![[hand]](/hs-pics/portraits/hands/glover4.jpg)
![[face]](/hs-pics/portraits/faces/gillan.jpg)
Bewitches all you gaze upon
It’s a slow news week as most people are enjoying the holidays, so here’s something for you to entertain yourselves completely ignore. A cover of Fireball by Canadian indie musician Rick White:
Thanks to Anton Glaving for the ignore fodder.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
🥴
December 30th, 2024 at 05:12Is this a recording from an old phone? And some will say that Born Again is recorded dirty.
December 30th, 2024 at 11:49If we are playing that game……..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SN5dOrwTs0Q
December 30th, 2024 at 13:07I’ve heard worse. It’s not as good as the original and Jon’s keyboard is glaringly missing plus Rick White proves he’s no Ian Gillan come the “Magic Woman …” part, but it captures the spirit and groove of the song and I like Rick’s voice.
I’m known for not liking ultrafast songs, but Fireball is an exception that is really catchy to my ears and I love little things about it like the way the tambourine changes time in the outro, it’s an arch-example of what just a bit of percussion can do to great effect in a song.
Of course, it is likely that both Blackmore and Gillian took inspiration for their respective parts from this earlier song
https://youtu.be/TJVSymN0yqM
but they added compositionally quite a bit to it, making Fireball the much more advanced song.
December 30th, 2024 at 15:46I relented and had a listen. I prefer Hugo Strasser’s version, that Roy @ 3 provided a link to. At least that is a different take on Fireball. Unlike Rick White’s too similar take on it. Not to worry at least I was game to clink on the link. Unlike many that Uwe sends, including very recently over at the ‘Still Equals One’ section. Cheers.
December 31st, 2024 at 01:18@2 – The records he’s made over the past year, of his favorite songs from the 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s, are actually fairly audiophile in comparison with Mr White’s earlier work.
The group for which he is best known, Eric’s Trip, was pretty low-fi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFNbgL_5xWk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdnamYjuKNc
True to form, though, these latest records were all done very quickly, with Rick playing all the instruments himself. And doing a pretty good job on the drums on “Fireball”.
He is quite a versatile player – here he is sitting in on bass with hardcore punk outfit YYY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPbgHyNQdq8
@3 – love that Hugo Strasser version of “Fireball”! It would make a great opening tape for DP’s live shows!
December 31st, 2024 at 01:18Then there’s these guys
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9ILYYskAV8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5ikgZLq7Jo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbkbqwzMB04
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghgJNomZNx0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LiDQR5XvP0
But here’s the real shocker
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfJYcMM3mJQ
God help us!
December 31st, 2024 at 01:54Nino, Indie/Alternative Rock artists don’t want to sound hifi, God forbid! When I first heard The Strokes, I wondered why they couldn’t give the poor singer an unbroken microphone without distortion! 😝
https://youtu.be/TOypSnKFHrE
I hate that. Aping the limitations of a foregone recording era. It’s like playing artificially aged (“reliced”) instruments, all make-believe and no substance.
Nothing wrong with Indie if it’s recorded properly though!
https://youtu.be/GnSvrnoKiYA
December 31st, 2024 at 02:39@3: https://youtu.be/PZ_SUMRBKH0?si=SP–fxhScFlGB4sh
December 31st, 2024 at 13:53@4
Definitely not. For some reason, someone decided that this song was from 1970, but in fact, this is not true. The band Warpig recorded their only album, which included this song, in 1972 and there is no evidence that it happened 2 years earlier. Deep Purple used someone else’s work, but this is not the case.
https://www.discogs.com/ru/artist/1370886-Warpig?superFilter=Releases&subFilter=Albums
December 31st, 2024 at 18:14#10 Nino:
also at minute 1.37″ in the warpig song there is a blatant plagiarism of Speed king (which was written in 1969)
January 1st, 2025 at 01:19@10 Nino, you are completely wrong.
Canadian band Warpig were signed to FontHill Records in 1968, & recorded their first album, which they released in 1970. A 45 of “Rock Star” (from the album), backed with “Flaggit” made the rounds of the radio stations.
Then FontHill Records were bought out by London Records in 1971, & so they re-released the album in 1972. Finally the band re-recorded the single “Rock Star” for a 1973 release.
Be careful with research, there’s a lot of incorrect information, (some websites are missing a lot of facts), that are floating around on the internet, including on Wikipedia & many other sites.
Click on this link for all the correct info:
https://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=4329
January 1st, 2025 at 02:22Trivia: The guitarist, bassist, keyboarder and likely the drummer too you hear on that James Last recording of Fireball are all from Lucifer’s Friend, hence they sound real rocky, especially the guitar solos. James Last was their day job to make ends meet and be able to practice Lucifer’s Friend as more or less a hobby/labor of love.
Fireball (the song) is widely regarded as a progenitor of speed metal, along with Judas Priest’s Exciter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2IKnAKwqsw
albeit more than six years later. The fact that Fireball found inclusion on an “happy sound” easy listening dance sampler shows how commercially popular Purple was at the time (at least in Germany). Fireball (the song) was frequently played on the radio, imagine that today with any song with as many bpm, unthinkable.
I used to despise James Last’s easy listening renditions of popular hits (my dad loved them), but today I can see his skill as an arranger. Prior to becoming a big band leader, he was one of the highest regarded double bass jazz bassists in post-war Germany. He earned his living by playing jazz to Allied troops in their military clubs.
For what it’s worth, Sir Paul thinks that this is the best arrangement of his song Yesterday ever:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrZI998SV_s&list=RDxrZI998SV_s&start_radio=1
It wasn’t Hans’ (he was born as Hans Last in Bremen in 1929) first attempt at arranging the song though:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qILQk7CJxLM
Guilty pleasures? When it comes to German big band leaders I’m a sucker for Bert Kaempfert, Swinging Safari and all that, yup, at 02:30 …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEy4gsht8Co
Even as a hard rock enthused teenager, I always had a soft spot for Blood, Sweat & Tears:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWhGw3QYoj8
January 1st, 2025 at 03:02Dame Nino, the info on when the Warpig debut album was released is conflicting, the 1970 date is given here:
“They signed to an independent label called Fonthill Records and completed their debut album in 1970. In 1973, London Records re-released the album with two tracks re-recordedwith Terry Brown, who would later produce for Rush, and with a new album cover.[1] Later in between June and July of that year, the re-recorded version of their single “Rock Star” made the RPM charts for 7 seven weeks peaking at 52.”
https://www.deep-purple.it/forum/fireball-deep-purple-vs-rock-star-warpig-t7934-25.html
And here:
“The band was seen by a label owner and were signed to FontHill Records in late 1968. They continued on the circuit, while writing original material and financing the recording of their first lp. With the production help of Robert Thomson, it finally saw the light of day in the spring of 1970. The album was full of raw power, with inspirational remnants from everything from the British Invasion to the surf sound, from Chet Atkins to Black Sabbath. Reminiscent of a less-structured Deep Purple album, tracks like the lead-off “Flaggit” and “Tough Nuts” gave you the unbridled passion of a young band doing it their way, while “Advance in A Minor” showed the band’s tight structure and classical influences, in what could only be described as ‘early eclectic post psychadelic’. A common theme throughout the lp was the band’s pounding rhythms and straight forward guitar licks.
A 45 of “Rock Star” b/w “Flaggit” made the rounds of the radio stations, and along with their live show,the following grew. FontHill was bought out by London Records in ’71, leaving the band in the lurches as to their status for several months. The band carried on throughout the circuit, when they discovered they were without a label. London reissued Warpig’s debut a year later, repackaged and remastered.”
https://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=4329
But it really seems unclear, if the initial release was in 1972 (and this seems to be convential wisdom these days), then you are – as you always are – of course right! I mean who would dare mess with a fearsome pagan hunting goddess დალი/a Deep Purple Dæl/Dali of all deities?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/90/Dali-Vakhtang-Oniani-Girvergil-1969.jpg
You just need to convince Nick from that dreaded fake news source ‘The Highway Star’ about it!
https://www.thehighwaystar.com/thsblog/2009/10/10/creative-minds-work-in-mysterious-ways/
I will in the meantime sacrifice a deer or something to remain safe and not draw any undue დალი-wrath on me! 😁
January 1st, 2025 at 04:39I just realize, I mistook Roy’s Hugo Strasser with James Last, unforgivable, but no harm done, James/Hans did it too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqawI1Wq54A
Of the covers John posted, the funk treatment T.M. Stevens gave it is still unsurpassed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9ILYYskAV8
January 1st, 2025 at 04:59@12
My information is not taken from Wikipedia, but from Discogs. If you look at the albums released under the Fonthill label, it turns out that this record company released its first album in 1971 under catalog number 101. Maybe they were planning their opening before that, so they were looking for bands and signing contracts with them, but nothing shows that the Rock Star album was released before 1972 (catalog number 103). If so, at least someone would have this album. And the article from Progarchives has no more informational value than an article from AllMusic or Wikipedia, especially if the authors do not indicate what they drew their conclusions from (by the way, Wikipedia almost always indicates the source, at least an article from Progarchives). I gave you a page from discogs, where almost all music releases are catalogued, and there is no Warpig album from 1970, not even from 1971. And judging by this data, London Records bought Fonthill somewhere in 1972-73 and released their copy of the album in 1973, not earlier. If you show me a documented release of this album, and not an article from Progarchives, I will be grateful.
Here is another page from discogs, where both releases are indicated – the album and the single
https://www.discogs.com/ru/artist/1370886-Warpig?superFilter=Releases
P.S. Everyone forgot one of the oldest covers of this song by Funky Junction
https://youtu.be/InwtfuaTMh8?si=qVpQIAjgo7mC0Fbv
January 1st, 2025 at 16:27Now I’ll explain why I had doubts about this plagiarism and why I started to investigate it. The thing is that Deep Purple does often use other people’s riffs and melodic lines, but they never steal the entire song, and this is not borrowing, but plagiarism.
January 1st, 2025 at 16:42this about warpig:
underground activity in 1969-1970
– debut album in late 1970
– nothing changes in 1971-1972
– re-release of the album with two completely re-recorded tracks!!! … as it happens RockStar … which is defined as a Deep Purple-style track (a statement usually given to tracks derived from a source and not to the sources themselves) and as the only one that made the band pay attention
Keep in mind that Fireball was written between February 17 and 23, 1971.
So Warpig should have theoretically written the piece first and published it first ….. but …… if you look at the booklet of the Warpig album, there is NO date given, except for the re-release in 1973!!
Not only that, after the indication of this first recording of the album … NOTHING IS SAID ABOUT THE LIFE OF THE BAND between 1970/71 and 1973.
Yet another ambiguity ……. if we then add that, in the profiles of the Warpig musicians, the Purple Men (Blackmore or Paice) appear as influences ……
references to Flight of the Right and Speed King then confirm everything
January 1st, 2025 at 21:04If Purple stole from Warpig then they did it well, improving on the song by adding new melodic and harmonic parts, what they did transcended mere plagiarism. If Warpig stole from Purple, they sure dumbed Fireball down, that’s all I can say for sure.
Frau Nino has a good case with the discogs source, I have to admit. While the Warpig song sounds more 1969/1970 in feel to me than 1971/1972, you do have to ask yourself WHERE and WHEN Mk II should have heard it prior to recording Fireball (the song) in
–> MARCH 1971
(recordings for the Fireball album began in September 1970 with Anyone’s Daughter, the song Fireball was comparatively late, Demon’s Eye was latest – June 1971 – which is why it didn’t even make the US pressing of Fireball which was released already in July 1971 while the rest of the world only saw the album – now with Demon’s Eye rather than Strange Kind of Woman – in September 1971):
– Fonthill was a small one-man-label, I rule out that a significant amount of copies of the first print (had it happened in 1970) would have reached DP ears in the UK prior to recording the song Fireball.
– So DP might have heard it while touring Canada? Problem is that Mk II played Canadian dates for the first time in JULY 1971, as part of a short North American tour to promote the just released Fireball album there, by then the song Fireball had be in the can for more than three months.
– Didn’t Mk I tour Canada too, you say? Yup, they did, in late 1968 (Toronto) and in spring 1969 a few more times as part of their second North American tour. But Warpig’s Rock Star, even if released in 1970, wasn’t even out yet then. So they might have heard it live when Warpig perhaps opened for them in Canada? Not impossible, but unlikely – would have Ritchie, Jon and Little Ian remembered the unrecorded song of an obscure Canuck opening act to then teach it to Big Ian and Roger in early 1971, i.e. (more than) two years later, never having done anything with it before?
But if you assume it the other way around, Warpig ripping off Mk II, then it all fits, because then the Canucks could have heard Fireball (the song) as early as July 1971 either on record or Mk II even performing it live in Canada (Fireball was initially played live more often), well ahead of any recording of their piece of plagiarism in 1972.
Your guess is as good as mine, but I think our valiant Georgian Goddess of Wisdom & Investigation
https://www.wallartgalore.com/media/catalog/product/cache/402d204cd04085346d874a3de4cc24af/1/_/1_26029.png (see Nino tuning in with nature & the sands of time … 😎)
has shaken the foundations of the formerly so prevalent “Warpig came first”-theory.
[EPILOGUE: “Deep Purple came first” is also somewhat backed by the fact that Purple have never mentioned a Canadian infusion for the song Fireball whereas they’ve happily divulged similar third party inspiration for Child in Time (It’s A Beautiful Day), Black Night (Ricky Nelson), Lazy (Eric Clapton/Blues Breakers), Space Truckin’ (TV Batman theme), Burn (George Gershwin), Sail Away (Stevie Wonder), You Fool No One (Cream) or Love Don’t Mean A Thing (a street busker).]
January 1st, 2025 at 23:21