Whitesnake – The Purple Album

And lo…  a Whitesnake 2015 (David Coverdale on vocals, Reb Beach and Joel Hoekstra on guitars, Michael Devin on bass and Tommy Aldridge on drums) romp through 15 golden oldies from Mk 3 and Mk 4, entitled The Purple Album in May.
It’s hard not to imagine this was inspired by his talks with Blackmore last year, and it will certainly keep the internet chatterboards going for some time. And while the reaction in our in-tray today to the teaser video for Stormbringer has been largely negative, perversely I quite liked it.  Fairly grungy approach, and I think the vocal register worked in that context.  I’d rather this than a half hearted recreation of the original, and it has more life than Gillan’s lacklustre covers album (Gillan’s Inn) of a few years back.  For me the last few Whitesnake originals have been largely treading water, and at least here we get some strong material.  Mind you, I’d get the guitarist to lay off the beans before they hit the road if the vid is anything to go by!
With it still being strongly rumoured that Ritchie is pursuing what is now a Purple Rainbows approach on stage sometime this summer (in between Blackmore’s Night gigs) it’ll be interesting to see who wins the battle of the monster tributes.  The sad thing is that if you’d put Blackmore into this new album, it would have been properly explosive and we’d all be wetting our trousers today.
Pre-order details, track lists and formats to follow.
Thanks to Tom Dixon and Tim Summers.

Our original news story.

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.

Into 2013

Best wishes to everyone for the coming year, and let’s hope April lives up to expectations. I had thought the band might make the most of the time of year to post a five minute audio trailer for the album over the Xmas break – what a great way to gee everyone along. But then I woke up…!
DTB are getting back into the swing of things after a fraught run up to the Christmas break. The phone lines up our neck of the woods are never great. One had already gone down a few weeks ago and was proving a struggle to repair, then the other line went the week before Xmas – leaving us with no phone, no internet and no credit card access. Happily it was reinstated after a couple of days but it did backlog the office orders. The other line was finally repaired as well – but they forgot to tell us! One bit of good news out of it all was that the BT engineer told us fibre optic is now installed in the locale and we should get this in a few months. Not that the Government is funding it. The money is coming from the EU development budget. So any UKIPers who try and doorstep us will get a mouthful!
Anyhow, working through the weekend we did get all the orders out before Xmas but we do apologise if some were a bit late. Also struggling against the elements was the California Jam book. Literally on one occasion when in that ice-storm we had a forklift truck carrying cases skidded and dropped the lot. Then, everyone concerned having bust several guts to get the book finished, the big problem came with the vinyl; having decided to press in the UK the plant let the publisher down, delivered just 100 copies and then closed a week before Xmas. The only fair option was to dig back and ship the oldest orders out first, and the other copies will go this month once the vinyl problem is sorted out.
After all that we needed cheering up, but didn’t expect Blackmore to be the one to provide the laughs. Tim Summers caught Mr. & Mrs. Blackmore on a radio interview recently. He was asked the rather bizarre question of ‘Which singer that you’ve worked with in the past does Candice most remind you of?’ Blackmore quickly came back with ‘Coverdale, because she’s always shouting at me and calling me Baby’! Good to see he’s not lost his sense of humour altogether. It does beg the question is she always exhorting him to take up cigarettes as well? (“I said Smoke!”).  Sorry.
Keith Sharp was out doing his Xmas shopping in Primark and spotted this gem on sale there between the Hendrix and Stones skinny tops. Size – very small.

The US label Friday Music have done a ‘deluxe’ reissue of Slaves & Masters on CD (due Feb). I’m not a fan of their editions at all. This promises ‘remastering’, which if their other efforts are anything to go by, will be awful.
For some light relief, check out this new Brazilian TV advert which uses a cover version of Highway Star as the backing music. Thanks to Roberto Souza for the heads up. The agency have done two versions of the track, one a female vocal pop take, the other more like the original, then switch between the two as the graphics go from Sin City type urban imagery to more colourful comic book stuff. Hard to explain, so have a look! Who makes JAC cars (or why anyone would want to buy one) I’ve no idea.
http://carros.uol.com.br/noticias/redacao/2012/12/12/jac-j2-deixa-faustao-de-lado-e-aposta-em-deep-purple-para-atrair-jovens.htm

Update – the rock rendition is actually Glenn Hughes, and it’s the one on that patchy tribute album ReMachined from last year!

Bits and bobs

Bits and bobs new to the site; a look at the new Double Trouble vinyl hardback reissue, a really high-quality release; a Greek 6CD on-pack set in replica covers (see the press advert above); and a setlist for the recent rockin’ Xmas concert in Berne.