{"id":24602,"date":"2025-04-15T19:11:07","date_gmt":"2025-04-15T23:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/?p=24602"},"modified":"2025-04-15T19:25:09","modified_gmt":"2025-04-15T23:25:09","slug":"d-purp-rawks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/d-purp-rawks\/","title":{"rendered":"D-Purp RAWKS!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For some bizarre reason, Doof <a href=\"http:\/\/ace.mu.nu\/archives\/414434.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">elected to embed the milder, tamer studio version<\/a> of Deep Purple\u2019s crowning achievement, \u201cHighway Star.\u201d This inexplicable lapse has forced my hand; there\u2019s nothing else for it but to showcase the best-EVAR version, from the greatest live album in rock \u2019n\u2019 roll history: the incomparable, nigh-flawless\u00a0<em>Made In Japan<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7zKAS7XOWaQ?si=W4fKLup9Udbewklh\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/center><\/p>\n<p>I find this video double-plus awesome because the guy had gumption enoughl to take a stab at syncing up the <em>Made In Japan<\/em> audio track with video footage from the <em>Live In Copenhagen<\/em> DVD, which he did a bang-up job of too, IMHO. Regarding the <em>Made In Japan<\/em> album, what&#8217;s there to say? It still brings classic 70s hard-rock aficionados nearly to tears of joy with every successive listen. No overdubs whatsoever; recorded on a half-assed, el cheapo recording\/mixing lashup (8 track? Dude, SRSLY?); an apathetic, indifferent attitude towards the project from the band members\u2014who could possibly expect anything <em>remotely<\/em> good to come of this incipient disaster?<\/p>\n<p>Then the album dropped, and a waiting world hardly even knew what hit it. <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Made_in_Japan_(Deep_Purple_album)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Check it<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The band had mixed feelings about the album. Gillan was critical of his own performance, yet impressed with the quality of the recording, while Lord listed it as his favourite Deep Purple album, saying, &#8220;The band was at the height of its powers. That album was the epitome of what we stood for in those days.&#8221; &#8220;It&#8217;s still probably the best live rock &#8216;n&#8217; roll album ever made,&#8221; declared Paice, who suggested that the shows were some of the group&#8217;s best. &#8220;And that&#8217;s putting everything Led Zeppelin have done, anything Black Sabbath may have done, Bad Company, Free&#8230; As a tour de force of innovation and living on the edge and great playing with a fantastic sound, nothing comes close.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The response from critics was favourable. Rolling Stone&#8217;s Jon Tiven wrote that &#8220;Made in Japan is Purple&#8217;s definitive metal monster, a spark-filled execution &#8230; Deep Purple can still cut the mustard in concert&#8221;. Subsequently, a 2012 readers&#8217; poll in the magazine declared the album to be the sixth best live album of all time, adding the band have performed &#8220;countless shows since in countless permutations, but they&#8217;ve never sounded quite this perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Recent reviews have been equally positive. AllMusic&#8217;s William Ruhlmann considered the album to be &#8220;a definitive treatment of the band&#8217;s catalog and its most impressive album\u201d. Rock author Daniel Bukszpan claimed the album is &#8220;widely acknowledged as one of the greatest live albums of all time\u201d. Goldmine magazine said the album &#8220;defined Deep Purple even as it redefined the concept of the live album.&#8221; Deep Purple author Dave Thompson wrote &#8220;the standing of Deep Purple&#8217;s first (and finest) live album had scarcely diminished in the quarter-century since its release&#8221;.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Myself, I bought &#8230;<em>Japan<\/em>\u00a0at my uncle\u2019s drugstore in 1974, when I was all of 14 years old. I loved it then, I still love it now, and across all the intervening decades (!) have neither stopped playing it nor gotten tired of hearing it. Drop the needle anywhere you like, you won\u2019t be disappointed; there\u2019s not a dud song or performance to be found. Incredibly, the allocated recording budget for D-Purp\u2019s <em>magnum opus<\/em> was a measly $3,000, which trifling sum translated to \u00a349,995 as of 2023.<\/p>\n<p>As time rolled ever on, a major label would blandly shell out a few hundred G&#8217;s just to have an upper-tier band hump their gear into the tracking room without so much as batting an eyelash. Now, with the lightning-fast proliferation of PCs, digital recording, and affordable home-studio equipment, the music-biz landscape has undergone yet another radical shift.<\/p>\n<p>As for <em>Made In Japan<\/em>, all in all it&#8217;s pretty dang impressive for an album that still enjoys brisk sales today, as it has throughout the 50-plus years since its initial release. Looked at from that angle, \u201cimpressive\u201d doesn\u2019t even BEGUN to cover it, wouldn\u2019tcha say?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For some bizarre reason, Doof elected to embed the milder, tamer studio version of Deep Purple\u2019s crowning achievement, \u201cHighway Star.\u201d This inexplicable lapse has forced my hand; there\u2019s nothing else for it but to showcase the best-EVAR version, from the greatest live album in rock&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"easywp-readmore\"><a class=\"read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/d-purp-rawks\/\">Would you like to know more?<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  D-Purp RAWKS!<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,169,118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brilliant","category-classic-rock","category-guitars-and-those-who-sling","wpcat-20-id","wpcat-169-id","wpcat-118-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24602"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24606,"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24602\/revisions\/24606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}