Puppet Show

I saw Deep Purple last Friday night on the Mike Bullard show, where they performed "Highway Star" and a new song (as the end credits rolled). The guest before them was an elderly yo-yo champion. I'm sorry, but I couldn't stop thinking "PUPPET SHOW and Spinal Tap."
Purple were great anyway.

Deep Purple and Thin Lizzy, Feb. 8, 2004 at the Orpheum Theatre
Thin Lizzy came on with lights flashing and sirens wailing—tonight there would be a jailbreak, apparently. The sound was shatteringly loud, and the kick drums were distorting a bit. Thin Lizzy were basically a cover band, albeit one with a pedigree. John Sykes, who handled guitar and vocals (sounding not unlike Phil Lynott), was only with Lizzy for one album in ’83. Scott Gorham, the other guitarist, hailed from the band’s glory days. The bass player was a generic Richie Sambora type. The drummer, Michael Lee, had double bass drums just like Brian Downey, and a big cooling fan blowing in his face. Very rock. The set list was basically one half of the Live and Dangerous album (“Don’t Believe a Word,” “Rosalie,” “The Cowboy Song”, “Still in Love With You,” and so on), with a couple songs from the ’80s thrown in, like “Chinatown” and “Cold Sweat.” They didn’t play “Emerald,” unfortunately, which is one of those songs I’m always in the mood to hear. The set was over in a flash, way too short to do justice to the Lizzy back catalogue. After 45 minutes, they gave the crowd the beer-commercial-tainted “The Boys Are Back in Town” (cue Fancylady’s dash for a slash) then left the stage.

Intermission and time to survey the crowd. Lots of normal folks, and more aging rockers than you can shake a Thai stick at. Families occupied whole rows, the dads anxious to show Puddle of Mudd-loving offspring how the guitar ought to be played. And a lone hipster in a trucker hat featuring the word “BUDGIE” chicken-scratched above the brim with a Sharpie. Sure, he may like one of the most rocking bands in history, but he wasn’t going to shuck off the irony and expend some effort replicating their logo. Come on, Roger Dean designed it—it’s nearly as cool as the Yes logo!

Deep Purple were everything I expected them to be—poised, well seasoned, and masterful. They make it look so easy. After opening with a new song off Bananas, they went into “Woman From Tokyo,” and the gig took flight. I’ve always thought this was a semi-silly song, but man, did it ever work on stage. Purple are masters of the sustaining tension and delaying the payoff, and the long, trippy “So far away” section in "Woman From Tokyo" was a perfect example. Then they crashed into the main riff again and Don Airey raced through that piano solo and it doesn’t get any better than that. The first half of the set was 50/50 old/new, and included “Strange Kind of Woman” (I like a shuffle), “Perfect Strangers,” and “Knockin’ at Your Back Door”. The new songs from Bananas were all very classy, tight, a little busy and proggish. I get the impression that they can toss this stuff off effortlessly after all these years. Having Steve Morse in the band must help, because that guy is a music machine. He probably writes 15 riffs before breakfast.

Ian Gillan looked comfortable in baggy white togs and bare feet. His voice is a well-worn instrument these days, upper range mostly gone, but everything else hanging in there. Ian Paice (hero!) played like Ian Paice behind his Ian Paice drum kit. Looks like fun. Roger Glover (wearing the aging rocker head scarf favoured by Ian Anderson and most of Fleetwood Mac) is hard to pin down as a bassist. He’s not an introverted genius virtuoso like John Paul Jones or Entwistle, nor is he the embodiment of low-end simplicity like a Cliff Williams. Not to slight him, but Glover just does the job, and he sounds great.

They devoted the last half of the show to Machine Head, playing all tracks in order, slipping “When a Blind Man Cries” (a b-side you’ll find on the CD reissue) between “Lazy” and “Space Truckin’.” Gillan had some serious trouble with the album's opening and closing tunes, but handled the rest of the songs okay. During this segment of the show, the bananas backdrop disappeared in favour of film clips related to the early seventies—Janis and Jimi, Nixon and ’Nam, protesters and pot leaves. This was a bit forced, distracting and unnecessary. The songs didn’t need that kind of visual buttressing, and Deep Purple's music, to me at least, stands apart from that sort of clichéd nostalgia. Machine Head certainly still holds up today—I play it several times a year. It’s a helluva lot more than a period piece.

After a short break, they came back and played “Hush” and “Black Night” for the encore. It was all good, though I was hankering for something from In Rock. However, Sox tells me that “Child in Time” hasn’t been in the set since ’87, and most of the other songs on that album are probably out of Gillan’s range, too. Whatever—the crowd did a soccer chant along with the “Black Night” riff, the Gimli-like figure of Gerald the Rattlehead was bouncing up and down the aisle, and even though the gig would end in a couple minutes, everything was just about perfect.

The Supertramp revival begins here. I even heard "Fool's Overture" coming out of someone's Walkman on the SkyTrain yesterday. I remember discovering FM radio back in the late Cretaceous Period and being frightened by that song. I wasn't creeped out as much as when I first heard Dark Side of the Moon, but it was spooky enough to leave an impression. Believe you me.

I recently saw a Classic Albums show about the making of Deep Purple's Machine Head. Besides the good stuff you usually get in a typical CA episode (washed-out old film footage, band members listening to the master tapes and marvelling at how good they used to be), you also got Ritchie Blackmore in full Three Musketeers mode being interviewed in some kind of medieval grotto, complete with candelabra and suits of armor in the background. Gillan, Paice, Glover and Lord were more down to earth. Glover sported a balding rocker bandana, Lord seemed quite the country gentleman, and Gillan and Paice looked like they’d come in from a backyard barbecue.

The band as a whole were remarkably soft spoken. They had a few good stories about the perilous circumstances surrounding the recording of Machine Head, but I got the impression that they directed most of their attention towards the music back in the day. (I expect they enjoyed a drink or twelve as well.)

Roger Glover delivered what I thought was the best quote of the show, while discussing "Pictures of Home": "We never had a formula, but it's always good to have a shuffle on an album." I totally agree.

Actually, Machine Head features two shuffles. They didn't talk about "Lazy" on the show, and that's the shufflingest shuffle of all possible shuffles.

Machine Head always takes me back to our late-summer visits to the Sarrell family home in Oliver, B.C. The Sarrells were teacher friends of my parents. We’d drive out there in the VW van and load up on fruit. Their son Michael was the epitome of cool to me. He had the big seventies afro (what my hair will become if I don’t get it cut NOW), the sketchy peach-fuzz moustache, and the first collection of serious rock music I’d ever checked out—he had all the Kiss, Purple, and Heep albums. Mike was also a budding naturalist, so his room was full of dead things that he’d found out on the Okanagan bluffs—sheep skulls and snake skins, very large bugs. When he was out, I’d sneak in there and just be in awe. Anyway, it was through him that I first heard “Highway Star,” “Maybe I’m a Leo,” and “Lazy” (not to mention “Detroit Rock City”).

I think Michael now works as a wildlife biologist in the area. He pops up in the media occasionally whenever some strange faunal phenomena occurs. I remember him being interviewed on CBC radio when a massive colony of bats was discovered in a church attic.

After returning from one of those trips to Oliver, I joined forces with the men of Huxley Ave. They had also seen the light, and my life was set.