was in heaven when they started playing it because that’s one song I didn’t really expect!
Everyone was really great, and with the close-up cameras you could really watch them play even from our seats. It was nice to give everyone a chance to solo a bit, Roger didn’t get one last year (again, if my memory doesn’t betray me).
All in all it was a great show and I’m glad I decided to come back.
Hopefully, we’ll see them again next year!
Romain Dolbeau
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing