Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Deep Purple - Rapture of the Deep

Deep Purple - Rapture of the Deep


"The Wrong Man" rocks. Let me just say that for starters. In this latter day version of Purple, it's a great litle groovetastic rocker. Gillan is in great voice, Airey makes you not miss Lord. At all. Whereas the title track sounds wayyyy too much like "Got To Get You Into My Life" in the verses. The chorus is a dank jam track. In fact, that's what this band is now. A dank jam band.
There's nothing to get too excited about on Rapture. But the band doesn't embarrass themselves in the slightest.
There's still the occasional dip into Zevon land with "Clearly Quite Absurd", where Gillan sounds more like Warren than Warren does.
Other than that, it's standard issue Purple.
And with that, the Deep Purple section of this Listening Post is over.

Grade: B-
ASide: The Wrong Man
BlindSide: Back to Back
DownSide: Before Time Began

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Deep Purple - Bananas

Deep Purple - Bananas - 2003

Bye bye, Jon Lord.
So, Lord leaves, Blackmore is gone, who's left? Ian Gillan (who occasionally sounds like Ian Anderson AND Warren Zevon!), drummer Ian Paice. Not much else.
Ex-Sabbath keyboardist Don Airey is here instead and Steve Morse is on guitars.
You know what? It's great. They sound fantastic. You wouldn't know the difference. Well, they are more of a jam band than a metal band, but I'm at the point now where I think Purple accidentally invented metal. I think they just played what they wanted. Blackmore liked harder stuff and he caused the metallic part of the band. Lord and then Airey fit right in the psychedelic trope. Gillan is just a good vocalist, through and through.
This album isn't as hard as Abandon. It's lighter. Funnier at times. More fun at others. Sometimes it rocks ("House of Pain", "Silver Tongue"), sometimes it's heartbreaking ("Haunted", "Walk On"), or it's playful as on the folky-Simon and Garfunkel-esque, "Never a Word". There isn't a clunker in the bunch, with the high point being the multi-structured, sublimely layered, "I've Got Your Number".
The 1-2 punch toward the end of "Bananas" and "Doing it Tonight", one a pure rocker and the other tinged with Reggae, is the most inspired the band has sounded in a while.
I love Bananas. I'm bananas for Bananas

Grade: A
ASide: House of Pain, Haunted, I've Got Your Number, Bananas, Doing it Tonight
BlindSide: Silver Tongue, Walk On

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Deep Purple - Abandon

Deep Purple - Abandon - 1998

Abandon finds our heroes settling in to their roles as niche filling, core fans satisfying, able codgers. In 1998 did you even know that Deep Purple was still playing, let alone were releasing new music?
Me neither. But I thought they stopped playing in the early 70s.

Abandon rocks a LOT harder than Purpendicular. There's still the occasional prog-rock flourishes, of course, now sounding like a a cross between Rainbow and Jethro Tull, of all things. Well, not on the entire thing, but it's there on "Fingers to the Bone". These guys can play.
Case in point the hard edged, rifftastic, "Seventh Heaven"
Abandon is actually the best the band has put out in a while. You don't need it. No one does. But, if you find yourself itching for some Jon Lord or some...whatever it is Purple is classified as now, you won't be disappointed.

Grade: B
ASIde: Any Fule Know That, '69, Bludsucker
BlindSide: Seventh Heaven, What's Her Name
DownSide:

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Deep Purple - Purpendicular

Deep Purple - Purpendicular - 1996

I like "Vavoom: Ted the Mechanic". It's a groovy, slippery trip-blues jam. For some reason it reminds me of Steely Dan at their most energized.
Jon Lord's understated piano playing on "Loosen My Strings" are a welcome surprise, followed by the horrendous over playing of "Soon Forgotten", which this song soon will be. Ugh, imagine Deep Purple imitating Sparks circa 1975.
Purpendicular bears no relation to any previous Deep Purple album. Gillan doesn't sound like Gillan you know, Lord is toned down, Blackmore is gone and ex-Kansas guitarist Steve Morse has taken over. It's a pleasant enough record but when put side by side with the other pillars of metal, this band might as well be Chicago by now.
Musically, there's some fantastic moments, like "Cascades: I'm Not Your Lover" and the strange Irish/California hybrid rock of "The Aviator". But, if you walked in to a record store and the last thing you knew of Deep Purple was Machine Head or "Smoke on the Water", this would leave you scratching your head.

Grade: B
ASide: Vavoom: Ted the Mechanic
BlindSide: Cascades: I'm not your Lover, The Aviator
DownSide: Soon Forgotten

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Deep Purple - The Battle Rages On

Deep Purple - The Battle Rages On - 1992

Oh, just look at the album cover. If there was ever anything that screamed "Sell out!" it's that. One thing I've learned from this series that the roots of Heavy Metal are deep not in the blues, but in psychedelia. Go back and listen to those early DP and BS records and you'll know what I'm talking about.
So, it's distressing to see the architects of Heavy Metal consign themselves to the easiest of the genre's tropes: Medieval mythology.
And the music is following suit. This is, I believe, a good thing for the most part. Gillan sounds less like the Gillan we've come to love and more like...Brian Johnson and Joe Perry. Allmusic said it best when it compared them to Def Leppard. Hey, at least they've shrugged off the Foreigner obsession.
This is a Blackmore-centric record, which harkens back to a harder sound ala Machine Head. The songs aren't nearly as interesting, however. And there's even one called, gasp, "Lick it Up". It's not as bad as the title, but holy hell, guys.
Late in the album on "Solitaire" the band finds their proggy-trippy roots and manage to sound, well, like they wanna play with Rush, but at least its not Foreigner, right?
The playing is fine. The album is almost completely unengaging.

Grade: C-
ASide: The Battle Rages On
BlindSide: A Twist in the Tale
DownSide:

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Deep Purple - Slaves and Masters

Deep Purple - Slaves and Masters - 1990

I'm so tired. It's not because of a new baby or life or work. It's because of the chore I have set out for myself. When it can be quickly become invigorated by, say, the resurgence to greatness by Black Sabbath on The Eternal Idol or Headless Cross, my disposition can just as quickly turn to despondence by listening (or forcing myself to listen to) whatever Deep Purple has turned themselves into.
Basically, they are Foreigner. Without the hooks.
From the very beginning they just sound out of date. 10 years out of date. And I don't know why. I mean, I know why. It's because they sound like a Foreigner influenced band 10 years after Foreigner mattered. What I don't know is why they turned away from their teeth, the razor sounds of Ritchie Blackmore vs Jon Lord and turned themselves into this. Except that I always felt like Purple was above the fray. Like they believed themselves to be "important" musicians. Akin to Genesis, pre-Collins.
No matter. If you like watered down prog-rock or were wishing for another Foreigner record, this is for you.
If not, skip it.

ASide: Fire in the Basement
BlindSide: Wicked Ways
DownSide: Love Conquers All (Holy Treacly Hell)

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Deep Purple - The House of Blue Light

Deep Purple - The House of Blue Light - 1987

Workmanlike, at best, this second record by the Mark II version of Deep Purple is actually my favorite of their post "Smoke on the Water" records. It's no Fireball and it's definitely no Machine Head but the band is in fine form and their songwriting has improved from the extrapolated jams of the last one. Every song is just a little too long and desperate in it's need to make room for everybody. Gillan needs his vox, Lord needs a place to shine his fancy fingerplaying and Blackmore needs to prove that he's relevant.
All that said, Blue Light is better than Stormbringer or Come Taste the Band, by a long shot. The glory days have past but these guys can still give their fans what their fans want. Although, by 1987 I'm seriously wondering who their fans are...

Grade: B-
ASide: Call of the Wild
BlindSide: The Spanish Archer
DownSide: The Unwritten Law, Mitzi Dupree

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Deep Purple - Perfect Strangers

Deep Purple - Perfect Strangers - 1984

Ritchie Blackmore! Ian Gillan! Jon Lord! The whole band is back! It's a Mark II DP reunion!
So how is it?!?!?

Eh.

Look, these guys can obviously play. And they know their instruments, how to play them and they know each others' instruments and how to play off them.
That would be great if they had anything to say or something propelling them to create some great psychedelic metal. But craptastic jams like "Mean Streak" seem designed to let their masturbatory musical impulses play out to the the point where an audience really doesn't matter.
I kind of enjoy the music here but only in that I appreciate that it isn't pisspoor. It's about as on par with latter day Genesis. Although "A Gipsy's Kiss" reignites that terrific Blakmore/Lord oneupsmanship that made the band so interesting a decade + before. And "Wasted Sunsets" while trite is a musical excitement and one that leads into the album's most interesting , the quasi-eastern european "Hungry Daze".
There's more to interest a casual listener on Perfect Strangers than one would notice from the first half. PS fits right in the DP canon. It won't surprise you, but it won't fully disappoint.

Grade: C
ASide: Knocking at Your Backdoor, Hungry Daze
BlindSide: A Gipsy's Kiss (I know it sounds like it fell off a Roger taylor record, but I think that's why I like it. ), Wasted Sunsets

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Ozzy Osbourne - Blizzard of Ozz

Ozzy Osbourne – Blizzard of Ozz – 1980

“Daddy, I want music, not talk!” my four year old daughter shouted to me as we were on a run to the pharmacy last night.
“You got it!” I said and fired up Blizzard of Ozz, which was next on the Listening Post list anyway.
“Daddy! Wanna see my leg kick dance?!?”
I looked back and saw Zoe kicking and jerking her feet to the music.
“You like this music, Zig Zag?” my most often used nickname for her.
“Yeah!”.

Until “Goodbye To Romance”, that is. She doesn't dig the ballads.

When I was 15 I had a job in the greasy spoon in the tourist of Bar Harbor. I mixed the cole slaw and, eventually, I was graduated to fish chowder.
That's when I met Pete. My best friend for a couple years until we lost touch in the early 90s, Pete was a lover of all things metal. Pantera, Van Halen and Ozzy. It was he who convinced me to go to the Bangor State Fair to see Ozzy in concert. He convinced me to bring the album cover with me and wave it, which was a burden, actually.
Because of Peter Daher I got to the concert so early that I was 3 people from the stage. Because of him I saw a new band that really caught fire with both of us, a little band called Def Leppard. Because of him Randy Rhodes looked me right in the eye and smiled at me through a solo.
Thanks, Pete.

Blizzard of Ozz is a perfect record. Even if I hadn't had those experiences I would love this record. Watching my daughter react to it the way she did 30 years later proves that for me. I think a lot of that has to do with healthy competition and need to prove himself after leaving Sabbath.
Of course, without Randy Rhodes I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be writing any of that.
Rhodes brought a magical combination of adoration for the idiom of metal, a respect for classical music, a slavish disciples talent (my god, how many fingers did that man even have? 15?) and a sense of a little bit of radio friendly ear candy.
All of this together brings us classics like “Crazy Train”, “Mr. Crowley” “I Don't Know” AND acoustic gems like “Dee” which bleeds into the righteous “Suicide Solution”. There's room for that power ballad because there's so much of everything else going on.

I find it interesting that both Ozzy and Sabbath would choose to use sacrilegious imagery on their covers. From Ozzy's cross-as-weapon to Sabbath's smoking angels (a theme copied by Van Halen just a couple years later). Dead Kennedys would incorporate the same anti-religious themes on their In God we Trust, inc the next year. No doubt this was all a reaction to the Moral Majority's rise in America.
It all fits the music, by the way.
But I digress.
In short:
I love this record.

Grade: A+
Aside: I Don't Know, Crazy Train, Suicide Solution, Mr. Crowley
BlindSide: Dee, Revelation (Mother Earth), Steal Away (The Night)
DownSide:

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Deep Purple - Come Taste The Band

Deep Purple - Come Taste the Band - 1975

I can't believe I'm saying this but, I've never been so glad to hear Jon Lord's organ. After the abysmal borefest that was Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow, that instrument is a welcome sound.
It should be noted that by this time the only original members of Deep Purple are Ian Paice, the drummer and Lord. So, how does the band sound?
Energized, at least on the first track. Tommy Bolin avails himself well on the boogie rocker "Coming Home". Had he not died the following year, one only knows how far he might have come. "Lady Luck" continues the faux-soul that the band had been exploring and it's just short enough to be sweet. The same can be said for "Gettin' Tighter", which could act as a blueprint for The Hellacopters 25 years later.
Tracks like "Dealer" and "I Need Love" are funktastic metal and make for a fine listen on a Saturday night cruising through your small town looking for chicks. It's not great, but it'll do.
The second half of the record is flabby and unmemorable. The wannabe-funk of "Drifter" and, worse, the horrendous "Love Child", which comes across like a reject from Aerosmith's "Train Kept a Rollin'" are just torture to listen to. And that ballad..."This Time Round Owed to God"...oh, dear. That one's like bad Elton John meets Freddie Mercury in a smoky piano bar, drunk on sake and feeling treacly.

And thus ends the contribution to metal from one of the genre's architects. We won't be hearing from them for another decade.

Grade: C
ASide: Coming Home
BlindSide: Lady Luck, Gettin' Tighter
DownSide: Love Child, This Time Round Owed to God

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Deep Purple - Stormbringer

Deep Purple - Stormbringer - 1974

Wow, one year, two Deep Purple albums. I've said before that I think 1974 was a watershed year for rock music. The coalescence of so many ideas and pinnacle of concepts and conceits.
In 1974 you could buy Burn and dig on the journey that had become Deep Purple from prog rock 60s psychedelia to heavy metal architects to soul infused version of both.
Or you could get Stormbringer. A half assed attempt to follow the soul tropes set down on that previous record.
How bad is Stormbringer? It's not awful. It's not like Dee Dee Ramone's rap album. But from a band widely recognized as one of the three godfather bands of metal, it's just generic. Dull. Uninteresting. Like a band's 9th album. Only I would have hoped that the new inclusion of David Coverdale which had infuse the previous album with such energy, would have carried over to this one. I have to believe that 12 years later both of those records would have been put out as one CD and we would have combined the ratings between the two to come up with something very very average.
Nothing will prepare you for the third rate soul stylings of "Hold On" (which I swear Chicago should cover) or the 5th rate wannabe-Purple "Holy Man".
I will admit to kind of enjoying the speed-sheen metal of the title track and "Lady Double Dealer", the only time Blackmore really gets to shine on the record. "High Ball Shooter" is not bad, either, even though I think it would work better as an Aerosmith tune.
Stormbringer is what happens when you let the bassist get too much input. They always wanna funkify everything. They really should best be left to laying down a bottom and leave the filigree to the others.

It wouldn't surprise me if Ritchie Blackmore just quit after this experience.
Oh, wait. He did.


Grade: C-
ASide: Stormbringer
BlindSide: Lady Double Dealer, High Ball Shooter
DownSide: Holy Man (oh, snooze city), Hold On

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Deep Purple - Burn

Deep Purple - Burn - 1974

Remember Machine Head? How great that record was? And then it was followed by the highly mediocre Who Do We Think We Are?
Forget that. And forget Deep Purple as you might have known them.
From jump street the addition of David Coverdale as Ian Gillan's replacement has infused the music with something more incendiary than before. On the title track Jon Lord seems to be playing catch up to Blackmore's guitar and Coverdale's voice. It's refreshing and exciting and one of the best tracks this band has put out in a long time. And when he does finally get his chance to shine, it's superfluous. The song's already done what it needs/wants to. Ugh, I'm tired of organ....
Of course, no sooner do I write that then I get to the next track, "Might Just Be Your Life", a hybrid child of "Woman of Tokyo" and "Smoke on the Water" with some of Lord's most subtle and interesting work. Tracks like "Lay Down Stay Down" rip with Madison Square Garden anthemic quality.
Songs like "Sail Away" and "You Fool No One" show a leaning toward a more funkier sound, an even heavier sound, the convergence of metal and soul, if you will. The torch-blues of "Mistreated" is a ready-made stadium track if I've ever heard one. Lighters up!
The closing track, "A 200", a space age, trippy instrumental number, is inconsequential, inessential and perhaps the worst thing Deep Purple has ever recorded.

Grade: A-
ASide: Burn
BlindSide: Lay Down Stay Down, Sail Away, Mistreated
DownSide: A 200

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Deep Purple - Who Do We Think We Are!

Deep Purple - Who Do We Think We Are! - 1973

WDWTWA starts off with that familiar classic rock radio staple, "Woman From Tokyo". I always thought it was Skynrd or Foghat or someone. Could have been Kiss for all I knew. It's not bad it's just very generic. It's a great track. But it's not genius. I'm beginning to smell a roller rink....
While I kind of enjoy "Smooth Dancer", the song brings to focus that this is a band that seems to have run out of ideas. It's as rote a swingin' rocker as I've ever heard.
And "Rat Rat Blue" sounds like a band that was so bored they just rewrote the opening track. It's awful. And the swirling solos in the middle just sound like a bunch of guys showing off.
Singer Ian Gillan would leave the band after this. I don't entirely blame him. Being forced to sing "Place in Line" would make anyone leave.
The album closer, "Our Lady" could have been a leftover from some late 60s Beatles/Stones Satanic/Mystery epic. But nowhere near as good and 6 years too late.

Grade: C-
ASIde: Woman from Tokyo
BlindSide: Smooth Dancer
DownSide: Rat Rat Blue, Place in Line, Our Lady

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Deep Purple - Machine Head

Deep Purple - Machine Head - 1972

Hey, what's that sound? That driving metal with the rock n roll wail? It sounds so familiar. It's...the theme to Rock Band 2! And it's 40 years old.
"Highway Star" is the track, Machine Head is the album, Deep Purple is the band. This is the one that we think about when we think about the architects of metal. Zeppelin 4, Paranoid by Sabbath and Machine Head.
Having listened to all these albums in a row I can finally really hear the connection between 70s metal and 60s prog rock. They have more in common than I would have ever thought, having been weaned on the blues based meta of AC/DC or the glam metal of Crue and Poison and GnR.
But, this is where the Motorheads of the world find their genesis. Metallica, Megadeth, the great shredders of the 80s owe a lot to Richie Blackmore, Jon Lord and the rest of Deep Purple. There's no doubt in my mind that all the great metal bands of the next decade had this in their collection.
Next up is "Maybe, I'm a Leo". And like the previous album, it's a let down after that opening attack. It's not bad, it's just more of a back beat, later in the record sort of track.
After that the album really rights itself and doesn't let up. "Pictures of Home" and the ubiquitous classic radio staple, "Smoke on the Water" cement the record's heavyweight status. Listening to it again it sounds indelibly like what I would expect from DP, and yet, like nothing else in their catalog really. it's as though it crawled out of a southern rock swamp. A truly remarkable song.
Not to be undone, the mostly instrumental blues rocker with harmonica, "Lazy", is one of the grooviest tracks the band's ever produced.
Rounding out the album is the almost glammy rocker, "Space Truckin'".

This might be one of the greatest rock albums of all time. At least in its genre. No doubt about that.

Grade: A+
ASide: Highway Star, Smoke on the Water
BlindSide: Pictures of Home, Lazy, Space Truckin'

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Deep Purple - Fireball

Deep Purple - Fireball - 1971

This is great. This was what the band was leaning toward on In Rock. In fact, this is the logical progression from there. Building on the toughness of that album, Fireball, with just a few exceptions, is one strong beefcake of a record.
With a shredtastic opening title track, Deep Purple puts to rest the memories of "Hush" and psychedelia. Embracing Blackmore's edgier tendencies seems to have infused the entire band with energy. There's still a lot of room for Jon Lord to show off some superb organing but this endeavor leaves whatever classicism the band portended to have in the dust.
The blues-ified Lord showcase number, "No No No" is almost a setback, but I found myself enjoying more toward the end. Of course, this was every time Gillan's vocals came back or Blackmore's guitar cut through the clutter. At this point I'm ready to say goodbye to Lord's organ. I know this is sacrilege but I'm over it. I can feel this is a band that wants to cut loose and kill and that sound softens everything.
It's nice to hear piano instead of organ on the very weird and fun "Anyone's Daughter", a personal favorite of mine.
Toward the end the LSD is back on "The Mule" and it's not awful, but when the guitar and drums kick in for that middle 8, they effectively brush aside the haze. That's what a lot of this record is; the brushing aside of hazy hippyness by stratospheric metal. The sludginess of "Fools" is the perfect amalgam. It's psych-metal. It's delicious.

Grade: A-
ASide: Fireball
BlindSide: Anyone's Daughter, No One Came

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Deep Purple - In Rock

Almost as though answering a salvo laid down a few months earlier by Iommi, Osbourne and crew, Deep Purple came out with this spin.
Rod Evans is out as vocalist and Ian Gillan is in. In other words, from the moment you hear the first track, "Speed King" you realize, this is not your father's Deep Purple. In fact, on that track, for the first time in four albums, I find the Hammond organ to be a pain in the ass. It gets in the way. The metal is so pulsing, so energized, Blackmore's fuzz if fuzzier, the bass sounds more like "Radar Love" than anything on the previous records. And what Gillan's doing with his voice is Robert Plant but without the flowers and grooviness. It's more Halford than Plant. And on the ferocious "Child in Time" he becomes the 5th instrument, not just something to put the words out on what would otherwise be an instrumental. After listening to "Flight of the Rat" it's become obvious to me that Brian May MUST have been listening to Ritchie Blackmore and this album when writing some of Queen's harder rocking stuff. it's all there.

Nothing on the previous albums can prepare you for this. This is the Deep Purple of notoriety, not the prissy, neo-classical, prog rock. This is cock rock at it's finest. Hard to believe that in a few months all this stuff turns 40.

Grade: A
ASide: Speed King, Child in Time
BlindSide: Bloodsucker, Flight of the Rat

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Deep Purple - Deep Purple

Deep Purple - Deep Purple - 1969

Deep Purple's eponymous album comes a year after their debut AND sophomore records. And from the very first few seconds you can tell it's a different affair entirely. "Chasing Shadows" is a drummer's showcase and Ian Paice is up to the challenge. The blending of tribal percussion to Blackmore's psychedelia drenched lead licks is nothing short of astonishing. It would sound contemporary 3 years later. Nothing on the previous two albums is as exciting, and I'm including "Hush" in that statement. There's only one cover on Deep Purple and it's Donovan's "Lalena", a rendition so slow and meticulous that its almost funeral. It's a terrific pairing with their cover of "Help".
On the other hand, while original material like, "Blind" COULD have fallen into the ho-hum category of the previous band's material offerings, the intensity of Blackmore and Lord's playing, each seemingly in competition with each other, upping the ante, bringing more and more power to their instrument's contribution, is perfectly matched with Paice's drumming. So, what might have been trite prog-rock of the 60s, is, instead, the foundation of what rock could and would be.
Deep Purple is an important entry into the pantheon of Metal. I think it's terrific, dark, brooding, haunting and amazing that just 9 years earlier the music scene was all about bobby soxers and teeny boppers. If you were 15 in 1955, you were 29 when this record came out. You either got it, or you got off it (or you dropped some acid and got off on it). Talk about a generational divide.
Deep Purple is the first DP album I can really get behind. It's terrific. The semi-orchestral "April" is worth the whole damned trip.

Grade: A
ASide: Why DIdn't Rosemary, The Bird Has Flown
BlindSide: Chasing Shadows, The Painter, April

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Deep Purple - The Book of Taliesyn

Deep Purple - The Book of Taliesyn - 1968

The first thing you notice when you drop the needle on Deep Purple's sophomore offering is the edge. This is a darker album, but not murkier. It's edgier, cutting, trippier by virtue of frenzy. Mirroring the landscape that was being mined by bands like The Moody Blues, DP merges it with their improvisational jam theories and runs it through their own taffy machine so it's all musch scarier and harrowing than even the darkest moments of their debut.
The issue with this is that the overindulgence is still present and that, married with the galloping drive of the musical engine creates an exhausting listen. And very little lingers long enough for the listener to hold on to it. That's not to say the songs are short. They are quite the opposite. Nothing clocks in at under 4 minutes and three tracks are over 6. They are healthy and robust but unfocused and immature.
Not the best of the genre that I've heard. There are moments, though: Ritchie Blackmore's guitar work toward the end of "Wring That Neck" suggests at what he might be able to achieve later on.
Half of the album is covers, most notable, Neil Diamond's "Kentucky Woman". It's no "Hush", to be sure. It's spectacularly predestined as the HIT SINGLE, and that sense of the pre-ordained stinks all over it. Blackmore really comes in to his own on this track, though. The duel between him and Lord's Hammond is a treat.
The pomp and majesty of "Exposition" gives way to a veritable psychedelic rave and, finally, pounds in to the cover of another Beatles track, this time it's "We Can Work It Out". By the time you get there, if you aren't already believing that Jon Lord is something of a genius on par with Walter Carlos or Rick Wakeman, you aren't really listening.
Taliesyn isn't any great shakes. It's non-essential, like Moody Blues' In Search of the Lost Chord.

Grade: C
ASide: Kentucky Woman
BlindSide: Exposition/We Can Work It Out
DownSide: Shield, Anthem

Listening Post: Purple Sabbath - Deep Purple - Shades of Deep Purple

Deep Purple - Shades of Deep Purple - 1968

The Guinness Book of Records has called them the "World's Loudest Band". I'm sure Deep Purple contribute to the pastiche that made up Spinal Tap 14 years after this record was released. But, in 1968, Deep Purple started to change the way the world would listen to music. Along with Zeppelin and Hendrix, they lay the groundwork for all that would come to be called "Heavy Metal".

Shades of Deep Purple opens with the instrumental track, "And the Address", an instrumental piece that comes across as a psychedelic, heavier Strawberry Alarm Clock. It's very emblematic of the times, noodley guitar leads, quickly delving into transformed blues motifs, reliant on cow bell and tremendously indulgent organ work. The whole affair is huge and could easily serve as the soundtrack for "The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies". However, I imagine that, at the time, this was pretty cutting edge. And a bold way to start off an album.
From there we transition to "Hush" and if there was ever a song that defined an era, it's this one. The perfectly delectable melding of psychedelia, hippy grooviness, rhythm and blues, and slashingly smart guitars. John Lord's Hammond work is nothing short of brilliant.
Fully half of the album are covers like "Hush" and The Beatles' "Help" and the epic, "Prelude to Happiness/I'm So Glad" and they show that the group's solid understanding of dynamics and their skills as musicians are unquestionable. Their originals are a little less inspiring but they could never be called failures. Especially "Mandrake Root" whose middle section is as inspired an LSD trip as anything the Moody Blues ever put out. Just listening to it the first time I want to shoot something into my veins. Doesn't matter what it is, so long as it's not a natural color.

A terrificly solid effort that is a perfect representation of one of the prevailing sounds of the late 60s.

Grade: A-
ASIde: Hush
BlindSide: Mandrake Root, Help
DownSide: Love Help Me