Pointless

We do watch the BBC TV quiz Pointless from time to time, er, when time permits.  Several people spotted Deep Purple popping up in a question in April 2019 but which has since been repeated; Tim Summers has a freeze frame facility on his digibox and grabbed the shot for us. Contestants had to identify pictures of bands under the round titled ‘colourful bands’.  Nobody went for Purple, and only 3 of the 100 people the producers asked beforehand could name them! But then we saw an edition last year where two contestants didn’t even know who The Rolling Stones were…  Co-host Richard Osman reckoned this could have been a photo of a current band as “100%, all bands now look like this again”. 

As Tim adds, just a shame they can’t play like them…

Just Might nick your poster

Always enjoy anything sleeve art related so appreciate Tonny Steenhagen’s eagle eyes spotting this vintage Fillmore poster recently.  Which was borrowed a few years later (circa 1977) for an early Deep Purple bootleg, Just Might Take Your Life, shown below.  Not really a surprise that a bootleg label would also steal the cover art, and a very strange image at that!  Still they did fork out for some Letraset for the title…

Mr. Whoosh

Another day, another exclusive limited Whoosh edition with a free t-shirt included.  Only this is one you might actually want to wear, being as how it was designed by our resident haute couture specialist Jean-Timothée Summers….

He’s back!

We need a smile in these difficult times, but is this the man to do it? You decide…

Throw My Bones

Edel are apparently priapic with pride to reveal yet another special exclusive limited edition of Whoosh, which seems to round up all the other editions (see posts below – 2LP vinyl, CD, mediabook), plus three 10″ vinyl records called “The Infinite Live Recordings Vol 2”, art prints and a t-shirt.  Ten items in all (pack shot below), eight of which have the same cover art (and the other two are prints).  We would expect whatever the live content is (they don’t specify) will soon be recycled as Edel have 100% form in that department! UPDATE : the live material is from Deep Purple’s performance in Rio 2017 “The inFinite Live Recordings, Vol. 2”. And for the DVD, it features the full Roger Glover and Bob Ezrin in conversation (clips on the web) and, for the first time, the full live performance at Hellfest 2017. Thanks to Lutz Reinert.

“Whoosh!” will be available as Limited CD+DVD Mediabook (incl. the 1 as video)

Never mind all that though, they have also just posted (well it went up at midnight, but DTB likes a lie in these days) a teaser track online at last, so we can get our first real flavour of the recordings. And Throw My Bones is a clear follow on from InFinite which is hardly surprising (or a bad thing).  A decent enough if short offering, plus great production, but those lyrics sound very very personal…  and given the current pandemic, quite prescient.  Thanks to everyone for the updates.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUW7PvvbbO4

 

Santa back in lapland

It seems Simon forgot to post the answer to the Santa Quiz, and some people are getting restless!  So now Santa is back home we can put everyone out of suspense; the hotel is question is where most of Deep Purple stayed while they rehearsed for their late 1972 British Tour nearby, where rehearsals for Machine Head also began.  We have asked if they have any booking diaries (before souvenir hunters descend) but the current owners say sadly not.  Still if that isn’t worth a blue plaque, we don’t know what is!  Mind you Simon was talking to Hanwell last year about doing the same for their building, so watch these spaces. And feel free to prompt.

Original post.  The Machine Head book publisher’s site.

 

 

 

Mexico wave

Deep Purple went ahead with their show in Mexico on the 14th, despite the health risks inherent with all travel at the moment, although I suspect they were well isolated from start to finish.  However it went ahead without Don Airey, although no reason was given at the time of posting this except to say it was a one-off. The keyboard player from Dream Theatre deputised apparently.  Purple’s June tour is still on for now.

Thanks to Tim Summers, our man at the festivals merchandise stall…

Smile please

What can we say? Simon does own a few vintage enamel signs and spotted this for sale a little while back. As it was the thick end of £700 he passed on it : “I seem to remember blogging one of these in an old issue of the fanzine which we spotted in York museum’s Victorian streetscape, but never seen one on the market before. I’d certainly have gone for it if my surname had been Coverdale!”

Whoosh!

UPDATE – Record Store Day has been put back to late June due to current health crisis. Original story below.

Record Day is fast approaching (April 18th) and fans in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland will have the chance to grab an exclusive ten inch vinyl special from the new Deep Purple album at participating shops. As of now we do not know which tracks will be featured, nor their exclusivity or otherwise, but Lutz Reinert has sent us the sleeve (above). More as and when.

Mean time we were out shopping the other day (we’re very old school at DTB) for some computer screen cleaner and ended up with this…  and judging by the price Edel would be advised to ditch issuing records and go into making cleansers.

 

Kapow!

Well, we were going to post an official link to Google Play who were trailing 30 second audio clips of all the tracks on the new Deep Purple album a couple of days ago. Some people were very much in two minds whether to listen to just clips, but as folk dithered they all suddenly disappeared as quickly as they came (“Whoosh” indeed)!  Needless to say not before a lot of people probably ripped them…  anyway here’s a tiny written spoiler from someone who was quicker off the mark than me (we’ll just call him “Dave”): “There was no chance of me lasting three and a half months, so I gave in immediately. As it’s entirely subjective I’d hope to not be giving anything away.  I’m OK with 3 of the first 5 tracks (the two exceptions may be the only ones on the album that I can’t get along with).  Tracks 6-13 sound promising, and five potential killers to round it off!”

Track titles see posts below.