On Aug 9, 8:10Â am, Dale Houstman
skypoint.com> wrote:> Morning Glory wrote:
>
>> Deep Purple is a flash in the pan kind of group which doesn't merit
>> much except for a handful of tunes. Pearl Jam, however, were a
>> prominent grunge band at the time.
>
> I suspect you haven't heard much of Deep Purple beyond their handful of
> (huge) hits, but they were a very exciting live band,
In fact, to tell the truth, I had a friend who was a co-worker of mine
that I collaborated with on story about Deep Purple. We did plenty of
research, went to concerts (I purchased tickets and went with him to
see them live in concert at the California Jam Festival in '74 (now on
DVD), listened to three out of four of their studio albums and met
them backstage. I enjoyed listening to Blackmore's exciting guitar
playing and his improvisational skills were outstanding (in fact I
later heard they were almost banned from playing in America ever
again), but what was missing was clearly the fact that the lyrics of
the songs were just pedestrian in relation to the music performance,
in fact the band members didn't impress me as human beings. Blackmore
struck me as being quite snobbish with a keen awareness of his
greatness (he didn't say much to my friend, but I was aware that he
indeed thought highly of himself). Surprisingly, when I brought up the
subject of Neo-medievalism to warm him up to interviewing he became
more tolerable. Gillian was the opposite of Blackmore and quite
enjoyable. The others didn't leave strong impressions on me, so I
don't quite remember them except what happened to one of their roadies
who threw a beer bottle at the wall barely missing poor Roger Glover's
head (tee-hee) by an inch!
>with an
> improvisational bend (especially in the interplay between guitar and
> keyboards).
I've noted this myself because I was impressed with how close and
tight the band performed onstage.
>Pearl Jam is good also, but (particularly instrumentality)
> they are certainly not better than Deep Purple.
I don't know about the term "better" but I definitely prefer the music
of Pearl Jam to Deep Purple for now. It is just invigorating music
that brings myself back to my teen years. I realize that Deep Purple
were an excellent live band that were quite capable of making great,
memorable songs but for my money the music of Pearl Jam is much
tolerable these days than listening to '"Burn", "You Fool No One",
"Ramshackle Man" or "Smoke on the Water" from my twenty-something
years.
