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Reviews, Europe 2003

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T-Mobile Arena, Prague, Czech Republic
November 17, 2003

Deep Purple's show in Prague was my latest reason for a vacation and marked my 25th Deep Purple concert. Having seen the band trot around the states for the last two years performing greatest hits sets, I was excited to see my first show on the Bananas tour. Not that their last tours of the US weren't enjoyable. The last one in particular was excellent, and I saw great shows in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and New Jersey. However this time I was excited to see new material for the first time since the excellent Abandon tour and witness Purple playing exclusively to their fans, not part of a package tour.

The T-Mobile Arena was certainly unimpressive. In fact, it was possibly the ugliest arena I've ever seen! Our first snag of the night was when we realized that our tickets were not at the venue box office for pickup as I had thought, but rather at another agency somewhere else in town. As it was 5pm by the time I found this out, I was not really in the mood to go gallivanting through town to track the place down. I asked to buy two new tickets and the woman at the venue was kind enough to sort out the tickets there, and saved us the trip. Certainly more effort than anybody would do here in the States!

My wife and I happened to meet a woman from Rhode Island--just around the corner from where we live in Connecticut--who had also come over for the show. Small world. Just after 6pm the doors opened, and we made our way to the best seats we could find on the left side of the stage with a good view of Paice and across the stage to Don and Steve.

The opening band was a local blues-rock band. Nothing special, but not painful either! The merchandise was nice looking-a long-sleeved football style shirt, some sweatshirts, and tee shirts with the Bananas cover art. I didn't notice any tour programs. Unfortunately they didn't seem to take credit cards, so I only made away with the football shirt. Doubtful they would be selling this one on a US tour!

The changeover from the opening band to Purple seemed short. Suddenly the lights went down and the guys made their way to the stage without any fanfare. Paice started up his snare beat to Highway Star and we were off and running. It was nice to hear Hush, Fireball, and Woman From Tokyo opening past Morse-era shows, but Highway Star is the best opener in my opinion. The crowd was very energetic and the band was in great form. Gillan's voice sounded great, not showing any signs of strain or wear.

Strange Kind of Woman always sounds natural as a second song and went down well. The ending seemed a little abrupt, certainly abbreviated even from the Abandon tour version. Silver Tongue was the first newbie of the night, and sounded excellent. Gillan started his famous ramblings, this time about kissing the Blarney Stone. The band stretched out a little at the end, which was also a nice touch. I actually prefer that band add their improvisations on the newer material or different classics and give us the punchy versions of SKOW, Lazy, and Space Truckin' for a change.

Knocking At Your Back Door kept the momentum going, and hopefully stays in the set for some time to come. House of Pain followed with a Gillan harmonica intro and Airey, Glover, and Morse joining in on the chorus in their collective monotone voices! I find it hard to believe Paice would have failed the backup vocals audition at this standard, so bring him in too!

Doing It Tonight was a real highlight. Paice started it out with his funky cowbell beat before the others joined in. A real tight performance. Space Truckin' was another goodie, I really enjoy the Machine Head length version. The Well Dressed Guitar was perhaps an unexpected highlight, and really ha d the crowd going. It probably helps Gillan's voice at this point in the set, but can hardly be described as filler. Airey's into Perfect Strangers was excellent, and showed what he could accomplish with some time to himself. Smoke on the Water followed and finished the main set with a real bang.

Hush and Black Night closed the evening with the band loosening up a bit more. Hush contained a short Paice solo, and Black Night had an extended intro and Morse at the lead for a sing-a-long towards the end. As we filtered out of the arena, Haunted was playing loudly over the PA. We got to the door just as it was finishing-the end of a fantastic show.

If they show had a down side, there was a slightly rushed feeling at certain points which is a little hard to describe. I noticed this on their last US tours, but put it down to the shortened sets they had at some shows. It was as if they had preplanned songs where each could doodle around before, but had a time limit that prevented them from actually doing anything interesting or spontaneous. On the Purpendicular and Abandon tours Steve played brilliant extended solos and even his guitar parade on later shows was fun for me. But tonight his various short intro/solo pieces didn't seem to add anything to the proceedings. When Airey had a few minutes to himself he weaved a beautiful solo that really had the crowd going, but Morse didn't seem to have the right occasion to do the same. The set could also have had another improvisation section during the main set, perhaps as an extension of Bananas.

Having said that, the flow of the set was excellent without any misplaced songs or downright clunkers. It was also good mix of old and new, and while the lack of anything from Purpendicular and Abandon looked like a bad move ahead of time, it didn't seem that noticeable with the inclusion of all of the new tracks. Both the band and the audience were very energetic, constantly feeding off each other. I also noticed Gillan doing more to get the crowd going than at previous shows, and Glover and Morse were also really getting into things as well.

The fact that they are actually promoting a new album this time gave the show a sense of purpose that was perhaps the missing piece at the previous US shows that I saw. They showed a renewed spirit and proved to me at least that there is a lot of life left in them yet. I look forward to more on the US tour!

Brendan Johnston, Niantic, CT, USA