Deep Purple

Florestan

New member
John, Cool I got you turned on to Stryper. They always considered themselves a rock band not a "Christian band" and don't care for that label. The Church gets all over them for what they are doing but they have reached a lot of people with God's message. My brother, a guitar player in a band (he was into all kinds or rock from the late 60s to death metal), and I sent him an album many years ago of the Daniel Band (Run From the Devil). He said it is cool how they can convey the message without being in your face with it (as in Bible thumping street preachers I guess).
Here is a good Stryper link besides their official stryper.com site: http://www.nolifetilmetal.com/stryper_cds.htm and here is an article on how they got going https://observer.com/2016/10/to-hel...yper-created-the-first-christian-metal-album/

Back to Deep Purple, one of my favorites is this song (hey, another one off Machine Head--that is my favorite album of theirs):

Love the harmonica part on this one!
 
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John Watt

Member
That is one of my favorite John Lord organ intros.
I was walking by so I went into "Old Speakers",
a retro style store with a big accent on albums and the tech to play them.
The owner used to work part time at the music store downtown where I met him.
I thought I'd look at a new stack of albums and "Machine Head" was on top.
Four songs per side, over twenty minutes per side, didn't seem like a good musical deal,
yeah... until you start listening to them.
Deep Purple never gave it all away on albums. You had to see them to catch all the music.

I stopped in at a social services agency that supports me,
and got talking with Andrew, an early twenties employee.
I mentioned Stryper and he looked at me right away, saying they were a great band.
I said I was surprised he even heard of them at his age,
and he started to describe how he and his one friend listened to them,
saying they were a Christian band with a good message.

Considering how loud Deep Purple were,
Ritchie could get a nice, warm and clean tone with a bit of a rasp, as for "Lazy".
That smooth, cool tone he gets to solo in "Sweet Child in Time" is one of my favorites.
When I saw him live he could sound like a violin or cello, really nice.

American Christian rock has a formula to it, bands sounding the same.
Most bands think not not having lead guitar solos is losing the "drug influence".
Not playing lead solos? That really is lazy.

Sons and Daughters of the Gael, pre-Scottish natives, my ancestry, have a different take on religion.
"Bible Thumpers": When spies such as Jesuit Priests started coming from The Holy Roman Empire,
they would be carrying a Bible covered in leather, framed with metal with a lock, protecting "gods' word",
and the Bible had gold and could have gems on the cover.
Taking this book and beating the Roman to death with it was called bible thumping.

"Holy Mackerel": Saying this as an exclamation is commonplace for many societies.
When The Roman Empire wanted to become The Holy Roman Empire, around 340 A.D.,
they came up with a symbol that was easy to paint on shields and other military gear.
Taking the Greek symbol for infinity, which looks like a sideways, stretched out number eight,
they chopped one side short and said it was a combination of infinity and the Jewish fish symbol.
Yes, infinity is not eternity.
When "Scottish" people saw that, they said it looked like a mackerel, a less desirable fish,
calling it a Holy Mackerel, and again, it was a reason to kill a Roman.
Just having wine on your breath or your skin smelling like garlic were other reasons.

Imagine Roman soldiers marching along and seeing a bonnie lassie wearing a kilt,
by the road, dancing in a very challenging way over some crossed swords.
As a Roman approached to do the Roman thing,
the girl would pick up a sword and kill him and then run away,
unable to be caught by men dressed up as soldiers.
The Roman army was made up of prisoners, slaves and captured enemy soldiers.
Their big tactic was to use a wall of shields and spears to keep coming at you,
not being athletes or warriors. That was also fighting with one style, as the British did.
If you avoided a confrontation like that, you could pick them off easily wherever they were.
A Scottish woman, having a Roman soldier come up to her,
would toss her baby at him, and as the Roman soldier reacted she would stab him to death.
You could be standing there with a long tree branch, fifteen feet, sharpened like a spear, in the grass.
When a soldier on horseback started charging at you, you would pick up the long spear and kill him.
And Caledonia, what Romans called it, is the only place where an entire Roman Legion disappeared,
with their golden Roman Eagle, the only loss like that ever suffered by the Roman Empire.
That's why Emperor Hadrian built a wall across the island to separate them.

And yes, this is Christian history for me.
The fight is still on. The pain grows.
 

Florestan

New member
Where it wall went wrong with the Christian Church was when The Roman Empire wanted to become The Holy Roman Empire, around 340 A.D. From that point onward, church and state were co-mingled to the detriment of the church and the average man who only wanted to practice the faith. I think the Amish give one of the best examples of what the Christian Church should have been. Because of the mix of Church and state, Joan of Arc was wrongly condemned as a heretic and burned at the stake.


Stryper wishes to not be categorized as a "Christian band." They were rockers first and after they were born again they kept on rocking, just they had a different message. They purposefully have gone with secular record labels so as to keep from being relegated to Christian book stores. My local music shop, Dearborn Music, even has two copies of Strypers latest album, God Damn Evil, in the racks.

In my opinion Stryper was one of the few, if not the only, band with a Christian message that really could rock right up there with the secular rock bands.
 

John Watt

Member
Florestan! You've got me thinking heavy thoughts before I reply, just because you started it.
You are totally correct about 340 A.D. and the Holy Roman Empire. But that was a Roman thing,
and existing churches of all religions kept going in other countries, even in Rome, except for the ones they denied.
If you're a Joan of Arc (Jean D'arc) admirer, and I am, have you seen the movie "The Messenger", starring Milla Jojovich?
That's one of my favorite movies and it's about Joan of Arc, a true miracle worker. I've got in on DVD.

I've been saying, now that so much of my life has passed before me,
that I should contact some Amish friends and see if I can become part of their community.
People wonder right away if I could live without electricity... but I know I can.

This kind of fits in with the video I picked before I saw your reply.
I was thinking that Deep Purple recorded an album with a symphony orchestra,
one of the first rock bands to do that, and since then there was an "unplugged" era.
Lately, we've been going through a return to "roots" music and instruments,
banjos, ukuleles, mandolins... you know what I'm saying.
So I picked this "orchestra" because they are acoustic, they are playing a classical composition,
and it features a "roots" instrument from a Gypsy culture that is just wonderful,
something I never saw before.
It makes sense that someone using two small mallets can do things on strings a guitarist can't.

If I was in a new Deep Purple, I'd want them for my opening act,
coming back on stage to play with the band for the last few songs.


I have to ask. You're saying Dearborn Music. Is that in Dearborn Michigan?
I custom ordered the speakers I use from Electro-Voice in Michigan, a long time ago.
They still look and work as new.
12 inch, 8 watts, 25 pound magnets, 150 watts, 200 watts R.M.S., full range with aluminum cones.
I custom ordered a new Marshall 100 watt head in 1977 when Marshall came out with a pre-amp and master volume,
and bought the speakers, making my own cabinets so I could use them on stands, one on each side of the stage.

I can agree with what you're saying about Strypers' place in Christian and rock music,
but you have to admit, The Doobie Brothers with "Jesus is Just Alright" got heavy with it.
This was their only song like that, but it's still a good one.
If you want me to agree with you about Dearborn Music, please, send me return bus tickets.
I'll treat you to a meal at Kentucky Fried... or 7/11, if they have kitchens and food like in Ontario.
We can sit on the curb with our Super Big Gulps and watch the world go by...
 
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John Watt

Member
I'm sitting here after listening to some of the tunes here, laughing at myself.
When I saw George Benson he was sitting onstage as an instrumental jazz guitarist,
and the only singing he did was going boop boo doo doo as he sang along with some lead riffs.
I got into doing that and got into harmonizing or singing words along with lead riffs.
When I saw Deep Purple that same year, I was impressed with Ian Gillan and Ritchie Blackmore trading riffs,
Highway Star being the best, doing it in Speed King when I saw them.

You can imagine how easy it was for me to have vocal and lead guitar battles by myself,
or sing along with my own hard rock leads, adding wah sounds, always getting off on that onstage.
And that made it so easy to play the guitar parts in big show-bands and sing other instrumental sounds.
I'm telling everyone I want to start a new band. I really want to get it together.
Let your brother know, unless you want to play bass.
 

Florestan

New member
Hey that Gypsy music is awesome. I have a Joan of Arc video. Very good one. This is it:
7175azDcuQL._SY445_.jpg


Joan of Arc is amazing. I read there are over 20,000 books on her in the national library in France. There is more historical documentation of Joan of Arc than anyone else up to her time (15th century).

There are op;eras on her. This is a good one, only about the trial.
118985052.jpg
 
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John Watt

Member
Without being able to watch and listen, I'm going by what I'm thinking now.

Leelee Sobieski is an actress I've seen in movies, thinking of her as being calm or mellow,
and Peter O'Toole is definitely an English actor, more Shakespearean than Hollywood.
Milla Jojovich plays Jeanne D'arc as a nervous and hysterical woman, driven by the spirits around her.
When she first shows up as ordered by the King, the professional generals and soldiers don't like her.
After not being able to attack a fort the English built on French soil,
she gets on a horse and does what is called a miracle, jumping over the walls of the fort,
and cutting the ropes that held the drawbridge up, so that suddenly, her soldiers could run in to win.
She runs up a ladder to climb a wall in another battle and takes an arrow into her chest,
where they said she was dead. They brought her back and put her in a bed in a tent all alone,
and she comes to, and by the next day is up, waking up the soldiers, saying they have to keep fighting.

Things like this continue until there is a large English army waiting to fight the French, who aren't ready.
She rides out to get close to the English where she starts shouting about herself, how god is on her side,
talking about the battles she had won, and the English decide to turn and walk away.
The French generals are laughing in hysterics after that.

an updated "Stormbringer".

coming out of rural France, carrying a sword,
Jeanne D'arc fights for her country in the name of her lord,
dark smoke is gathering as the English burn them out,
but after winning a few battles the French generals have no doubt...
ride the war horse, hold your banner, Jeanne D'arc is coming...
guitar solo

I'm laughing here... too bad it's not all the way to the bank.... uh... the left bank that is.
That's a nice statistic about Joan of Arc.
For the entire 19th century, Charlie Chaplin is the image that is most reproduced.


 
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Florestan

New member
I have not watched The Messenger, and from what you say about it, I don't think I will. The one I posted above is much better. But also I should check this one out as it looks like a good one:

91AvWcSTeaL._SY445_.jpg
 

John Watt

Member
The reason I like The Messenger the best is because of the fast paced, almost frenzied acting.
It's not a question about being on a mission, it's her driving force for living and it's very believable.
She might have mellowed out a bit after being imprisoned and tortured for a while.
I had doubts at first, thinking oh no, another supermodel who wants to be an actress,
but Milla Jojovich isn't worried about her looks and isn't posing up a heavenly storm at all.
She also starred in another of my favorite movies, The Fifth Element, an operatic science fiction.
She was also in another American movie where she plays a poor mother taking her child on a road trip.

And that Ingrid Bergman Joan of Arc graphic looks digitized, when the original is probably black and white.
I have to admit, when it comes to watching women on horses,
a Canadian TV series from the prairies called "Heartland" is the best, on for over eleven years with a Christmas special.
They really do work miracles with wayward horses, and other local beasts.
 

John Watt

Member
I had to scroll back to make sure this thread started out with Deep Purple.
This week, I'm seeing a lot of Motley Crue after a new movie came out about the band.
They had the flash and trash down to an arena act art form,
even if they ended being the Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson show.
Producers say the band wanted to co-operate and insisted on showing their reality,
so people could see what the drug and sex addictions did to them as individuals.
I'll have to go to Niagara Falls and see that on the big screen.
 

John Watt

Member
This is actually a little exciting for me, seeing something here I never noticed before, if I'm right.
And there's a strange coincidence, the Deep Purple song being off the album "Burn",
called "You Fool No One", and Jimi Hendrixs' song being "House Burning Down".

I never sang or played "You Fool No One" in a band, and that was back in the seventies,
so I decided to give it a listen, doing the album version, when I noticed this.
Around the three minute mark Ritchie Blackmores' solo stops being a melodic and sustaining thing,
with a deep tone, and changes to fast notes with effects, probably a flanger-echo-phase shifter,
that sound like the intro to "House Burning Down". Ritchie also does this again at the end.

The intro to "House Burning Down" is heavily produced in the studio,
and for me, it's one of two guitar passages that are the most difficult to play in any Hendrix song.
The other is also on "Electric Ladyland", part of the eighteen minute "Moon, turn the tides, gently, gently away, a Merman I would be".
Between playing left or right-handed or left-handed upside-down, and reversing tapes to get guitar passages,
no one guitarist can ever play the complete passages like the album.
When other guitarists asked me if I knew these riffs, I'd say I like to leave some solos just for Jimi Hendrix.

This is a busy, and for Deep Purple, funky song. It's got band vocals, and you can dance to it.


 
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John Watt

Member
I published the post before I went off to look for "House Burning Down",
and it activated the link, so I can't type any more without extending it.

An authentic Jimi Hendrix video of "House Burning Down" isn't available.
I'm not surprised. The Hendrix Estate is notorious for not letting anything go for free.
This is the intro and it chops off right at the end, where Jimi squeezes out the last two notes,
before he starts a searing series of not just descending chords, but fast, sliding down chords.
For Jimi, this song was inspired by the racial burning of cities after Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated.


 
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