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Better than expected
Wallingford, CT: I have been a Deep Purple fan since the early 70s. They are the best ever in my opinion.
Edgar Winter was the opening act. Wow! He was great. His musical talent was tremendous, his energy and voice quality was excellent, and his band members; drummer, guitar and bass players were young and all very talented musicians. I can’t say enough about Edgar’s willingness to entertain and success at it as well.
Next was Blue oyster Cult. I must admit I have never been a big fan. They sounded like an average bar band. Their 3 hits were ok, don’t fear the reaper, Godzilla and Cities on flame. Otherwise pretty boring I thought.
Now for Deep Purple. The band sounded great! Better than I remembered and honestly better than I expected. They have fine tuned their craft. The guitar playing by Steve Morse was phenomenal. Words cannot do justice to his versatility and tone. Obviously he has put his branded style on many of the songs, but that’s fine with me because he is just fantastic.
The other members were great as well, they played with passion and with good dynamics, everything you would expect from seasoned musicians of their stature. They played many of the classics, Highways star, Smoke on the water, Lazy, Hush and many more…as well as a few new ones, which were great, but they didn’t play Burn, I was so disappointed, it’s my favorite.
Now for the bad news, the only depressing part of the show was Ian’s voice quality. He just didn’t have it. I wanted him to, but he just didn’t. His tremendous range, quality and intensity he is known for was not there.
I really don’t know if this was a temporary situation (laryngitis) or that his vocal cords are simply shot at this point from all those years of all-out singing. He was obviously straining on every song, and he didn’t even come close on hitting the high notes. Many times, there was literally no sound coming from his mouth, just a faint whisper of the note he was attempting to hit.
Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t expect that he would sound like he did when he was 25, and he certainly was giving it his all, great energy and showmanship, but the voice was just not there..
Overall, Deep Purple was outstanding and the show performance was excellent.
Steven Pappas
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing