What is it with these classic rock bands these days? Deep Purple is a band with very few popular songs, and not a band that should be playing at 17,000 capacity amphitheaters more than forty years into their career. Don’t get me wrong, Machine Head is an amazing album, but other than that I’m not sure what Deep Purple is good for.
Let’s start with the venue: the show was at the Molson Amphitheater (which as I mentioned before is HUGE), a venue that was around four times too big for this show. I’d say there were only around 4,000 people there and throughout the show all I was thinking was “how are they making any money?”.
Then comes lead singer Ian Gillian. Although he appears to be in good physical shape, especially for somebody as old as he is, his voice has gotten very nasally to the point where you can’t bare it after a few songs. He would also leave the stage for long periods of time (up to almost fifteen minutes) during instrumental breaks and then come back when he had to sing a line. I don’t know what he was doing backstage during all of his little breaks but this definitely took away from the show.
The band also only played for 90 minutes which is an atrocity considering how much the tickets cost. Any classic rock band playing massive venues like that should play for a minimum of 105 minutes plus an encore.
I highly recommend that you don’t go see Deep Purple. I came away from the show feeling like I’d wasted my money, especially for only two of the five members being original…
Overall: 4/10
