![[hand]](/hs-pics/portraits/hands/paice3.jpg)
![[face]](/hs-pics/portraits/faces/airey.jpg)
Olympic ecstacy in Paris
11 years after recording their famous live album “At the Olympia” Deep Purple came back to the most famous Parisian club for a brilliant sold-out show, without Jon Lord this time but introducing Don Airey to a mythic place of music and culture.
France was widely toured in 2006-2007, and this very date was particularly awaited by about 2.000 people challenging Rapid-Transit on strike to be part of this memorable stage of the “Rapture of the deep” world tour.
Usual French support band Cafe Bertrand warmed up the audience efficiently as ever. However resonance defects punctually occurred during DP show, surprisingly due to Olympia’s disappointing acoustics.
Other slight disillusions were Ian Gillan’s voice not at its very top (although much more audible than on recently-released “Live at Montreux 2007”) and the unexpected briefness of Steve Morse and Don Airey’ s solos.
The rest was real ecstasy and I doubt tracks like “Mary long” and “Loosen my strings” were for ages or ever performed in France.
Set-list:
Pictures of home
Things I never said
Into the fire
Strange kind of woman
Rapture of the deep
Mary long
Kiss tomorrow good-bye
Contact lost
(Steve Morse solo)
The well-dressed guitar
The battle rages on
Lazy
Loosen my strings
(Don airey solo)
Perfect strangers
Space truckin
Highway star
Smoke on the water
Hush (including Ian Paice solo)
(Roger Glover solo introducing:)
Black night
Purply yours
Gilles Colas
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing