I like 'Purple but I LOVE Steve Morse!  😉  Glad he got to fill his pockets playing with those guys, but I'm a Dregs man!  😉 

Awesome selection of music by one of my all time favorite bands. Thanks for sharing some Deep Purple.

Never saw the band as whole, but little parts like Rainbow w/ Richie Blackmore back in the 80's at the World Series of Rock Festival at Bush Stadium in St. Louis.

Learned about Steve Morse before he joined the group from his days playing in the Dixie Dregs.

Still love listening to "Machine Head," and especially "Lazy." 

Yeah..Morse is such a beast. I dont think we as fans would have gotten the evolution of the band if RB would have stuck around. Its nothing against him.He is one of my all time fav's for sure. But after he left it gave the others room to breathe, show their creativity and adding SM, what more to be said.  Don Airey is a awesome too. Really shines on the latest release.

I love live Purple! There is a decent amount of footage of Mark II, and some of it amazing. There's the half hour from 1970, there's the Concerto too. There IS that B & W 1972 footage that always strays away from Blackmore during the solo...grrrr. And there's the brief color footage from maybe 1973 Hofstra, near the end of the line with Gillan, who looks mighty burnt. All great. 

Steve Morse is owed a great debt of gratitude from Purple fans. His creativity, his musical intelligence, his work ethic, his humor and patience: he is to Purple what Warren Haynes has been to the Allmans. 

I'll admit I have a few quibbles. Morse has definitely pushed the band to be active in making more studio albums, which is great; each record has loads of unusual twists and turns. They are certainly not cookie cutter hard rock. I assume Morse is also behind the way that the band has brought back a number of Deep Cuts into the setlist, which is awesome. Purple setlists do tend to have a load of the same old greatest hits, but at least they throw in a few gems each time for the fan who has seen them repeatedly. Their setlist is still so greatest-hits heavy that after seeing this line-up a bunch, I have stopped going to their shows.

Because I was a Dregs/Steve Morse band fan for a full 10 years before he joined the band, I was ecstatic at the union. With his chops, I was envisioning Purple doing more things like "Wring That Neck," massive instrumental affairs. Surprisingly, that really has not been the case.

I have also felt that in concert, Morse often falls into a lot of predictable patterns, perhaps because Purple's music is just not as complex as that of the Dregs. Palm-muted chromatic shreds, pinch harmonics, basic whammy dives, pedal-point licks - we get them a lot live. This is why I respect how Bob Ezrin really challenges Morse in the studio to slow down and play more like David Gilmour. It takes someone of Ezrin's stature to make that demand of someone of Morse's stature, but it has worked; Morse's solos on the last few studio albums have indeed had more memorable melody and less shred.  

His effortless live shredding can make it all seem too easy. With Blackmore, when it came to fast precise runs, you could feel how on the edge it was, that this was him playing at the top of his game to pull off this manuever. With Morse, there's never that sense. I have never been a fan of Blackmore's love of noise and gimmicks - I'm glad Morse doesn't put the guitar down on the stage to play it with his foot, etc. However, I also love Ritchie's tone for the most part, certainly in the 70s and 80s. Morse has had a tone that is somewhat processed, which takes some of its soul away for me. 

Regardless, his tenure with Purple has kept them viable and interesting for longer than anyone would have ever anticipated. The string of studio albums they have put together is on frequent rotation in my CD player. Thanks for posting these live videos!! Great stuff. 

I love Deep Purple, and have been a S Morse fan since the late 70's.  His playing with DP is fantastic, but Blackmore just blows my mind sometimes.  His anger and passion and tone, just destructive!

Posted by: @jimsheridan

I love live Purple! There is a decent amount of footage of Mark II, and some of it amazing. There's the half hour from 1970, there's the Concerto too. There IS that B & W 1972 footage that always strays away from Blackmore during the solo...grrrr. And there's the brief color footage from maybe 1973 Hofstra, near the end of the line with Gillan, who looks mighty burnt. All great. 

Steve Morse is owed a great debt of gratitude from Purple fans. His creativity, his musical intelligence, his work ethic, his humor and patience: he is to Purple what Warren Haynes has been to the Allmans. 

I'll admit I have a few quibbles. Morse has definitely pushed the band to be active in making more studio albums, which is great; each record has loads of unusual twists and turns. They are certainly not cookie cutter hard rock. I assume Morse is also behind the way that the band has brought back a number of Deep Cuts into the setlist, which is awesome. Purple setlists do tend to have a load of the same old greatest hits, but at least they throw in a few gems each time for the fan who has seen them repeatedly. Their setlist is still so greatest-hits heavy that after seeing this line-up a bunch, I have stopped going to their shows.

Because I was a Dregs/Steve Morse band fan for a full 10 years before he joined the band, I was ecstatic at the union. With his chops, I was envisioning Purple doing more things like "Wring That Neck," massive instrumental affairs. Surprisingly, that really has not been the case.

I have also felt that in concert, Morse often falls into a lot of predictable patterns, perhaps because Purple's music is just not as complex as that of the Dregs. Palm-muted chromatic shreds, pinch harmonics, basic whammy dives, pedal-point licks - we get them a lot live. This is why I respect how Bob Ezrin really challenges Morse in the studio to slow down and play more like David Gilmour. It takes someone of Ezrin's stature to make that demand of someone of Morse's stature, but it has worked; Morse's solos on the last few studio albums have indeed had more memorable melody and less shred.  

His effortless live shredding can make it all seem too easy. With Blackmore, when it came to fast precise runs, you could feel how on the edge it was, that this was him playing at the top of his game to pull off this manuever. With Morse, there's never that sense. I have never been a fan of Blackmore's love of noise and gimmicks - I'm glad Morse doesn't put the guitar down on the stage to play it with his foot, etc. However, I also love Ritchie's tone for the most part, certainly in the 70s and 80s. Morse has had a tone that is somewhat processed, which takes some of its soul away for me. 

Regardless, his tenure with Purple has kept them viable and interesting for longer than anyone would have ever anticipated. The string of studio albums they have put together is on frequent rotation in my CD player. Thanks for posting these live videos!! Great stuff. 

 

 

Great post Jim and totally agree on your thoughts about SM and BM. I could talk DP, Blackmore and Rainbow all day long.

I think the setlist has gotten better, but still some of the same usual suspects.They do improvise ,maybe  not to the extent of the ABB but they do. That , at least for me, still makes buying and listening to they're live stuff enjoyable

I highly recommend the following two live releases.

Live in Rome

https://www.discogs.com/Deep-Purple-Live-In-Rome-2013/release/14496805

Live In New Castle

https://www.discogs.com/Deep-Purple-Live-In-Newcastle-2001/release/13855670

I would give the NewCastle show an A+, but Jimmy Barnes...ugh!! He trys to out do Gillan being an over the top obnoxious ,cringe worthy Gillan.

I think the band can afford to mix it up and rotate songs in and out and still please all types of fans that go to the show. I wont get on my soapbox about that now. Done that in the past and probably dont have enough room to type all of it!!!

I listened to a podcast in the fall with Roger and he did mention about going into the studio again. I also ran across this.

https://www.blabbermouth.net/news/deep-purple-will-try-to-make-another-studio-album-in-2021/

I think Ezrin has been good for them. The fanboy in me has been wanting a really hard, raw,not so polished heavy release. There have been moments of that here and there. The music has been great none the less. I like the way they balance rock and prog together. I would almost like to hear them go a little more progier(is that a word?!?!?) After listening to Whoosh,I went back and gave the two prior a spin to kinda rank them I guess. Not sure if I could, all have really good material.

You were dead on about RB: "With Blackmore, when it came to fast precise runs, you could feel how on the edge it was, that this was him playing at the top of his game to pull off this manuever."  The clip above really demonstrates that. Just seems like he's almost ready to go off the rails ,but just dances on the edge. Beautifully  controlled chaos!!! I dont mind Ritchies gimmicks, it just adds to the intensity. Just my opinion. I do agree he can be noisy at times. These days, the last four summers, you really did not get that. Probably for many reasons, but playing the type of music he has for the last 20-25 yrs I am sure has changed his approach, technique and etc.  I am not sure of what the purpose of doing just a handful of shows from 2016-2019 was about. Was he just testing the waters,just wanting to play rock again. Not sure. I am glad he did though. I thought maybe it was going to progress into more dates and maybe a full studio album.  There was an interview with Ronnie Romero and he was asked of the status of Rainbow: https://www.blabbermouth.net/news/is-rainbow-still-an-active-band-ronnie-romero-responds/

"Well, we are locked down. [Laughs] We will see. Obviously, nothing's gonna happen next year. And Ritchie and [his wife] Candice [Night], they're really focused on the new BLACKMORE'S NIGHT record. So probably if everything comes back to normality in the next few years, probably we'll do some more shows. But at the moment, everything is on standby."

Ritchie Blackmore discussing the California Jam in 1974 (Part 1).

Ritchie Blackmore celebrating The California Jam (Part 2)

I do love the live Rainbow with Dio. That 1977 Munich video is the bomb. 

Purple have been very good about getting live material officially released for the fans. I'll investigate the discs you mentioned!

Love Ritchies playing on the intro to this. Cozy locks in with him well.

Thanks for the videos Scott.  I watched Mary Long and the entire Live @ The Greek show.  Will get to Mandrake Root later.  

Everyone seems to be focused on Steve Morse in this thread and of course he's a great player.  I've seen this version of the band probably 6 or 7 times now and the question mark for me is always how Ian Gillan's voice is going to sound on any given night.  I saw them two years ago and was surprised at how good he sounded.  Other nights I've witnessed him really struggle.  He sounds very good on Mary Long.  On the Greek video though he struggles from the opener of Highway Star.  Often during the show he has to take the song down an octave or more to handle it.  I thought he recovered pretty well though and did a passable job at the Greek show.  He hit all the notes on Smoke On The Water (a song that older fans like me have had enough of but it's their trademark and they MUST play it).  

But hey, he's Ian Gillan.  I'd rather listen to him even though he struggles at times than some younger substitute vocalist who was not there for Fireball, Machine Head, etc, etc.  Instrumentally of course this band is always SPOT ON and it's worth it to listen to them just for that.

I just ordered Whoosh (their latest) on Amazon and can't wait to get it, the promotional video for it was a tune called Nothing At All and it was very, very good.  Reviews of Whoosh have been consistently very positive.