Venue: Hala Tivoli / Ljubljana / Slovenia
Concert date: 04.10.2006
Attendance: 4
Ticket price: 9.500,00 SIT (39,64 €) – on the day of the show
Old friends, old town, old band! By around 6 PM traffic on Celovška had visibly collapsed. It was time for the area around Hala Tivoli and the hall itself to come back to life, and the place was already buzzing like an anthill. There were plenty of youngsters among the otherwise well-seasoned gentlemen who had come to relive the early seventies one more time.
SHEEVA: 8:00 – 8:30 PM
The evening was opened by Slovenian up-and-comers Sheeva. The band is trying its luck with that current dirty, modern guitar “groove” and a furious female vocal. Still, it’s unimaginably nicer than having to watch some random accordion players, who these days generally darken the healthy image of the rock scene in Slovenia, and above all in the heads of the “little Slovenes”. Simplified rock, so, alternative solutions. With the sad sound during the songs, where the bass tones smothered the whole mix, the thing just never really took off. The other reason is that in front of Deep Purple you can’t just put on any old support act you happen to have lying around. I don’t know why, with all the options out there, Slovenian bands devoted to the classic hard rock approach – Forgotten Eden, Rock Shock, Firebird – don’t get their chance. They’d have delighted a crowd tuned to the Deep Purple sound, warmed it up nicely, and when they left the stage they’d have handed it over in an even more feverish anticipation of the legends. Luckily it lasted only half an hour.
DEEP PURPLE: 9:00 – 10:50 PM
And even that would’ve been too much. Deep Purple started right on time. What? What’s with that sound? Too quiet? Aha! A horror show, once again all you can hear is bass everywhere. Pictures Of Home, Things I Never Said and Into The Fire. Damn! Gillan sounded like my grandma coming back into the house after weeding the garden, having got up for that very purpose at first light, ten minutes to five, on 19.06.1981, to make me scrambled eggs and cocoa for breakfast. Hoarse to the heavens and back. With cracked, rooster-crow squawking he also saw off the verses of the surprise of the day, the classic Into The Fire (“In Rock”, 1970), and hearing that crushing approach, my heart nearly broke from disappointment.
Well, things began slowly drifting back to their usual places and to some satisfying level that’s demanded of Deep Purple with the fourth song, Strange Kind Of Woman, during which the hall came alive for the first time. The sound got fixed and Gillan warmed up his voice. From there on, Deep Purple at least justified their spirit and their big name through routine. The view of the stage was seriously contrasting, as you turned from the worn-out Gillan to the energy-charged and still fresh pirate Roger Glover, who hopped relentlessly from one end of the stage to the other, swinging his Vigier bass as if it were a ballet dance partner. Well, Rapture Of The Deep obviously put things in their place. In it the guys briefly brushed against the atmosphere of Perfect Strangers and even showed a bit of childlike naivety in playing it. The crowd leapt up enthusiastically again for the classic Fireball, where Gillan’s voice sadly burst at the seams once more, but it’s a song that, with its speed and explosiveness, simply lit a real fire in the hall. It felt like the concert’s dynamics were swinging the whole time between hot and cold. Now Wrong Man calmed the mood, followed by Morse’s solo spot, in which the guitarist was just devilishly well-oiled standard as he sped up and down the fretboard. But he stunned the audience especially by working in the main riff of the AC/DC classic Back In Black, the entire solo of Led Zeppelin’s Stairway To Heaven, and a switch to the main riff of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s evergreen Sweet Home Alabama. Well, when he moved on to the instrumental Contact Lost, you could feel his lengthy solo spot was nearing its end. Next came a three-minute band “jam” (with Gillan still stubbornly seated, waiting at the foot of Paice’s drums – if only they’d given him congas, or at least castanets) Well Dressed Guitar, in which the guys joined Morse’s guitar rather clumsily, since they dropped into the song with a completely wrong note. Oh-oh-oh, so many years on the road, and still this… grrr!!! Paice’s drum intro and Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye with its witty lyrics: I piss in the water, I burn the trees,.. – about the delusions of mankind and the desecration of nature! Calming things down again with When Blind Man Cries, where some 3,500 Slovenes managed to scrape together just enough funds to buy gas for lighting a whole three lighters during the concert. The mood finally perked up with Lazy (Gillan on harmonica), which Don Airey, as expected, opened with a witty intro. After that we enjoyed Airey’s excellent soloing, and then came a new highlight, the one that finally woke the hall from its slumber: Perfect Strangers. A great performance. Simply the one “Blackmore era” tune that suits Morse’s guitar style best. Played and sung spot-on – thanks to the bigger of the two Ians. Now came the peak of the show. The “Machine Head” trio, with Space Truckin’, during which the hall once again followed Purple calmly, Highway Star, which Morse and Glover preceded with a thrilling short instrumental “jam”, and of course Smoke On The Water. End of the regular set.
The return and a party with Hush, opened by Paice, to everyone’s surprise with a short drum solo, something he hasn’t done in a long, long time, and a finish with the classic Black Night, marked by a longer all-Purple jam on stage, right before the classic ending. Done shortly before 11 PM.
A few more remarks. Most of the hall was, for the better part of the show, pretty much mute and standing still. Only the first few rows, filled with youngsters, went wild. Gillan literally had to goad the crowd a few times to wake it from its hibernation. Ian also chatted with the audience less than usual, and on top of that Purple leaned mostly on their routine this time, which, together with that “laid-back” attitude, exposed a few tuning gaps during individual songs and especially the dismal sound in the opening part of the show.
Still, for the most part the concert was played at a satisfying level, albeit with some energy saving (I’m pointing the finger especially at both of them – little and big Ian). The sound got fixed and Gillan sounded perfectly acceptable too. What I miss in Purple today is, of course, an injection of freshness. True, Airey after Lord’s departure was a lottery win for the band, the kind you can only dream of, but the concerts are too samey and predictable. Maybe they could cut down the time given to solos and group “jams” and instead throw in another Mk II classic that Purple haven’t played in ages, even if it’s only Anyone’s Daughter. Expecting Morse to smash his guitar during the show, or some stripper to messily strip on stage during Strange Kind Of Woman, is of course utopian, but Purple today need some original spark during a concert to revamp and refresh their shows a little. Anyway, the youngest were the happiest, since they got the chance to see legends live, and they’ll surely tell their grandkids bedtime stories about it one day, about how Gillan glanced at someone during the show, and how Glover pressed a pick into someone’s hand, and so on… The forefathers of metal on concert stages are always a great joy in the new millennium too, and you simply must not miss their visit.
Setlist
1. Pictures Of Home
2. Things I Never Said
3. Into The Fire
4. Strange Kind Of Woman
5. Rapture Of The Deep
6. Fireball
7. Wrong Man
8. Steve Morse solo (incl. Back In Black/Stairway To Heaven/Sweet Home Alabama)
9. Contact Lost
10. Well Dressed Guitar
11. Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye
12. When A Blind Man Cries
13. Lazy
14. Don Airey solo (incl. Star Wars/Superman main theme)
15. Perfect Strangers
16. Space Truckin’
17. Highway Star
18. Smoke On The Water
—encore—
19. Hush
20. Black Night
