måndag 8 Jun 2009, 10:07
Deep Purple / Burn / Deep Purple: Live in California '74 (2) / Jan 2006
This is the second of three posts honoring the 35th Anniversary of California Jam on April 6th, which I failed at the time to highlight.
In the first post, I covered Black Sabbath's peformance. Deep Purple followed them on the California Jam bill. As I mentioned previously, California Jam was not a rock festival that was properly recorded, other than some of it being simulcast on ABC with audio on FM radio. However, unlike Black Sabbath's performance, which has never been released in its entirety, the entire Deep Purple set was finally released on DVD in 2005 as Deep Purple: Live In California '74. (This was actually a re-release of a 1981 laser disc.)
As popular as Black Sabbath were at the time, Deep Purple were monster sellers. And yet, they were also a band in flux, having recently parted ways with Ian Gillan and Roger Glover. Their performance at California Jam was actually the high point of their tour to support Burn, the first album of the Mark III lineup with a 23-year old David Coverdale on vocals and Glenn Hughes on bass and vocals.
Playing to 200,000 people (200,000! festivals in Europe and Latin America still draw that many, but I can't imagine something that huge in the States today!!) was a real baptism of fire, especially for Coverdale, but he and the rest of the band not only handle the pressure, they play one of the all-time storied live sets. (Some of this was previously touched on in the discussion thread for my birthday salute to David Coverdale last Sep 22nd.)
Don't go out of your way to get the DVD or pay more than a few bucks for it, because the quality isn't that great. It would be good to have in your collection of concert films and rock docs if you're like me and have a library of those, but you can watch most of it in an evening online.
This is their opening performance of "Burn" to get you started:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YuQMIeK28U
Here is the rest of the Deep Purple setlist for that evening, including five of the songs from Burn:
Might Just Take Your Life
Lay Down, Stay Down (not included on the original release of the show)
Mistreated
Smoke On the Water
You Fool No One (opened with Lazy and closed out with The Mule)
Space Truckin’ (a/k/a "Smoke on the Infield" - really! look up the video for this one to see Ritchie's wild destruction that extended this to nearly 30 minutes)
\m/ (ò_ó) \m/