A hot river of notes
I've been a DP fan since when I was sixteen, so it's been a long time. A friend told me of the live Deep Purple show to be held in my city and I had no doubt about the choice.
I arrived at the show at 8:00pm, the place was crowded by fans. As always I tried to get as close to the stage as I could. I ended up at the right side of the stage in the second row!
At 8:45pm the support band (Sungift) started to play - don't expect too much from them, but they have one or two very good songs.
At 9:30pm Ian Paice was the first to enter the stage and sit at his place on the drums while the audience was screaming his name! Everyone in the band was in really good shape from the beginning of the show, and Ian Gillan's vocals were as if he were a teenager.
I must say that Steve made two or three mistakes at the beginning of some solos, but as soon as the crowd started to sing and scream, he began to play wonderfully, a hot river of notes that can surely be compared to Blackmore's performances.
Don Airey did also a good job and showed great skill at the piano, even if he has not the same touch and emotion for the old DP songs as Jon Lord. It's probably only a matter of how many times you have played a song with the band. A solo of classical music was a little off-topic, but nicely played.
The audience was excited and participated in the show greatly (from what I saw from my position). We sang and danced to every song, giving all our energies to show DP that Turin is a great hard rock city!
The show was really great and probably the best DP show I have ever seen. They played many great 'hits' but also some older songs like "Fools" and "No One Came"; the mix of hard songs and slow ones was great. They also played a medley of songs of other bands with Steve riff-raffing on his guitar! Every song was played by the band with great skill (even with the mistakes of Steve), power and 'love'. It was clear that they love to play these songs and give their lives for them.
I was particularly excited during a solo from Steve in "Speed King": absolutely great, played with passion and dedication, technique and speed, so great that at the end of it I found myself with some tears of joy falling from my eyes. I had the same feeling on the last song, "Highway Star", where the crowd exploded in a scream of joy, singing louder and louder as the song continued.
The show ended at about 12:00 midnight.
Well, a wonderful show. Deep Purple still rock and also without Blackmore they are one of the best bands out there, probably the best. I hope to see Jon again in the next live show.
Here's a list of the songs that I remember (probably not in this order):
Woman From Tokyo
Ted The Mechanic
Fools
When A Blind Man Cries
medley: (AC/DC, Hendrix, Led Zeppelin...?)
Smoke On The Water
Perfect Strangers
No One Came
Mary Long
Speed King
Hush
Black Night
Highway Star
Hey, go to the next show!!!
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