So, what have you been listening to lately?

[Highlander]

Daughter and me are even attending his book tour show in Glasgow... Alice is the musician she has seen more than any other it turns out...
She also attended the Geddy book tour...

Musically, presently have Tedeschi Trucks on a loop... all of their recordings...
Derek Trucks has soooo got that Duane Allman "vibe" nailed...

[Pilgrim]

Just scored tickets for the Fabulous Thunderbirds (June) and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy (August), in a local outdoor amphitheater this summer. 

[Ken]

I have The Afghan Whigs this Thursday, then Sugar on Sunday and Monday. Can't wait to see Sugar again.  I haven't seen them live since 1994, though I've seen all three of them in various things since.

[uwe]

How great they were ...

[uwe]

The new single off the coming new album, need I say more?

[TBird1958]

The new single off the coming new album, need I say more?

 I like it - That said, I would like it much more without the homogenized production, part of DP's charm for me is/was the obvious idiosyncrasies of the various members instruments, Glover's big, clanky Rick, Blackmore's Strat, Lord's Hammond/Marshalls. At least Paice still swings.   

[gearHed289]

The new single off the coming new album, need I say more?

This is pretty great!

[uwe]

Bob Ezrin's production of the last six (including the coming one) DP albums is hotly contested among Purple fans. My two cents: Purple fans haven't really been reared on "produced" albums, all 70s albums by DP were not so much "produced" as they were "engineered" - capture the best sound of the instruments + vocals and off you go, don't try to make the band sound any different than it does live (hence DP sounded - unlike Zeppelin or Sabbath - live always pretty much like it did in the studio). That is of course not Ezrin's approach, he tries to create cinemascopic aural landscapes. And while DP hasn't received as radical a makeover as KISS did with Destroyer, the change is still too much for people who where raised with Martin Birch and Roger Glover type engineering (Roger "produced" more than Martin Birch, but was still hardly invasive).

Me? I'm a Bob Ezrin fan, he's my favorite producer (never forget how I was an Alice Cooper fan before I turned into a Purple one!). I would have never imagined that he would work with Purple given their penchant for "only engineered albums", but work together they did and - look and behold! - it turned into a fruitful collaboration for the last 13 years. Since working with him together first, DP have recorded a new album every two years or so (in comparison: before hooking up with Bob, their last studio album - Rapture of the Deep - had been eight years old and they had basically resigned themselves to being just a touring outfit) - the Canuck must be doing something right!

I miss Roger's legendary Ric sound too, but he is on record for stating that he was personally never happy with it and thought his 70s bass sound had way too much overdrive and distortion - he longed for a clean signal (I guess the producer in him). And that is what his active circuit Vigier gives him though on the Ezrin recordings he is often using the latter's old P Bass (with strings that have - no joke - not been changed since Roger Waters recorded Another Brick in the Wall with that same bass and set of strings!).

[4stringer77]

If they did a video like the Stones just put out it wouldn't work as well. People would be wondering why a young Ian Gillan sounds like he has dentures. Good for them for staying active all this time. Can't say the new stuff does much for me compared to their prime years. At least they're not playing medieval minstrel tunes.