Organizers of next year’s sold out Wacken Open Air Festival – which will take place August 1st – 3rd in Wacken, Germany – have launched their annual X-Mas Calendar 2012 which will announce one new band daily until December 24th. Today’s (December 2nd) band is DEVILDRIVER.
Wacken Open Air Festival 2013 band confirmations: AMORPHIS, ANTHRAX, ARCH ENEMY, ASP, CANDLEMASS, DEEP PURPLE, DEVILDRIVER, DIE APOKALYPTISCHEN REITER, DIE KASSIERER, DORO, ESKIMO CALLBOY, HAGGARD, HATE SQUAD, SCOTT IAN, IHSAHN, LEPROUS, LINGUA MORTIS Featuring RAGE, NIGHTWISH, RAMMSTEIN, SABATON, SOILWORK, SONATA ARCTICA, SUBWAY TO SALLY, BOB WAYNE.
Leslie Wilson Jr. of GulfNews.com‘s Tabloid! recently conducted an interview with DEEP PURPLE singer Ian Gillan. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.
GulfNews.com: How do you keep up the enthusiasm and energy over the tours and the years? What’s the secret?
Gillan: Well, I don’t really know. We never planned this far ahead. Possibly it’s the way we set ourselves up in the beginning. We had no ambition, except to make the band as good as possible. Every street where I lived in the south of England had a band, so you try and steal the guitar player or the drummer from the band in the next street, just to improve your own band and all we cared about was just playing music that we loved. We didn’t give much thought to image. In fact, we don’t have a publicist — never had one — and we never [gave] thought to the normal business things. So there’s a basic simplicity to the ethos of the band which has survived and I don’t think it’s changed in any way. The music’s kinda matured with us — it’s grown up a little bit, I suppose — but it’s still got all the energy and enthusiasm that we had as kids. Apart from that, I couldn’t answer your question because I’m too close to it. All I know is that it’s full of energy and we still love it.
GulfNews.com: You have been screaming rock music for over 40 years. How do you do it?
Gillan: I think it’s quite natural, I do a lot of it, and so I keep myself fairly fit. My mates who were singers they quit to enjoy their success or raise families and they didn’t continue. Then they tried to come back years later but it was very difficult because vocal cords, unlike guitar strings, are unforgiving, you can’t change them. So I think I’ve been singing all my life, and therefore I’m pretty match-fit, so to speak. Most things are within my scope, I sing pretty naturally so it’s not a strain, never has been.
GulfNews.com: Befitting the success DEEP PURPLE has achieved, the band has been nominated for the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. How much of an honor is this, or is it?
Gillan: [laughs] Without being asked, I was nominated for an MBE a little while ago and I was a bit fed up with these sorts of things and then I rationalized the situation. When I was a kid, the last thing that I wanted was to be institutionalized and sort of fought against the establishment all my life. However, when I had a chance to think about the nomination, I realized I saw people getting excited about it around me and I realized it’s for family and friends and it’s not for me alone, it’s for the people who have supported us all through these years, particularly through the bad times. So I look at it in a different way now, with a certain amount of humility.
A rare RAINBOW documentary has surfaced on YouTube detailing the band from 1975 -1978, featuring DEEP PURPLE guitar legend Ritchie Blackmore, late singer Ronnie James Dio and late drummer Cozy Powell. Check out the 11-minute clip below:
DEEP PURPLE, LAMB OF GOD and IN FLAMES are the first acts confirmed for the Getaway Rock Festival 2013, scheduled for August 8th – 10th in Gävle, Sweden.
A promotional video for the very limited mediabook edition of JON LORD‘s Concerto For Group And Orchestra, which includes a CD, documentary DVD, and 80-page book, can be viewed below; the release date is December 7th.
With his legendary organ blues-rock sound, DEEP PURPLE‘s founder and soul, Jon Lord has influenced decades of rock music. He is with no doubt the pioneer of fusing rock and classical/baroque forms and became one of the most important composers of the last decades while having a major impact on the music business. On July 16th, he passed away after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.
Jon Lord co-wrote many of Deep Purple’s legendary songs like ‘Smoke On The Water’ and played with many bands and musicians throughout his career (WHITESNAKE, to mention one out of many). Best known for his orchestral work Concerto For Group And Orchestra, first performed at Royal Albert Hall with Deep Purple and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 1969 and conducted by the renowned Malcolm Arnold – a feat repeated in 1999 when it was again performed at the Royal Albert Hall by the London Symphony Orchestra and Deep Purple.
Jon Lord always wanted a studio recording of the concerto. Irony of fate: he made his desire real only most recently. Hefinalized his very last mission – the first and only studio recording of the famous Concerto For Group And Orchestra, representing the definitive performance of a unique work.
Lord assembled guest musicians such as IRON MAIDEN’s Bruce Dickinson, Joe Bonamassa or Steve Morse in the Abbey Road Studios, to work with his trusted partner, director Paul Mann, on the 2012 version of the legendary concert.
“Over these last years since leaving Deep Purple, I’ve played it over 30 times with different orchestras and conductors all over the world, and, of course, in 2000 I did it well over 30 times with Purple on the Concerto tour, so I’ve been honing the piece live on stage, and I’ve had the opportunity to change things in the score that weren’t sounding quite right. It is therefore a marvellous and exciting prospect to have the definitive recording of the defi nitive version of the score.”(Jon Lord May 2011)
Already available in 2 different formats (CD and CD+DVD including a 5.1 audio mix) now comes a very special edition of the Concerto For Group And Orchestra. Conductor Paul Mann has written a personal history of his association with the Concerto and also detailed the full story of the work and the new recording.
The in-depth text about the person behind the Concerto also features a text from Jon Lord telling about his personal approach to the Concerto as well as a statement of Marco de Goeij, telling how he was able to reconstruct the lost musical score for the Concerto For Group And Orchestra by watching videos of live performances and listening to audio recordings.
All this resulted in a fascinating 80 page story highlighted with rare pictures that will now be released in a mediabook featuring the full Concerto on CD as well as a DVD containing the Making Of as well as exclusive interviews with Paul Mann and Marco de Goeij. So, to paraphrase an early Deep Purple lyric: “Listen, Learn and Read On…”
A rare live video of DEEP PURPLE performing ‘The Well Dressed Guitar’, an instrumental featured on the 2CD limited edition of the album Rapture Of The Deep, can be seen below. The footage was used in 2005 for the promotion of the album and it’s never been released on DVD.
Watch below:
Deep Purple and JOURNEY have announced more shows on their Australasian tour, which commences at the Vector Arena in Auckland on Sunday, February 24th, 2013.
Complete dates include:
February
24 – Vector Arena, Auckland, New Zealand
26 – Brisbane Entertainment Centre – Brisbane, Australia
March
1 – Rod Laver Arena – Melbourne, Australia
2 – Sydney Entertainment Centre – Sydney, Australia
4 – Adelaide Entertainment Centre – Adelaide, Australia
7 – Perth Arena – Perth, Australia
Deep Purple fan-site The Highway Star reported recently that bassist Roger Glover spoke to ITAR-TASS and revealed that there are 14 tracks ready for the new album, probably 11 or 12 of them will pass the final selection and end up being released. A tentative release date is somewhere in mid-February 2013 and the band are still deciding on an album title.
Journey are currently touring in support of their latest album, 2011’s Eclipse.
THE ROCK ALCHEMIST – Italian Rock Band from Turin with a strong sonic identity that blends modern rock with progressive, hard, alternative, and pop elements!
Kimmo Kuusniemi’s SARCOFAGUS return with a Historic 2010 Concert Video Premiere on YouTube! Click image to watch the video
Metal Shock Finland (World Assault ) 