A200 anyone?

Good to see Glenn Hughes is on the ball, preparing to tour in celebration of Burn’s 50th anniversary, albeit only in sunny Spain so far.  As sharper minds than us have pointed out (hi Tim), GH has in fact already played the bulk of the album on previous Remembering DP jaunts.  Still he rarely disappoints live so should be a good night out.  And maybe he will have a go at A200 to complete the set?!  Thanks to Steve Clare for the flyer. 

New and old

Glenn Hughes’s promoters have been swift to reorganise his cancelled UK tour, with some dates rescheduled, and some alternatives where venues were not available.  Dates are on the 2019 concert diary page.  Thanks to Tim Summers.

Make room…

It is the silly season after all. Since 2000, Machine Head (which is on my mind as I am working hard to wrap up the new book!) has been reissued on vinyl by Rhino, EMI, Back to Black, Universal and Warners, in a choice of clear, black or purple vinyl. And those are just the ones I know about.  So please forgive me if I can’t get too excited by this and the accompanying set of similarly coloured vinyl reissues of that part of the Deep Purple catalogue which Universal now control. And I own 25 copies of Machine Head, so must be their target market! What saner heads must think I can only guess.

Anyhow, if you missed them before, here’s your chance again.  Of course they’re remastered, although one suspects this just means a new master has been cut rather than anything more substantial (and I’m not certain remastering technology has developed that much in the three years since the last one!). And sure this work will have been done at Abbey Road, but only because that’s where the tapes are stored and copied. And yes they’re in a nice shade of purple, but then again so was the Machine Head reissue six years ago.  It is also limited, not really a big surprise as most reissue vinyl is these days. The sales people calculate the likely market and profit, an appropriate number are pressed, and then the run is closed.  It does seem to me major labels are quickly killing off this market; does the world need a reissue on vinyl of the first Now That’s What I Call Music LP?  Because there is one. I spotted it in Sainsbury’s last week.

Of course the set looks nice in the pack shot (let’s hope the sleeve scanner has remembered to remove the Record & Tape Exchange price stickers this time too!), but sadly they would just get squeezed onto our shelf, spine out. Maybe my £126 would be better spent on some more shelving.  

Any variations here? Well they’ve added the Mk 4 label to Last Concert, which also seems to have been pressed in black and purple vinyl (check the inner bag below where someone has forgotten the Photoshop mask)!  But you can pick up a nice original import press for only a few dollars more.  Or there is a very spiffing original first press minty looking copy of In Rock down at my local second hand shop. At least there is some history behind that.

Box sets

America seems to be getting a bit box set crazy these days, all part of trying to squeeze a few more sales out of back-catalogue, and often these can represent good value for money but only if you don’t have the titles already.
Rhino are jumping in with The Complete Albums 1970 – 1976 (cover shown above), 10 CDs, which runs from Concerto through to Come Taste, with MIJ and MIE as extras.
Meanwhile Audio Fidelity are planning their first box set with Gold CDs of In Rock, Fireball, Machine Head and Who Do We Think We Are in a metal box.  These have all been out separately, and got good reviews from audiophiles for the remastering.
Thanks to http://www.musictap.net/ (which is a useful American site for upcoming archive rock and pop titles and plans) and Leslie Hanagan.