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Catrin Wiegand

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A world of beats

To put the most relevant information for hardcore DP fans first: Ian Paice "only" appears in two songs written especially for him in the first series. But Jon Lord is a frequent guest in the second series: his compositions "Sarabande" and "Gigue" (from the album "Sarabande", 1976) are played - with him at the e-piano, off course. Apart from this, you find him (mostly at the organ) on seven other songs. That means on nine out of 14 songs... For those of you who have a distant memory of Smoke On The Water, Black Night and Gemini Suite (all sung by Miller Anderson): these were in the third series that is not featured on this DVD.

If you got used to the slightly odd naming in the menues there is not much to complain about this DVD... Well, not to name the songwriting credits - neither on the cover nor on the DVD itself - on a music releases is, to put it mildly, strange (they aren't - with the exception of one of Jon Lord's compositions and Igor Strawinski's "Firebird") especially as they ARE given on the LP and CD versions of the series...

Technical information: the DVD is "Region: Codefree" - good for selling it worldwide on the limited market such a release might have. Sorry, I did not find out if it is PAL or NTSC - it is not mentioned and my player / TV set can read both. Chances are high that it is NTSC. On the cover it names six "Menu-Languages" - I only found one (which is English)... The sound is pretty good (choose between PCM Stereo or Dolby Digitalo 5.1) - the vision is TV anno 1987/88... not really great but not bad either.

The so-called "Features" (Pete York explains in about five minutes each how the idea for the series came up and introduces the two series) are viewable either in English or in "Pete York German" (those who've seen the man in Germany will know what I mean ;-). The two versions are not 100% identical (the English ones being slightly longer), but if you can understand only one you won't miss much. Remarkable is that they were recorded in one single take, with only one camera and no cut at all, obviously at home with a private camera - but with a good microphone (Hello, Mr. Paice!).

"Special 1" consists of 10 songs (all of them instrumentals) from the first series - recorded in February 1987 in a former church near Ulm (South of Germany). The band back then only had Brian Auger (organ), Gerd Wilden (keyboard), Peter Wölpl (guitar), Wolfgang Schmid (bass) in it - with Auger being the only well-known. The drummers are: from the field of rock music: Cozy Powell (R.I.P. - formerly Rainbow, Whitesnake, Black Sabbath...), Ian Paice (DP, Whitesnake, Gary Moore) and Simon Phillips (session man extraordinaire and currently member of Toto), from jazz: Gerry Brown and Louie Bellson; plus percussionist Nippy Noya and - off course - Pete York himself. Finally song 11 is "I got Rhythm (The Last Round Up)" - the drummers are not playing all together as the credit "All the Above" might suggest but there is a solo from each of them blended together by some seconds of Pete York and his band.

"Special 2" consists of 14 songs from the second series - recorded in August 1988 in the former steelworks in Völklingen / Saarland (South-West of Germany). At the organ we now have Eddie Hardin, guests are Miller Anderson (guitar), Colin Hodgkinson (bass) and Jon Lord (another organ and e-piano), with Wilden, Wölpl and Schmid being still around and Rick Keller on saxophone. Not listed are the facts that Schmid, too, plays the keyboard occasionally, that Rick Keller also plays transverse flute, that there are two bagpipe solos and a "ooh"-breathing female singer (that somehow reminds me of Candice Night). The drummers are: rock music: Zak Starkey (back then new-coming son of Ringo Starr), Bill Bruford (Yes, Genesis, etc.), Nicko McBrain (Iron Maiden, Pat Travers), jazz: Billy Cobham, percussionists: Nippy Noya again as well as Freddy Santiago. The first song (a medley of Spender Davis Group songs) features vocals (by Eddie Hardin) - in the TV version there were some more songs with vocals but they are not featured on the DVD.

The only shortcomming of the DVD is that the original interviews and announcements/explanations from Pete York are missing. Dave Mattacks is missing, too, even though he is mentioned on the cover and Pete talks about him im the "Feature" about Special 2... There obviously were some last minute changes.

Summing up: highly recommendable, especially if you are a fan of one or more of the featured musicians or fusion music in general, and at a price of 16,99 Euro for 1,5 DVDs e.g. at Amazon you can hardly go wrong.

Now I am waiting for the third part to appear on DVD. As the songs were much more commercial (better known and equipped with vocals) that should be a great risk for the publishers... "Gemini Voice" sung by Miller Anderson remains my vocal-wise favorite version of the piece (sorry to Ian Gillan, Tony Ashton & Yvonne Elliman and Tony Ashton & Glenn Hughes).

Catrin Wiegand

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