Come Taste the Band

by Deep Purple

Isn’t it curious how, 50 years later^*, the only Mark IV studio album still manages to divide Purple fans. Is it, or is not, DP? Why it shouldn’t be DP? Come Taste the Band could (or should) be called pioneering for being the first album in Purple discography not to feature Ritchie Blackmore. It’s not Machine Head, and thanks for that. It did not spawn any stadium hits à la Smoke on the Water — ditto.

I myself didn’t quite dig CTTB upon first hearing, some time in early ’80s. The fact that I heard the atrocious Last Concert in Japan first must have contributed to my initial prejudice towards Tommy Bolin. But why? Poor Tommy couldn’t even play on Last Concert in Japan, not with two hands anyway. Forget it. On CTTB, Bolin shines through and through. Re-listening it now, I realise how ahead of the time this record was.

The title is, of course, a portmanteau of the famous Cabaret lyrics. My favourite tracks are Gettin’ Tighter, This Time Around/Owed to ‘G’ and You Keep On Moving. The 35^th Anniversary Edition (why not 30^th or 36^th, I wonder?) does not provide much in terms of extra material. The second CD (2010 Kevin Shirley Remix) is a refreshing alternative worth listening to... before you go back to enjoy the “original” version, in this case, CD1 (i.e. 2010 Digital Remaster). If I owned a turntable, a space to house it, and £105 to spare, I’d go for the real thing, not least because of its gorgeous cover art.

*	Wikipedia says, in the same article, that the album was released on 10 October 1975 and on 7 November 1975. This cannot be right. According to the BPI database, Come Taste the Band was certified silver on 01.11.1975, six days before its release on 07.11.1975.

Who Do We Think We Are!

by Deep Purple

According to Wikipedia, Who Do We Think We Are was released in the States on 12 January 1973. In the liner notes to the 2000 remastered edition, Simon Robinson wrote:

In America, where live sets were always hated by major labels, Warners insisted on getting “Who Do We Think We Are” out first. Back in Europe everyone was happy for the live release to precede it and the new studio album was released in March 1973.

While Discogs says that the first UK issue (TPSA 7508) was in February 1973. In absence of more precise information — why not mid-February then. Happy arbitrary Birthday, WDWTWA!

As a curiosity, the title of the album on the original LP label as well as the cassettes includes the exclamation mark which is absent on the sleeve and on subsequent CD releases. Go figure. Personally, I like the “exclamation” version (as an answer to “Who do they think they are?”) more. If it was up to me, I’d put there another (inverted) one, as they do in Spanish: ¡Who Do We Think We Are!

I first heard the album in its entirety in the early 1980s. From the catchy opener Woman from Tokyo to the psychedelic-era-Beatles-inspired finale of Our Lady, I loved it all. Machine Head it wasn’t — it was so much more interesting. Especially Jon’s crazy keys on Rat Bat Blue and slow (at first) blues of Place In Line. So fresh. So different. But what about Mary Long? That song rang a certain bell. Where could I hear it before?

Some days or weeks or months later, rummaging through our “collection” — well, a big dusty heap — of flexidiscs, I found it. This patently weird compilation simply entitled «Вокально-инструментальные ансамбли», that is, “Vocal-Instrumental Ensembles”. No names of the bands VIAs, no songwriter credits, no nothing. Just a note «на английском языке» (“in English”, in case the listener has any doubt). Typical. The A for America side had And When I Die by Blood, Sweat & Tears and Someday by Chicago, the latter inexplicably translated as «Борьба», i.e. “Struggle”. (The class struggle maybe?) The B for Britain side: bingo! Mary Long and another song from WDWTWA, Super Trouper. How? Why? Who? Most likely we’ll never know. Godawful cover design, atrocious sound quality; all yours for 60 kopecks.

Вокально-инструментальные ансамбли Side A Blood, Sweat & Tears — And When I Die (Laura Nyro) / Когда умру Chicago — Someday (August 29, 1968) (James Pankow, Robert Lamm) / Борьба Side B Deep Purple — Mary Long / Мэри Лонг Deep Purple — Super Trouper / Великолепный музыкант

The bonus tracks to my 2000 remastered edition (Amazon still remembers that I bought it 20 years ago!) include a splendid outtake Painted Horse (which would end up on the album if Ritchie hadn’t hated it) and First Day Jam “with Ritchie on bass and Roger on the Autobahn”, as The Highway Star put it. Indeed, on the first day of recording sessions in Waldorf Nord, Germany (October 1972), Roger Glover, in his own words, “had taken a wrong turn <on the Autobahn> and was desperately looking for a way back”. 50 years later, perhaps the most underrated album of the classic Mark II line-up still rocks.

Machine Head

by Deep Purple

Released 50 years ago today, this classic of rock remains, deservedly, the most famous Purple record. My first partial encounter with it was, I reckon, in the mid-1970s. I say “partial” because the tape we listened to then lacked Pictures of Home and Lazy. Discovered by me towards 1980, they became my favourite tracks of the album.

Not as heavy as In Rock, not as diverse as Fireball, Machine Head nevertheless provides more than enough variety and fun for a rock album. It could have been perfect if not for that number about some stupid with a flare gun which I really think should have been left out and replaced by When a Blind Man Cries. Not that it’s bad; it’s just not up to the level of the other songs.

Roger Glover recalls in the liner notes to the 25^th Anniversary Edition (which I purchased, pre-Amazon, directly from The Deep Purple Appreciation Society) how the name came about:

During one of these lost and searching days, I awoke one morning in my room at the Europe and, in that moment between sleep and wakefulness, with eyes still closed, heard myself say the words “smoke on the water” to the empty room. Opening my eyes, I wondered if I had actually said it out loud, or had I been dreaming? No, I concluded, I’d actually spoken those words. Mentally filing it away, I thought nothing more about it until later, when I told Ian Gillan. “Sounds like a drug song,” he observed and since we were devoutly a drinking band, we dismissed it.

Maybe I am too hard on it. (How hard one can be on a hard rock classic?) After all, thanks to it I learned about Montreux (also how this latter is pronounced by the English) and Frank Zappa and The Mothers. By now, the band themselves may well be fed up with the old Smoke but the fans can’t have enough of it. And there’s no shortage of covers. My favourites are Señor Coconut’s Humo en el agua, Dread Zeppelin’s groovy one, an instrumental by Stekpanna (from Standin’ Tall) and 1920s-style version by Robyn Adele Anderson.

Speaking of covers, the rest of the album — the good rest of the album, you understand — is as inspirational. Check out Min Chuguruk by the Siberian ethno-rockers Bugotak and another version of Highway Star by the Italian outfit Black Mamba — that “Oooh”, just before “she’s a killing machine”, is priceless. I loved the version of Lazy by Jimmy Barnes and Joe Bonamassa, from Re-Machined: A Tribute to Deep Purple’s Machine Head. Ditto When a Blind Man Cries, again by Barnes with Jon Lord and The Hoochie Coochie Men, from Live at the Basement.

CD1 of the Anniversary Edition, remixed in 1997 by Glover, is “what it <the album> should have sounded at the time”. It took me 25 years to get used to, or maybe more: I’m still working on it.

RIP Martin Birch. RIP Jon Lord. RIP Frank Zappa. RIP Funky Claude. Long live Machine Head.

Fireball

by Deep Purple

According to Wikipedia, Fireball was released in the States 50 years ago today. So my 25^th Anniversary Edition is 25 already!

Then again, the US version had Strange Kind of Woman instead of Demon’s Eye as it was in on the UK edition. That’s not right. It means, the proper 50^th Anniversary of Fireball has to wait till September.

I discovered Fireball later than the other Mark II classics, and it is the only Purple album with whose lyrics I’d got acquained before I actually heard it. It so happened that one of my brother’s bandmates brought him the songbook that, in turn, somebody else lent him for several days. The book looked like this:

At the time (that is, the late 1970s) we had no access to photocopier, so we copied the book by hand, or rather, by two hands: my brother did the scores, I did the texts, which included the lyrics and also the band’s bio. My knowledge of English back then was below elementary. Of course, I remembered some words even though I was not sure how to pronounce them. The album itself remained elusive for a couple of years after that, until the day I listened to an unmarked magnetic tape reel of rather dodgy quality and by-now forgotten origin. I heard a country-style song which I liked and suddenly realised that I recognise some of these words. Farmer’s daughter? Judge’s daughter? Could it be...? I unearthed my handwritten book. Yes, here it was: Anyone’s Daughter. And the rest? I rewound the tape to the beginning and listened to the end. Bingo: complete Fireball, starting with, well, Fireball!

Purple’s last prog-rock effort, Fireball remains one of my favourite albums. The band is at the peak of their powers, the songs are diverse and well-crafted, the title track is speedier than Speed King, and even Ritchie Blackmore finally plays in tune.

The sound quality of the aforementioned 25^th Anniversary Edition CD is great. If you don’t care about bonus tracks, just stop after No One Came, because that’s where the the original album ends. For those who prefers the American LP version, Strange Kind of Woman is also here, followed by I’m Alone, another great song hitherto only available on The Deep Purple Singles A’s & B’s.

Jon Lord’s 80th

by Timur Kulikov

Happy belated 80^th birthday, Jon Lord.

Concerto for Group and Orchestra

by Deep Purple and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Malcolm Arnold

I first got acquainted with this Jon Lord’s masterpiece (first performed 50 years ago today) in the early 1980s, already being familiar with the rest of the Deep Purple Mark II studio legacy. I had a 19 cm/s audio tape reel recorded from a very scratchy vinyl. There were several skips, most notably during the Ritchie Blackmore’s lenghty solo in the First Movement (Moderato — Allegro), but, as this solo is very repetitive, I didn’t miss much. More annoying for me was the fact that the Second Movement (Andante) was split between the two sides of the LP.

What still amazes me that the score of the Concerto was lost in 1970. How? Was there really just one copy? That Marco de Goeij was able to reconstruct it by listening to the original recording is even more amazing. The result, performed twenty years ago already, could have been great... if you hadn’t heard the original, that is. What was revolutionary in 1969 became a tribute in 1999. Still, worth watching, not least because of great guest musicians, such as Annie Whitehead.

Scandinavian Nights (Live in Stockholm 1970)

by Deep Purple

For Deep Purple Mark II, 1970 was truly an annus mirabilis. Not only because of In Rock — wait a minute, I’ve got a 25^th anniversary edition CD which is 20 years old already; shall we expect a 50^th anniversary edition in five years’ time? — but also because of Jon Lord’s Gemini Suite Live and Jesus Christ Superstar superstarring Ian Gillan. I was practically growing up on this latter album.

What about Scandinavian Nights? It was recorded in Stockholm exactly 45 years ago, on 12 November 1970, so it’s not clear why “nights” in plural. But trust me, behind its rather uninspired cover art you’ll find simply the best live recording of this, or any, Purple line-ups. Sure enough, there are Child in Time, Into the Fire and Speed King (in my view, vastly superior to their respective studio versions) as well as half-an-hour monsters of Wring That Neck and Mandrake Root. But also, please, don’t forget the cover of Paint It Black.

Live at the Basement

by Jon Lord with The Hoochie Coochie Men

Oh Lord, what a band! And when I say “Oh Lord”, I refer to the great late Jon Lord. Of course, he was — and always will be — known as a founding member of Deep Purple as well as for his orchestral works. But among Lord’s later recordings, this double album is an underrated masterpiece. Lord is in top form here — just check his Hammond solo in Howlin’ Wolf’s Who’s Been Talkin’, also featuring Jim Conway on harmonica.

April

by Deep Purple

You would think that Deep Purple could have done better than naming their 1969 album Deep Purple, but there you go. I always knew this album as April. Tonight I was listening to it again on my way to the samba practice. In the opening track, Chasing Shadows, Ian Paice manages to sound like a full band of African drummers. And then, bluesy Why Didn’t Rosemary? and The Painter, psychedelic The Bird Has Flown, orchestral April. A quintessential prog-rock record which never gets boring.

Listen

A week or so after my last work day, which happened to be 27 February 2009, I took the last few boxes of assorted stuff and junk from my former office. I would leave it there to gather dust for longer but my former office was about to move to portakabin. The stuff consisted of (mainly) books, CDs, a few DVDs, old bass strings, some photos... Our friends were coming to stay for a couple of weeks in March so I felt it was about a right time to organise my CDs (in other words, taking them off the floor and other surfaces) and books (well, those still form some sort of leaning tower in the corner). Then I thought that I may as well start writing something about them. So: books, music, movies...

Those who, like me, was around since late 1960s, probably know what Listen, Learn, Read On is (the song that opens The Book of Taliesyn album by Deep Purple) and, by extension, may guess what kind of music I was grown on. However, the purpose of this blog is to document, mostly for myself, what I am listening to (music), what I am reading (books), and what, if anything, I am learning as a result. Now.