Deep Purple, The Best of Deep Purple

This is probably the umpteenth attempt by the record companies to cash in on Deep Purple's "legend" rock status, by contriving a more "accessible" version of their music in to a shrink-wrapped, easy-to-market, sugar coated "best of" package. The trouble these money-makers run into, is that for rock music, and especially for rock bands who pretty much shunned the music charts or indeed the 'need' for 3-minute pop singles, it was all but impossible to find a true "best of" without being completely subjective.

To the Deep Purple conundrum, this meant the would-be compiler of said collection would have to do the following:

Singles? Black Night (from In Rock), a genuine single, and did well; Hush (from DP mark 1, went well in USA but sticks out like a sore thumb as no longer being representative of them); Strange Kind of Woman; Never Before/Blind Man (the 'single' from Machine Head which bombed; Woman From Tokyo (from WDWTWA).

"Classics": Smoke on the Water and Highway Star

"Album-specific choices". "Speed King", "Fireball", "Space Truckin'", "Burn", "Stormbringer" "Perfect Strangers" etc.

plus some token stuff for the post 1980 stuff, and you're done, right?

Well sort of, but the album stuff in the main is only the taster, the real fun begins with the live shows and with the truly breathtaking musicianship that one can only fully appreciate when the shackles of time, production constraints and overdubs are released.

For me then, a best of that doesn't have anything from Made In Japan or In Concert or the earlier Nordic shows is a nonsense. Also (like trying to do the same for Led Zep), squeezing it on to one CD is a farce of the highest order. Their best rendition of Space Truckin is 18 minutes long (from the Japan 72 shows) and makes the 4'30 verson from Machine Head sound lifeless.

There's the conundrum right there - sticking to studio stuff and feeling obliged to have something from every album, and opting to have every single, instead of actually taking the time to find out (market research is easy enough) the true gems of the collection, means you are fundamentally failing to build a Best Of. You are building yet another so-so collection which is a near-duplicate of (from memory) 24 Carat Purple, Deepest Purple, DP Anthems, et al. How many iterations before EMI or whoever say, oh I know why not do a decent job of the whole lot and build a true collection of the best of?

Which for me would include pretty much all of In Rock and Machine Head, with as much live stuff as possible (including Maybe I'm a Leo), and probably excluding things like Child in Time, Strange Kind of Woman, Demon's Eye and (the studio version of) Smoke on the Water - if we had to find space. The live (Japan) Black Night would replace the studio version, the same treatment would be given to Highway Star, we'd have to somehow squeeze in Wring that Neck and Mandrake Root (In Concert), and you might argue anything post 75 would have to be sacrificed.

Anyway this isn't to say the collection we have here is poor, it is merely a very lightweight introduction and is probably not truly representative of the power, finesse and energy that this band possessed, which is best exemplified by examining the darker corners of their back-catalogue and finding the gems yourself.

You can bag Machine Head and In Rock (remastered editions) for a song these days; for any DP newcomer, start there, then grab an early live show and then doors really start to open for this music.

Deep Purple!!

If you haven't got any Deep Purple music in your collection, and if you are into rock, then you are missing out. Deep Purple are one of the great Rock bands from the early seventies. Not Glam Rock, but good old hard rockin early heavy metal stuff. Ian Gillan fronted the band with his unmistakable gravel warbling great Rock voice.

This stuff may be a little dated now by some standards, but take a trip back and remember where most of the great Rock Bands of today got their inspirations from. This is the original head banging grass roots stuff! From where air guitars were first born!

Hear Deep Purple at it's best and play it loud!!!! I dare you!!!