Wie ich erst kürzlich erfahren habe, ist Dave Hodgkinson in der ersten Dezemberhälfte 2023 im Alter von nur 58 Jahren gestorben.

Ich habe Dave leider nie persönlich getroffen, sondern immer nur über das Internet mit ihm kommuniziert, was - wie Trond J. Strøm in seinen Nachruf treffend beschreibt - nicht immer einfach war:

It must be said that Dave’s written communication at times could be a bit confusing. Especially for us non-native English speakers.

Dave war für mich eine Schlüsselfigur bei der Entdeckung des Internets im Bezug auf Musik: Zuerst bin ich ihm in der Usenet-Gruppe alt.music.deep-purple begegnet, später als Leser zur von ihm zusammen mit Trond gegründeten Website “The Highway Star” gefolgt.

Dave war auch derjenige, der mich 1996 in das Editorial-Team der zeitweise offiziellen (seit einigen Jahren “original” statt “official”) Deep Purple-Website eingeladen und mir als erste Aufgabe die Überarbeitung der chaotisch sortierten Image Gallery eingebrockt hat.

Zwar ist unser letzter Kontakt schon viele Jahre her, aber es bleiben viele Erinnerungen an die Arbeit an dem gemeinsamen Projekt - und die Erfahrung, mit Menschen, die man persönlich nie getroffen hat schon in der “Frühzeit des Internets” etwas Gemeinsames erschaffen zu haben, ganz ohne viele der inzwischen als unverzichtbar geltenden Werkzeuge und Methoden.

R.I.P.

Right to Deep Purples 30th anniversary, the “30 : very best of” birthday compilation hits the stores. (Anyone took the time to count how many collections are already out there??? :)

Instead of featuring just several tracks taken from two or three albums, this one tries to give a view over 30 years of Deep Purple in rock. Of course there are dozens of tracks that should be featured on such a compilation - and I’m also sure if you tell ten fans to write down the tracks that should be included in such a release, ten different tracklists will come out - because everyone has his own favorites that stand for his personal meaning of Deep Purple - but as CD space is limited, you have to make a selection.
And so also Nigel Reeve, who compiled this release, had to make his selection. A selection that - when first looking at - annoyed me a bit. Where’s “April”? Where’s “Anya”? Where’s “Knocking At Your Backdoor”? were the first questions that popped up in my mind.

In my eyes the tracklist looks a bit unbalanced. There are three tracks taken from the “In Rock” era and four tracks from “Machine Head” but nothing from “Deep Purple”, “The Book Of Taliesyn”, “The House Of Blue Light”, “Slaves and Masters” (yes, “Slaves and Masters” - maybe not the best, but a part of Deep Purple history) and “The Battle Rages On”. To make 18 tracks fit on one single CD, Nigel Reeve also had to take a lot of single versions and edits instead of “full album versions” - a fact that leaves me with some mixed feelings - “Child In Time”, for example, sounds way too short in the single edit.

So who are the people to buy this CD? Sure not the ones who already have most or all Deep Purple CDs in their collection (even if some collectors just might get it because of completism). It’s a collection for those knowing some songs of Deep Purple but never bought an album - and for newbies, as it’s at least an equal route to Purplemania as “Deepest Purple” is.

First of all it was sort of depressing to see someone like DIO performing in a small city in the middle of nowhere in a sports-hall.

The sound was bad the whole evening and it was really hard to find out what the bands were playing.

Black Symphony

As we arrived a bit late, Black Symphony were already on stage and I was only able to catch the last two songs. Last song was a strange cover of “Smoke On The Water” with the second verse sung twice - first by the bass player and after the solo by the singer…

Narnia

Narnia entered the stage afterwards and - from the few things I was able to hear - were really good.

They had the worst mix that evening - everytime there were vocals there was nothing else audible.

DIO

It was my first time to hear DIO and I was looking forward to it for a long time. The master himself was great to incredibe - but this guy trying to play the guitar…. Either

• Dio has lost his complete hearing or
• I didn’t see the man with the gun who forced Dio to let this guy play

This guy ruinded every song with his playing, I still can’t believe how bad he really was. And I didn’t seem to be the only one. During the guitar solo, the spots to the crowd were turned on and - there was no reaction :)

Setlist was fine, although some songs were (as always:) missing. It included “Heaven And Hell”, “Children Of The Sea”, “Rainbow In The Dark”, “Holy Diver”, “Stargazer”, “Mistreated”, “Catch The Rainbow”, “Man On The Silver Mountain”, “Neon Knights”, “Straight To Your Heard”, “The Last In Line”, “Long Live Rock’n’Roll” and two new songs I don’t know.

Another thing I wasn’t able to understand was why the drum solo was placed after the third(!) song.

Overall an evening which leaves some mixed feelings…

The Setlist remains the Same - Deep Purple live in Karlsruhe

First of all a big “Hi” to the internet people I met before and after the show… ‘hope to see you all again soon!

The venue was a small hall in Karlsruhe (about 4000 people), which offered a poor sound and really two (TWO!) small doors to let the crowd in…

Opener were German metal band Rage together with a “chamber version” of the Lingua Mortis Orchestra - which featured only 3 of normally 22 people. They played a good show with only two problems:

• the orchestra-people were way too low in the mix

• the setlist - I really don’t understand why they only played songs out of their actual CD “XIII” and a cover of Rolling Stones “Paint It Black”

Purple entered the stage at about 21:20 and played for less than two hours. The band was in a fine shape, especially Big I sounded better than on last tour… A disappointing fact was the setlist: where were the surprises that make a concert exciting? Instead of keeping “Into The Fire” in the setlist (only played once in Germany) and digging out some never-played-live songs, they re-introduced live standards like “Strange Kind Of Woman” and kept songs like “Woman From Tokyo” or “Speed King”.

To sum up: it was a bit like a movie featuring some great actors - but with a script you always have the feeling you know what will happen during the next 5 minutes…

Deep Purple live in Karlsruhe 1998-06-17

Just coming back from the show in Karlsruhe….

Opener were German metal band Rage together with a “chamber version” of the Lingua Mortis orchestra (only 3 people of normally 22). Bad thing was these people were way too low in the mix and Rage played only songs from their actual CD “XIII” and the Rolling Stones cover “Paint It Black”…

Purple entered the stage at about 21:20 and played for less than two hours. The band was in a fine shape, especially Big I sounded better than on last tour…

A disappointing fact was the setlist: where were the promised surprises? Instead of keeping “Into The Fire” in the setlist (only played once in Germany) and digging out some never-played-live songs, they re-introduced live standards like “Strange Kind Of Woman” and kept sogs like “Woman From Tokyo”.

To sum up: it was a bit like a movie featuring some great actors but with a script you always have the feeling you know what will happen in the next 5 minutes…

Tataaaaaa, here it is: The 25th anniversary release of one of the best live recordings of all times - Deep Purples “Made In Japan”.

I wasn’t too sure what to expect: “In Rock 25” set a level that seemed impossible to top for further releases, and “Fireball 25” finally showed me how brilliant the “Fireball”-recording really was. First problems IMHO came up with “Machine Head 25” - the anniversary release of the Deep Purple “hit album” and mega seller - it was nice to get it in excellent sound and also to get the different mixes; but I was missing the things that made “In Rock 25” and “Fireball 25” so exciting - all that stuff that has never seen the light of being published over the years. And now “Made In Japan 25”…!? I already have the original CD release, the “Live In Japan” 3CD set - and now again a 2CD set ahead to buy… sounded a little bit too much to me…

But finally I got the CDs - a typical EMI promotional release - so I can’t say anything about artwork, booklet, etc. The first CD features the original “Made In Japan” in digitally enhanced sound whilst the second CD offers “Black Night” and “Speed King” from Tokyo (17th August) and “Lucille” from Osaka (16th August), all labeled “previously unreleased”.

So I put CD1 into my CD-player, set the amp to “give the neighbours what they deserve” and enjoyed a really blasting version of the original “Made In Japan” set. I haven’t compared it to the mixes on “Live In Japan”, so I can’t say anything about further enhancement or things like that; but I can say for sure that it sounds damn fresh for a 25 years old recording.

Then it was time for the second CD. I was a bit disappointed when looking at the running-time: only about 22 minutes - so it has just the usual Maxi-CD problem: you put it in the player, press “start” and don’t need to walk away very far, because you have to change the CD soon again. So I set my CD player to “loop mode” and what should I say? I didn’t change the CD during the next 2 hours. This CD really rocks! “Black Night” is a really nice take of that song - same goes for “Lucille”; but the real highlight is “Speed King”. Not only that is is a very electric and dynamic version of that song - it also captures a moment when something within the audience seemed to go wrong. I can’t exactly say what it is - maybe a struggle between the audience and security which Ian Gillan tried to solve - hopefully the booklet of the final release will tell us more.

So at the end there are just five words to say “Buy it, you won’t regret!”