Deep Purple Web Forums And Discussion Groups

To quote David Lee Roth, "Missed us? We're baaaack!!"....

Long promised, finally delivered -- the Highway Star Fan Forums are back and ready for you to chat with DP fans worldwide. There's a number of topics set up, so you should be able to find the appropriate board to start (or join) the conversation you are looking for.

We've also set up a Trading Board for folks to share live recordings -- please note, this is strictly meant for trading only. There is NO selling allowed; and we are simply acting as the message board, we have nothing to do with the trades and take no responsibility for them. It is up to you to be careful and know who you are trading with. Having said that, however, the DP fan community by and large is a very considerate and decent group of folks, so make sure you fulfill your end of the trade and you should have no problems.

Before you head off, however, please pay attention closely: the reason the forums were shut down before is because they were abused. Just because you have the ability to post anything you write DOESN'T mean you should. We have not set the forums back up just so you can scream your head off, or at everyone. We will not tolerate personal insults. We will not tolerate gratuitous swearing, either. Just because you have an opinion, that doesn't mean someone else can have a completely different one -- and NEITHER of them is the "correct" one!! So, (for example), there is no point in writing that Ritchie Blackmore is God and anyone who thinks otherwise should be drowned in pasta, nor in writing that Blackmore was a hack not worthy to carry the guitar case of the only player that ever mattered, Steve Morse. Because, not only are both of those extremes intolerant, they're wrong -- the greatest guitar player of the 20th century was Django Reinhardt, so there.

You get my point.

Simply put, the principle the forums operate under is RESPECT. Treat everyone and everything you find in the forums with it, and we will all get along just fine. If not, then we will be forced to ban you from participating in the forums. If it gets too out of control, we will simply have shut the whole thing down again -- and I doubt you want that.

OK, that's it for the warning speech -- now go to the Forum and have fun interacting with your fellow fans!!

Everybody's talking...

There are plenty of other forums available too, possibly in your native language. Some of them were set up by regulars on our old forums. If you were a frequent forum user yourself, you will probably meet some old friends in these forums. Please note that none of these forums are run by The Highway Star or are affiliated with The Highway Star in any way. If you have questions about a particular forum, there should be information about how to reach the administrators in each forum.

• English forum
• Google Groups: Deep Purple Fan Page
• The Aviator's German forum
• Snakebite's German forum
• Italian forum
• Portugese forum
• Russian forum
• Spanish forum
• Spanish forum 2

One forum that has been around for ages, even before THS was a gleam in Trond's eye, is the Usenet newsgroup alt.music.deep-purple (AMD-P). Usenet can be a bit of a hassle to get into but thanks to folks like Google or Giganews and their web interfaces, these days Usenet participation isn't harder than using any web forum. Be warned, though -- the Usenet is completely unmoderated and those who hang out there have a Wild-West "anything goes" attitude, which means that flamewars, spam, and totally off-topic posts are often the norm (that's one of the reasons moderated bulletin boards have become so popular, it's often very hard to see the useful posts for all the noise).

• Google groups - alt.music.deep-purple
• Giganews (access by subscription)
• Our good old alt.music.deep-purple information page, with some interesting moments from the past archived there as well.

Them's fightin' words, mister!!

Every forum has problems from time to time. Some people use the anonymity of being behind a keyboard as an excuse to behave in a way they would never do in front of "real" people, especially not a big group of people like a forum's audience sometimes can be. Below are some useful links to pages about "netiquette", how to behave in forums and in mailing list. There are also links with information about how to set up a "kill file", something that can be needed to ignore posters in Usenet forums and on mailing lists.

• The basics of netiquette
• A very in depth look at netiquette
• What is a Killfile and how do I set it up in my program?

Good luck and have fun! If you see any important Purple news in your favorite forum that we seem to have missed, don't forget to let us know!