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Five shooters in Dallas
25 August 2007 — The last stop of Deep Purple´s 2007 North American Tour.
This is what I love so much about this band. They were on!
Of course, I arrived 6-hours early (no chance of being late that way), talked to a couple of the HOB ladies, and asked them what of sight-seeing significance was close.
To my amazement, the Sixth Floor Museum/Dealy Plaza was just blocks down the street! Dealy Plaza, of course, is where my childhood hero, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was murdered. I get chills typing this now just as I got chills standing in almost the exact location where Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly fired the fatal shots and then in Dealy Plaza proper looking back at the Texas Schoolbook Depository.
In the Marine Corps we are taught about choke points and ‘no go’ areas and that area fit the definition to a tee. IMO, there is no way he could have done it alone… the area is just SO small.
Now. To the show.
At 20.00, a local Dallas band called One-Love hit the stage. At 20.45 they finished. Yea!!!!
At 21.10, the greatest rock band in the world, took the stage and played the following set list:
1. Pictures of Home
2. Things I Never Said
3. Into the Fire
4. Strange Kind of Woman
5. Rapture of the Deep
6. Woman From Tokyo
7. Kiss Tomorrow Good-bye
8. Contact Lost
9. Steve Morse solo to include Purple Haze/Ain´t it Ashame/Sweet Home Alabama/Sweet Child O Mine (SWEET!)/Girl, You Really Got Me
10. Well Dressed Guitar
11. Knocking At Your Back Door
12. Lazy (MH) — SUPERB INTRO BY DON AIREY!! Jon Lord-esque.
13. Don Airey solo
14. Perfect Strangers
15. Space Truckin´
16. Highway Star — Awesome Glover/Morse Intro
17. Smoke on the Water
Encores:
18. Speed King to include Roger Glover bass guitar solo (very rare!), Ian Paice drum solo and Ian Gillan solo to include: I Got A Woman/Sweet Dreams Baby/It´s Now or Later/High School Hop
19. Hush
Steve Morse is a guitar god! He did not seem happy with the sound on stage… he almost seemed out of sync at times. After show, he inidated that he was getting feedback harmonics from the floor (?) and that was screwing him up. These profesional musicians are amazing. He was telling us how many decibles above normal and stuff like that… I was yep, don´t have a clue what you are talking about.
Anyway, they were definitely on… IG was having fun… RG was having fun… Ian Paice (what a joker he is) was having fun… Don Airey was playing link a mad man and spinning and doing all other such antics… and SM was smiling (though not as big as normal, me-thinks, because of the harmonics issue).
They all looked pretty darn tired since they hit tree Texas shows in three days (Houston, San Antonia, and then Dallas) and Texas is not a small state. It´s actually the size of five in one. I was happy because they played songs from the new CD, I love KAYBD so I got to experience that live again, and I got to meet my favorite band again. So, this 46-year-old left feeling like a 16-year-old again.
After the show, I was priviliged to get backstage to rub elbows with my childhood and mid-life heroes (cannot call it a mid-life crisis when it´s a life long passion can you?). The first of my retirement coins went to Roger Glover, Ian Gillan, Ian Paice, Steve Morse, and Don Airey.
Ian Paice was kind enough to take one coin which he will deliver to Jon Lord when he sees him next week. Nobody seemed to have access to Ritchie so I kept his. The guys were so dang gracious! Their comments about the coin and their logo being on it are priceless. I am totally honored to have had the pleasure to meet them again.
Only bad part of my day — my camera ran out of juice though it indicated a full charge when I left NOVA.
With the show over, and my return to NOVA, thus ended two fantastic concerts in two weeks. Dave Matthews Band on 11 August and the immortal Deep Purple on 25 August.
Mark H. Bryant
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing