"It's a dark album. The sound is dark." - Jon Lord

It may be somewhat cliched to say, but Machine Head is my favorite Deep Purple album. It is a dark sounding album - very focused and intent, and some of the lyrical themes are less-than-happy (most notably "Pictures of Home"), but I find this album inspiring on many levels.

Last weekend I was feeling a little down. Not depressed, but I had some weighty things on my mind that I wasn't sure how to deal with. I popped Machine Head into the CD player as I was driving somewhere... instant comfort food for the soul. Now, I certainly wouldn't recommend DP's music to be one's source of spiritual guidance or the only place one goes for comfort in uncertain times (it is only rock'n'roll, after all), but the music is outstanding and I think some of the lyrics speak very well to some of the truths of the human experience that are common to everyone. (More on that in subsequent posts, as I share a few thoughts about some specific songs.) There's something encouraging about that, and there's something pleasant about the temporary distraction of a well-written song played well.

As I mentioned, the album is very focused. It was recorded in a short period of time (about three weeks) under trying circumstances. There seems to be a bit of a no-nonsense attitude in the recording, and the sound of the album certainly makes it easy to imagine it was recorded by a group in the hallway of a closed hotel in the midst of winter. (As much as I love Roger Glover's more "open" sounding mixes on the anniversary edition, I do not get the same feeling from that mix.) It gives the album a sense of immediacy that I think In Rock and Fireball, despite their excellence, lack.

The next few posts I'll be giving some specific thoughts on several of this album's tracks, although I don't know if I'll do them all.

Aside: special thanks to Stewart for his work on the format of this blog.

Why is this thing called "Purple For A Day"? The title comes from a bootleg of DP's concert in Long Beach, CA 1971. I've got that show on a boot entitled "Turn Around" (and it's very much recommended, by the way). Really, it just boils down to the fact that I like "Purple For A Day" as a title. It was either that or "Flying In A Purple Dream."

I always said I'd never start a blog. And yet, here I am. Why? There's a bit of a story behind that...

Most everyone who knows me knows I'm a big fan of the English rock group Deep Purple. In fact, I'm a member of the Deep Purple Appreciation Society - probably the only one in the greater Jackson, MS area. Maybe even the only one in the state of Mississippi!

On occasion, my fanaticism (for lack of a better word) works its way into conversations that are almost totally unrelated. Example: a few weeks ago I was watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory with some friends and somehow The Sound of Music came up. While we were talking about the movie, I mentioned that the Von Trapp family home in Vermont was used as the location for Deep Purple's rehearsals for the Perfect Strangers album in 1984. A friend said I could probably connect Deep Purple to anything.

I was then challenged to come up with a connection between Deep Purple and the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand. I had to do some research, but here's what I came up with, and what I emailed my buddies:

I couldn’t think of any connection between the Archduke’s assassination and DP, but my research shows that the Archduke was born in Graz, Austria. DP’s concert in Graz on the 1975 European tour was the first of three concerts recorded for what would become the Made In Europe live album (Saarbrucken and Paris being the other two). These turned out to be the final shows by the Mark III lineup before Blackmore left to form Rainbow. Made In Europe is largely pulled from Saarbrucken, but several tracks from Graz turned up on Mark III: The Final Concerts.

My friend Stewart, a recent entry to the blogging world, said I should start a Deep Purple blog and list that as my first entry. I thought about it - after all, I'm in the (slow) process of going through all my Deep Purple recordings and writing track-by-track reviews, to help myself remember which shows have the best versions of which songs, and I thought at some point I'd put them on a website. A blog would probably serve just as well for that. I was leaning against doing it, but since I had to register to post a comment on Stewart's blog, I thought I might as well go ahead. So here I am.

"I'd cut a long story short, but it's much too late for that!"
- Deep Purple, "Somebody Stole My Guitar"

Anyway, I'll start posting my track-by-track commentaries as soon as I get around to typing them up. In the meantime, I'll post whatever thoughts I have about Deep Purple, its various members, and related bands (such as Rainbow, Whitesnake, Gillan, etc.). I'll probably even comment on other musical groups as the mood strikes me, but I think I'll keep this blog limited to the musical arena.

And I'll be willing to try to find a Deep Purple connection to anything my readers might suggest.