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Too much support, not enough Purple
First time seeing Deep Purple for me and I am not their biggest fan – but I have been to some decent concerts so I thought I’d add my review in.
Got there for around 6.50. I think it was around this time that Thin Lizzy were on, but they were already playing when I got in. Not too bad – I quite liked some of the guitar stuff. Not too familiar with the band themselves so I am not really the best judge.
Again, not too familiar with Styx. I only really liked one of their songs ‘Come Sail Away’. Nice of them to throw out loads of Styx branded goods to the audience tho.
Changeover took around 20 mins between each band. I would say DP came on around 9.20-9.30. Overall the show was good. Just as DP came on a large chunk of the audience who were sitting higher up at the back all decided to go to the front and stand along with the people who had seats but were standing up on the flat floor – this created a nightmare for security who were then struggling to keep people off of a totally packed floor.
There have been a lot of comments about Steve Morse in these reviews. For my money he totally stole the show with his solo part (definitely going to look out for a bootleg of that in particular).
This is where I will be critical…’When a Blind Man Cris’ – I was a bit disappointed with this – I wish they would play a bit less heavy, more like the original version. Also felt disappointed with the ‘Highway Star’ solo – one of the best solos out there and it hardly featured – Morse’s guitar should have been much more solo and maybe it would have been good of him to extend it slightly.
Final annoyance – the show was VERY short – one hour 30 mins max. We were out by 11 pm. I imagine they were saving themselves for the bigger show in London the next night, which is disappointing.
At the end of the day people paid £31.50 to see Deep Purple, so I would have thought two hours minimum – even if we did get another two hours by way of support (thereby giving us 3.5 hours of music). I would imagine most people stumped up for Deep Purple and one hour 30 mins doesn’t cover it.
As I say in the start of my review I have been to a fair few concerts and even bands that charges less than half as much usually play well over two hours from what I have experience. Also I was a bit annoyed because they had obviously cut out Perfect Strangers, which was a song I wanted to hear. 🙂
Finally – the BIC is a very nice venue. The sound for Thin Lizzy was spot on, when Styx came on it got a fair bit louder – almost to the point of things just starting to get a bit fuzzy and not to clear. Possibly got a tad louder for Deep Purple.
Overall a fairly decent concert but not up there with the best ones I have seen. On the way out I noticed a lot of the other audience members thought the show was very short as well.
Mo Islam
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing