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Fine Form
Deep Purple live at Celeste Center (Columbus, USA 2015-08-05)
Last night was my 6th Purple show and while they are always good, I can say that without question it was the best show I’ve ever seen them do. It wasn’t perfect, but it was damn close.
The venue was a 10,000 seat multi-purpose, for lack of a better description, metal barn. It had a low ceiling, small stage and had about 6,000 elevated seats with the other 4,000 being floor seats. I’d estimate the crowd to have been 6,000 to 7,000 people. It was a mostly older crowd with a smattering of youngsters.
Musically, the band was tight as ever and the guys really played both with each other and off each other last night. Everyone had a smile on their face and you could really tell that they were having a great time playing. Everyone had a solo break and for me, Roger’s bass solo was the most fun. Well Dressed Guitar was also a standout and got a great crowd reaction.
Big Ian was in rare form last night. He stayed on stage with fewer breaks behind the curtain than I’ve ever seen. He was engaged with the band and audience and sounded the best I’ve ever heard him. He struggled just a bit hitting the high notes in Highway Star but otherwise he simply nailed it all night. I did note that he kept the range lower in Space Trucking but I think he simply played to his strengths, while keeping his voice in great shape for the entire show. He can clearly still hit the highs and did a lot of call and response with Steve. I was truly impressed by the range and strength his voice had last night. Simply superb!
My only disappointment with the show was that this set had more instrumental sections than any previous sets. Again, this is minor as I love the show of musicianship, but I found the breaks to be a little more than I like. To me, they disrupted some of the pacing of the set. That being said, my guess would be that breaks gave Ian a few more minutes to rest is voice and if that’s the case, it certainly paid off. Beyond a doubt this was the tightest, best gig I’ve ever seen. These guys are still on top of their game and still seem enthused by the reaction to Now What?!
As far as Now What?! goes, four songs were played from it last night, all with good crowd response. Hell to Pay, while I’m not a fan of big chorus on the track, got a great crowd response with a lot of people singing it back to the band. I’d guess that song stays in the set for a while.
The band played for roughly 1:45 minutes last night. The set list was:
Highway Star
Apres Vous
Hard Loving Man
Strange Kind of Woman
Vincent Price
Contact Lost
Uncommon Man
Well Dressed Guitar
The Mule
Lazy
Hell to Pay
Keyboard Solo
Perfect Strangers
Space Trucking
Smoke on the Water
Hush
Black Night
Would have liked to have heard something from Perpendicular but I have no complaints with the set list. I hope these guys continue on for a while longer yet. I can’t wait to see how sound for my 7th show.
review by Scott McNay
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
great to see the band is remembered well in the US today…..
August 9th, 2015 at 14:10