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Lyric Theatre, Star City, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
April 22, 2004

THS Reader of the Day

Jennifer Stokes' photos

Silver Tongue
Woman From Tokyo
I Got Your Number
Strange Kind Of Woman
Bananas
Knocking At Your Back Door
Contact Lost - Steve Morse solo
The Well Dressed Guitar
Don Airey's solo
Perfect Strangers
Highway Star
Lazy (incl drum solo)
When A Blind Man Cries
Space Truckin'
Smoke On The Water

Speed King

It's been remiss of me not to paint a clearer picture of the venue for Deep Purple's Sydney concerts this week. The venue is the Lyric Theatre at Star City Casino, which is located just to the west of the Central Business District on the water's edge near Darling Harbour. Star City Casino has a number of venues for entertainment with the Lyric Theatre being a three-level purpose built theatre, with Stalls, a Dress Circle and a Grand Circle. The Dress and Grand Circles step down towards the stage in a curve. In front of the Stalls is a small "mosh-pit". Actually it is more of a "mosh-flat" as the stage is just one metre above the floor.
Tonight I saw the show from the second row of the Grand Circle after previously seeing Tuesday's show from the first row of the Dress Circle and Wednesday's show from the front row of the stalls.
Each show has been different, partly from the various seating positions, partly the crowd's reactions to the band's playing and in the case of tonight's show, the song list.
The backdrop was a picture of a banana plantation which was highlighted by the lighting show.
The stage set up consisted of Ian Paice and Don Airey on separate podiums to the rear of the stage. There is a gap between the podiums, which allows IG to exit stage centre to have a refreshment. Both podiums have a bananas skirt that hides the frames and no doubt various cabling. There are two monitor boxes in front of the podiums.
Ian Paice plays a white Pearl drum kit (centre left) and Don Airey is surrounded on three sides, one side (front) has the organ, one side (middle) has the piano and the rear side is the Leslie stack (centre right). There are no monitor boxes along the front of the stage so it is a fairly spare set with only Steve's array of pedals off to one side. Roger Glover has four speaker cabinets with eight speakers in each (stage left) and Steve Morse has two Marshall speaker cabinets and four Peavey 5150 speaker boxes (stage right).
The show itself was pretty bloody good. Perhaps the band enjoyed not having to pack the truck, drive all day, set up the gear, etc. Oh that's right, they have someone else to do that, but I'm sure you get my point. No packing of suitcases, no limos and no travel by plane, train or automobile. Three consecutive nights at the same venue in the same city must be a record. I think IG enjoyed the opportunity to critique the dribble of Sydney Morning Herald music critic Bernard Zuel. [Read the review. What did Ian say about it? Rasmus] Probably something that he doesn't get the chance to do that often, as the review of Tuesday's concert was in today's (Thursday's) paper.
Highlights (and there were many) included Bananas, especially the guitar work of Steve Morse (stunning), Contact Lost was exceptional, the guitar solo included bits and pieces from Major Impacts 2 which was a nice touch. Perfect Strangers (there is just something special about that song) and Steve's control of feedback was simply stunning,
Highway Star was so good even Ian Paice applauded.
His drum solo in Lazy was hot (just as well his drum tech adjusted the fan before the song started) and consisted of the famous single-stick drum roll - amazing.
Space Truckin' was a blast, simply as good as ever (the crowd around me went wild) and the crowd at the front surged into the "mosh-flat". Smoke on the Water really got the crowd (and the band for that matter) going.
The encore was Speed King - say now more.
Sometimes I feel like screaming and tonight was one of those moments, a picture of innocence (not).
Graeme Milton

I went to the first and third Sydney show on April 20th and 22nd. Both shows were brilliant, and the material differed slightly. In my opinion the second time around was better. The solos of each of the members were brilliant, however Steve Morse's and Ian Paice's really stood out for me. Contact Lost was sublime.
To really get the most out of this tour you must listen to the new Bananas album. As I found out, having a good listen to the songs on the album will really allow you to appreciate the live versions even more.
A brilliant tour not to be missed!
Don Armstrong

Sydney Morning Herald review