A few words, if I may (and I may), about a concert we enjoyed last night.

The evening started off with bitter, bitter disappointment as we arrived at the venue shortly after the advertised door-opening time and long before the advertised showtime. It was when we were collecting our tickets that we were to discover that Dean Howard had already finished their set and that Thunder were taking to the stage. I had been looking forward to this gig for quite some time, so I was quite browned off to miss Dave’s live performance.

Thunder’s short set was very good indeed. In fact, I now quite fancy seeing them at one of their own gigs.

Peter Frampton has never really been ‘my bag’, I have to say. I was quite tempted to sit in the (smoke free) bar during his set, but thought better of it. I have to say that I was really very impressed at the quality of the music. The tribute to the Men of Black Watch was touching and his encore, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, was absolutely superb!

There wasn’t too great a delay before the main act came onstage. Deep Purple kicked off the set with Silver Tongue from their latest record (mental note: must buy copy of Bananas, I have the MP3s that I downloaded for evaluation purposes for too long now). This was pretty good, but the show really got started (for me) when they played the opening track to their 1973 album Who Do We Think We Are?, Woman From Tokyo. Ian Gillan, who appeared to have come onstage barefoot in his pyjamas, introduced the concept of air-Hammond to the crowd before returning to the Bananas album for I Got Your Number. The next song was from Fireball: Strange Kind Of Woman. Gillan’s amusing little anecdotes in-between songs added to the occasion. The next delight was Bananas: the song, not the fruit! Demon’s Eye was an unexpected treat from the Fireball album, followed up by The Well-Dressed Guitar. Steve Morse played through the blinding instrumental Contact Lost, a tribute to the crew of Space Shuttle Columbia. The mood was lifted then by Knocking At Your Back Door from Perfect Strangers, which merged nicely into Don Airey’s awesome Hammond extravaganza, culminating in the title track from Perfect Strangers. The main set was to finish with three songs from an album I always have a copy of in the car, Machine Head, these were: Highway Star, Space Truckin’ and the inevitable Smoke On The Water. Sadly, I’d snapped the G string on my shiny new air guitar, whilst tuning up, so I had to leave the guitar solo up to the man on the stage (he did an impressive job, too). I still managed to play the opening chords to perfection, of course!

The encore was quite literally, In Rock (if you like rock music, you must own a copy of this album): a ten-minute version of Speed King, featuring an impressive bass solo from Roger Glover and a small drum solo from Ian Paice, before the grand finale: Black Night (the second song that Mrs Johns knew of the set)!

Deep Purple are without a doubt one of the greatest rock bands of all time. Seeing them live not only confirmed these thoughts, but also gave me a new sense of respect for those musicians. Highly recommended.