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North America 2

Chronicle Pavilion, Concord, CA, USA
Sep 5, 2004

Silver Tongue
Woman From Tokyo
I Got Your Number
Strange Kind Of Woman
Bananas
Contact Lost /
Well Dressed Guitar
Knockin' At Your Back Door
Perfect Strangers
Highway Star
Space Truckin'
Smoke On The Water
Speed King
Hush

My oldest son, Marcus, and I attended the Sept. 5th show in Concord, CA. The show started with Deep Purple actually getting booed after the first two songs, Silver Tongue and Woman from Tokyo, due to a mic problem with Ian Gillan. The band being the professionals that they are worked through the problem. The crew fixed the issue and Ian said they were sorry and then the band gave a wonderful performance. Ian also thanked the crew for fixing the problem before they left the stage for the night.
Now back to the show. The songs played mirrored the Denver, Co. playlist. The highlights of the night for were the killer version of Smoke On The Water, Steve's very touching version of Contact Lost with Well Dressed Guitar after it, and the entire encore of Speed King and Hush. The real highlight of the show I can't say enough was the way Deep Purple handled the technical difficulty with professionalism and I think they kicked the rest of the performance up a couple of notches because of it.
Thanks and can't wait for the next tour,
Kevin McMahon

I showed up for their Bay Area concert when the sun was almost down. It was about 100 degrees. I missed Thin Lizzy, Blue Oyster Cult and Dokken, but did catch Joe Satriani. He is stunning, but I can only take so much instrumental music - unless it's Beethoven. So towards the end of his set I escaped to use the restrooms before the big rush of 17,000 bone bashers. Once I got back to my seat there was a couple more from Joe and then a long, long wait for Deep Purple.
The lights went down and so did Ian Gillans microphone, as they opened with a musically powerful Silver Tongue, but where were the vocals? At first I thought, "Gillan's voice must really be shot, I can't even hear him." But it looked like there was some big commotion on stage, so it probably wasn't Gillan. Any hopes of fixing the microphone problem were passed on. Why not stop the show and fix the problem. Instead, they went straight into Woman From Tokyo. Finger's crossed! When the vocals didn't appear once again, there was a huge "boo!" from the crowd. One bright spot was a good portion of the audience were singing the part for Mr. Gillan. It was actually kind of neat, but I wanted this problem corrected quickly. After WFT there was applause mixed with loud booing, the crowd was really trying to get somebody's attention up there. Glover picked up on it and then someone in the road crew finally gave Gillan a good old fashioned microphone with a plug in chord attached and what do you know - we could hear him say "Can you hear me now?" and the crowd cheered with approval. My wife thought DP should have played WFT again or at some point in the show. But no, so I guess the show must go on. Literally!
Gillan's voice was sounding superb, much better than the Abandon tour of 1998 and even earlier this year (Feb. 2004) for that matter. He had total control of his instrument. He was even looking great, letting his hair grow a bit and sporting a tan. As my wife said, "Ian's looking very handsome on the big screen".
We had good enough seats where we didn't need the big screens but it's kind of tempting to look at fretboard close ups. Steve was looking happy up there once his technical difficulties were fixed. His guitar was sounding thin but around the song Bananas it sounded great. Don Airey's solo spot was wonderful and the crowd just loved it. I was worried this would be a spot were they might lose the crowd. But no it didn't. Steve's solo spot was also amazing. I overheard one teenager behind me say, "Now that was inspiring guitar playing!"
There were actually lots of youngsters there. I don't think DP will ever be forgotten. No matter how hard the media tries, I just don't think DP are going away. And of course Mr. Paice and Glover were immense as ever!
This would have been a great show if not for the early screw ups and the mix was a bit muddy in the lower range. Hell, it was still a really good show, things happen when it's live.
Come back soon DP, we love you!
Mic Olsen