music

i have always liked deep purple. i think it was my pal monty who introduced me to them with the magical ‘machine head’ album. this was the classic line-up, no matter how good the other variations of the band were they never quite matched this lot.
there is another reason why i like this particular line-up they came into my dad’s pub and he sorted them out some food for their rehearsal sessions. i got to go and watch them. i had no idea what or who i was watching. once again fame brushed by me and i didn’t even wave.
in the video you can see roger glover playing a rickenbacker bass – i had a ricky copy and i wanted to be a bass player. the bass line in ‘smoke on the water’ convinced me i was never going to be a rock and roll superstar, it is an easy piece to play, but i couldn’t. another career shot down in flames (see what i did there). there is a lovely bit of musical interplay between jon lord on keyboards (another one who goes off to write a classical piece or two) and ritchie blackmore on guitar, when it comes to rock guitar you have to go some to find a better six-stringer than ritchie.
not only is ‘smoke on the water’ the deep purple song (even though they have several standard classics) it also references frank zappa. see there is a plan here. it also appears on one of the great live albums ‘made in japan’ and appears on one of my favourite albums: pat boone’s ‘in a metal mood’.
get your air guitar in tune and rock out.



ritchie just throwing off a solo for the pat boone version of 'smoke on the water'.



this is pat boone doing 'smoke' live. it is not a pretty sight. the album was fantastic, the lounge lizard take on several classic rock tracks worked well. live it just becomes a little odd. check out pat's dad dance, though compare him with ian gillan in the deep purple live vid and you can see that pat moves more. pat also seems to derive an immense amount of satisfaction from saying 'waaahtar'. the arc of lights in the background has an echo of the first rainbow tour, but more on that later.