Afterlife

People will very long memories may remember that Glenn Hughes was in the running for doing the original Ghostbusters film theme music back in 1983. He and musical partner Pat Thrall pitched their demo, which has just surfaced as an MP3 from Pat some 35 years on! It’s quite a strange thing to listen to, especially as it musically trundles along to much the same backing idea as the proper film theme. Tim Summers says this is because the producers got every artist on their list to use a Huey Lewis track called I Want A New Drug as a guide, as they knew this fitted the film sequence. Huey Lewis was apparently too busy doing Back To The Future to make his own pitch! Anyway, Pat and Glenn were one of some 50 acts who got rejected, and the gig went to Ray Parker Junior whose did turn in a cracking song. However someone had forgotten to tell Huey Lewis they were using his song as a guide and he promptly sued and got a pay-off in the end! According to Pat “The guy that mixed it had been awake for a week on cocaine. It is one of the worst mixes ever.”

ANYWAY, long story over, have a listen. There is a sort of Ghostbusters sequel due out any time with the original cast as guests. Looking forward to it.

The Sound of Music

I’m pretty sure Simon cried into his bottle of Rotring ink when he saw the first few of the band’s official bootleg series, but the ‘brown paper packages tied up with strings’ laziness continues on this next two. The Australian show will likely be familiar from the box set of bootlegs issued back in 2001, but the Hammy Odeon set from a year later is at least musically of interest. This is we think Jon Lord’s last concert as a full official member of Deep Purple. The band embarked on what was to be his final tour without telling anyone (though we seem to remember a certain fanzine broke ranks and blabbed all!), BUT everyone quickly went down with nasty flu and after the London show the rest of the dates were pulled. They were rebooked but played with two keyboardists, introducing Don Airey for half the show. The gig was recorded on multi track (and an audience bootleg is about) so let’s hope that’s been used (and not screwed with). And if you don’t have enough brown cardboard, vinyl editions will also be pressed. Thanks to Tim Summers, Matthew Kean for help.

The country where I quite want to be

Deep Purple have firmed up their concert dale in Finland next year, thanks to local Mark Maddock for the heads up (flyer below). Accept and Uriah Heep are the opening acts. Meanwhile one photographer has been busy posting about photo shoots of group members and then promptly taking the posts down again, suggesting he is doing material for a new LP sleeve and publicity material.

Going forward

As I think many of us felt they might Deep Purple have officially rescheduled the tour dates by around a year into late 2022. Tim Summers has sent us the revised flyer. It does make a lot of sense given the continued uncertainty surrounding both the pandemic, though it does mean this will be the band’s longest gap between tours since the split in 1976. There are continued stories on the web that they have been / will be / are working on putting a new studio album together in the meantime but we can’t shed any light on that and the graphic does still lean / promote Whoosh. Hard the think at least some of them haven’t had their notepads out during the break though!

UPDATE • from IGs spot on the radio last week (see story below) he implies they have not done any studio work on the next album BUT are now planning to get together towards the end of the summer to begin work on ideas and writing which does suggest they could have a new LP around the time of the rescheduled tour in 2021.

We all came down to Monmouth

UPDATE • Tim Summers listened in and says the show actually went out live; IG has been down there before and co-hosted it.

IAN GILLAN is doing a radio special Friday night (7th), starting at 4.00pm, on his local station http://www.lymebayradio.com, a show called Finally Friday. Thanks to Geoff Quad for spotting this! From the photo on their social media “site” I assume it’s a pre-recorded show. I also assume all three fellers have had their double jabs!

RSD 2021

Record Store Day rushes round again though not sure I would wish to queue for the goodies in these Covid times even with the jab. There a Bolin related barrel scraper in America (June 12) called Energy 2, while Cherry Red are pressing the Trapeze show from Texas in 1972 which I think came out on CD some time ago. If you are really keen there is even a pressing of Sundragon, a really rare pre Purple session, though again that’s been out on CD in the past (and the Purple cuts were included on the Pre-Purple People which Simon put together years ago. Thanks to Mark Maddock for sifting through the releases for us. Take my advice Mark and skip past Tom Tom Club’s Good, Bad & Funky – it was terrible even when it came out (and I’d buy anything with Tina Weymouth on it!) SR

https://recordstoreday.com/Home

DMX – X Moves

I don’t pretend to understand any of this but Ian Paice has been found laying down a heavy beat on the posthumous single from rapper DMX who died a little while ago (though it was cut before he became ill). It all kind of washed over me and the keyboards are amazingly dated but the involvement of Paice, Steve Howe and Bootsy Collins seems to get plenty of respect in the comments section below the official audio stream on YouTube. Thanks to Tim Summers for first giving me the heads up.

Sounds like…

Neil Young has been talking about a likely archive release of an album he cut in 2001 but shelved (“[It] was so sad that I couldn’t put it out. I just skipped it and went on to do another album in its place”). In doing so he refers to one track as being “like a Deep Purple hit”. This inspired Mark Maddock to hunt around for us and a live version from the time turned up. Called ‘Standing in the Light’ it’s not hard to see what Neil means! Even in bootleg form it sounds pretty good, so I’ll post and you can see how many seconds it’s takes to spot the influence.

Thanks to Mark for the story.

on lead vocals

There have been so many releases based around the Phenomena project by Tom Galley I confess I struggle to keep up, especially with all the reissues thereof. But this latest CD might have a place on your shelf as it brings together all the tracks featuring Glenn Hughes on lead vocals (as the cover sticker clearly indicates!). So if you never investigated this is as good a chance as any. The disc is out now, and our thanks to Stuart Hamilton for the info.

In town (shopping) tonight

£5.00 in 1980 WAS £5.00. But what do you do when you spot your guitar hero popping to to Burton’s the Tailors in Chester? Andrew Elsden braved the burly bodyguard who was with him and approached Ritchie for an autograph, but the only paper he had on him was this five pound note, which as a student he could ill afford to set aside. It must also be one of the few collectables that’s actually gone down in value since, given the drop in our currency (it’s worth about £1.25 today, I looked it up!). Ritchie was due to play Deeside Leisure Centre that evening (Feb 27th, the Down To Earth tour) and was just out killing time in the local shops. Though as far as I recall, Burton’s never did sell black spandex anythings.