Deep Purple fans are some of the luckiest alive in the context of live releases over recent years by their fan club!
What are people's thoughts on the official follow up to Made in Japan?
I bought the original vinyl of Made in Europe way back when but haven't listened to it in years. I remember being disappointed it was only a single album. Is there a more complete recording available. Don't recall this being given the super duper expanded treatment?
Back in the late 90's, a double CD that was drawn from the same shows as Made In Europe came out. I guess it's been issued under a couple different titles, but the ones I have is called MKIII: The Final Concerts. If I remember correctly from the liner notes, the band's management kinda figured out Ritchie was gonna leave, so they arranged for the last three nights of the Stormbringer tour to be recorded. If I remember, Made In Europe was said to be drawn from the second of those two shows, while MKIII: The Final Concerts is the first and third of those shows.Originally Posted by Rufus
Maybe the original album was only a single LP, because once you edited out Smoke On The Water, Highway Star, and Space Truckin', you didn't have enough songs to make up a double LP.
Never was a huge fan of this one. It was ok back then and now that Live in London - which was a hard find way back in the dinosaur days, at least for me - and Live in Paris '75 are out there in official form there's not much reason for me to pull this out.
I only have it on vinyl so have not listened to it in years, but I remember it as being a decent live statement of that version of the band. Should have been a double though.
I got it in some sale or other but haven't listened to it much. I don't really rate this era as much as the Mark II line-up.
It's about as good a live album as you're going to get from a band where the bass player is a better singer than the lead singer, but he's so over the top in some spots that it verges on annoying.
So then you buy the California Jam CD and it has the same issue, only not as good sound...
Pretty much defines MkIII.
"The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"
I always dug the beginning of You Fool no One... Guilty pleasure!
"Always ready with the ray of sunshine"
I don't really see why Coverdale takes such flak. No great lyricist, but on the Deep Purple albums I think his voice had a wonderful tone- far more listenable to my ears than Hughes' shrieking. The live concerts I've heard of this era veer towards unlistenable because of the latter. 'Burn' for instance, he was yelling out high A notes in all the live versions, which he didn't do on the studio album. I've hated that every time I've heard him do it.
Such a shame that Coverdale too went down the 'shrieking' road in the 80s. It paid off commercially- I believe the eponymous Whitesnake album is one of the biggest selling hard rock/metal albums there's ever been- but it had a long-term downside in terms of how he is viewed now. He then got caught between that Plant/Page soap opera when he teamed up with Page and took a lot of flak. 'David Cover-version' and all that stuff. (Actually the 'Coverdale/Page' album is 75% good stuff!)
To me, the biggest problem is that Coverdale simply sounded like total shit more often than not in the live setting.
"The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"
^I will say his stage patter is an acquired taste! 'Ere's a song for ya!', which I think he still says! And I remember other in-between-song comments on the 'Live In The Heart Of The City' album which were, shall we say, of their time!
Didn't Page disband Coverdale/Page because of his inappropriate swearing & banter?
BTW, I'd take Coverdale's vox over Hughes's annoying shrieks & squeaks any day of the week!
Last edited by Rufus; 08-08-2014 at 02:37 PM.
I think Coverdale was a better singer, than Hughes, when they both were in DP. Coverdale, with all his sighs and slurred diction, at least knew what to do, while Glenn tried to incorporate soul and funk into DP's music, sometimes imitating S.Wonder in a funny way.
With a passing of the years Hughes became a much better vocalist, than he was in his youth.
I actually really liked this album, (maybe even more than the In Japan )
Always thought it should've been a double as well.
From Mk3 and 4, Burn and this one is all I need (yes I miss Soldier Of Fortune, but let it be)
Sorry, but Hughes was much more a bassist than a vocalist back then
Yup, I'll take Cov over Glenn anytime >> I find Hughes to be even more obnoxious than Coverdale, and never nearly as good a singer either (though I take Cov is not much of a bassist)
Hughes kind of caused Blazckmood to quit... probably because firing him would've cost them an arn & a leg... I take it to pry away Hughes from the up & coming Trapeze took a rock-hard clauses contract
my music collection increased tenfolds when I switched from drug-addicts to complete nutcases.
I have California Jamming. Do any of the other "official" releases sound any better? I see there's a thing called Just Might Take Your Life that's supposed to be better sounding. Not sure if it's out there though. It would be nice to have a cd of the show that sounds better than what I have.
The CalJam show, I only have the DVD. But the picture source is not as good as other snippets I've seen over the years, IMHO.
Personally I think it's more interesting visually than musically, with Ritchie Blackmore's guitar destruction at the end. A shame the one complete Mark II show that exists on video isn't really one of the better performances I've heard from the band.
Are you referring to the Copenhagen show that's in B&W?
"The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"
^I am. It's been years since I watched it but it's certainly not 'Made In Japan' quality, in my view- nor is it up to the standard of the BBC In Concert tapes from 1970/2 or the 'Scandinavian Nights' set. It is, however, amusing to note the absence of 'Smoke On The Water' for what must have been the last time at a DP show.
Maybe I should listen to it, without watching it.
I agree it's not a great one. I actually prefer "Scandinavian Nights" to MiJ.
"The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"
The early shows are interesting, yes- you have songs from the early line-up like 'Wring That Neck' and 'Mandrake Root' given mammoth performances.
Yeah, very strange they have only one complete show filmed. That's manager's fault. Seems that show-biz people in 70s really didn't take seriously the video stuff.
I wouldn't be surprised if lots of tapes got used over, like the case with Monty Python and the BBC. They were going to reuse the tapes and they bought them from the BBC. Conventional wisdom, if there is any of that, would say there were many other shows filmed.
It seems conventional wisdom took a leap off the cliff with this band. Did any other major bands of the day screw the pooch this badly? Zeppelin is reigned over by Page so that's sort of different, I suppose. I only know of one Sabbath - Never Say Die - from BITD. Surely not everything everybody did was lost, right? Where's the Pink Floyd shows from the '70's, didn't they ever film anything?
Like the New York footage, they cut it a half hour then what, just threw away the rest? Seemed to be a pretty good show too. Bastards.
I don't know about Europe but certainly in the UK, the BBC never had Deep Purple on many TV shows- the records of who performed on shows still exist even if the shows themselves do not. Also by the 1970s, fewer things were being 'wiped'. Most of 'In Concert' and 'Old Grey Whistle Test'- the two main outlets for rock as opposed to pop- survived. Deep Purple did appear on 'Top Of The Pops' but this show was mostly mimed performances.
There was a UK show on the commercial network of the time ITV called 'Doing That Thing', which Deep Purple appeared on. This exists, but it's a short performance done for a TV show so doesn't reflect their full performance. It's notable for having footballer George Best in the crowd!
The only time concerts got filmed or videoed back then is if there was a particular project in mind, ie a TV thing or a concert film. The only Pink Floyd I know of is the KQED video from April 1970, the Pompeii film (most of which wasn't even filmed in Pompeii), and the versions of Set The Controls and Careful With That Axe that were used in the Sound City film.
But I don't think you could really afford to film concerts just for the hell of it, to have a video record of what you did on that night or that tour or whatever, just in case someone decided 20 years down the road it should/could be shown on TV. On the other hand, there seems to be a lot of footage from the Winterland that's just that, something that just exists because Bill Graham had the presence of mind to film shows (though a lot of it was lost in a fire in the mid 80's). (shrug)
I certainly don't think most bands could afford to hire a 4 or 5 man camera crew and have them film a show, hoping it would be the one. And then what do you do when it's not "the one", or when there's a technical problem that otherwise renders the footage unuseable?!
That's because the footage was owned by ABC, and what a lot of broadcasters did back then is they taped over stuff as the rest of the material that wasn't aired was considered "outtakes" and therefore no longer useful. I know this doesn't make sense to you, but it made sense to the people running the TV production companies at the time. From their perspective, Deep Purple (and probably most of the other artists who appeared on their show and many others) were the flavor of the month, and nobody expected anyone to care 40 years later.
From what I gather, the only reason the Deep Purple Cal Jam has survived intact was because the band bought the masters from ABC. Now, why they did it that time, and not for the previous show they did for ABC In Concert, who knows? I think the bigger question to ask is, why did Deep Purple by their footage, but ELP didn't?
And as I've said many times, I don't think anyone realized that the home video market was going to be what it ended up being. I think by the early 70's, insiders knew that home video was going to happen, but I don't think anyone thought it was going to take off as it did. So who knew that between the popularity of home video and the perpetual enthusiasm fans would still have 30-40 years, the idea that they could release something decades later?
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