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LIVE IN CALIFORNIA 74

Deep Purple

Proto-Prog


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Deep Purple Live in California 74 album cover
4.17 | 44 ratings | 3 reviews | 55% 5 stars

Excellent addition to any
rock music collection

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DVD/Video, released in 2006

Songs / Tracks Listing

1. Burn
2. Might Just Take Your Life
3. Mistreated
4. Smoke On The Water
5. You Fool No One/The Mule
6. Space Truckin'

Run Time: 119 minutes

Line-up / Musicians

- Richie Blackmore / guitars
- David Coverdale / vocals
- Glenn Hughes / bass, vocals
- Jon Lord / Hammond organ, synths
- Ian Paice / drums

Releases information

DVD Eagle Vision (2006 USA)
Fantasy/ Teltron S.A. AA2000 with the title 'Leipzig: California Live'

Thanks to seyo for the addition
and to MANDRAKEROOT for the last updates
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DEEP PURPLE Live in California 74 ratings distribution


4.17
(44 ratings)
Essential: a masterpiece of rock music(55%)
55%
Excellent addition to any rock music collection(32%)
32%
Good, but non-essential (11%)
11%
Collectors/fans only (2%)
2%
Poor. Only for completionists (0%)
0%

DEEP PURPLE Live in California 74 reviews


Showing all collaborators reviews and last reviews preview | Show all reviews/ratings

Collaborators/Experts Reviews

Review by Seyo
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Honorary Collaborator
4 stars Excellent Mark III concert promoting their latest album Burn in USA, April 1974. Performance is powerful, high-energy heavy rocking. Lord and Blackmore have their solo parts with on-stage acrobatics and mistreatment of their instruments, which culminated in Blackmore's setting fire to the Marshall speakers! The film is nicely shot from different angles (including bird-eye view from a zeppelin flying over), so the watching experience is much like in-theatre. The music set consisted of songs from their perhaps best albums, Machine Head and Burn. A worthy video that should be part of any heavy rock (and heavy prog) video collection.

PERSONAL RATING: 3/5

P.A. RATING: 4/5

Review by ZowieZiggy
PROG REVIEWER
5 stars This California Jam festival was recorded live by ABC-TV on 6th April 1974 at the Ontario Speedway. It is one of the most attended one-day festival. In terms of audience, 200,000 seems feasible (gross profit : 2 million US$).

It was not planned to release either a movie nor a record. Some parts will be broadcasted live on ABC televison (spread over four evenings). Audio parts of the show will also be broadcasted on some FM stations. A few performances will be released on CD and Video / DVD (as the one from the Purple). This is one of the last massive rock festival (there will be a CalJam 2 in 1978 with over 300,000 people attending).

The list of bands who were performing is rather impressive : Rare Earth (the opening band), Earth Wind & Fire, The Eagles, Seals & Crofts, Black Oak Arkansas, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Emerson Lake & Palmer to close.

ELP desperately wanted to change the order of appearance but couldn't. They had to show up AFTER the Purple and close the festival. As you will read in this review (but I recommend you to watch to the DVD), following Purple's performance that night was a daunting task ...

Ritchie will deliver a great concert but apparently he was not in a good mood that day. The Purple's contract mentioned that their show will start at sundown. Unlike Woodstock, this festival ran faster than foreseen. So, the Purple could start earlier. But Ritchie said : No, not yet ! He was waiting for the sundown like the contract mentioned !

One of the organizers went nuts and started to yell and scream. He even got the local sheriff to handle Ricthie. But he locked himself backstage. The audience got a bit angry, but after another half an hour the sun went finally down... I guess it was pure coïncidence, but on stage there was a rainbow coloured decor above the band ...

IMO, this is the second best Mark of the Purple. They really performed well on stage. They had released Burn two months before, so their show started with three new songs.

Burn (6'20): which is a great opener and will replace Highway Star for quite some time in this exercise. The version here is really great. You can hear (and see) the great vocal duo David / Glenn at work. Fabulous. Although this line-up was quite new (they started to tour in Europe early December 1973), the band copes well together.

Might Just Take Your Live (4'41) : gives its full power while being played live. It is far much superior to the studio version. Mistreated (10'14) is one of the best Mark III song. Its rendition here is a highlight. David is absolutely gorgeous in the lead vocal. Although I am not really in when blues is concerned, this one is superb. On the video, you can se a Zeppelin flying above the grounds of the concert... While Sabbath and Purple being there, it would have been great to get Led Zep as well... Ritchie's solo is magic. Full of emotion and power at the same time.

Smoke is played in its typical Mark III rendition : short Ritchie's intro, the song as such and finally a bluesy final from Glenn (that I do not like very much). Again the vocal duo works great.

You Fooled No One / The Mule (18'42) is definitely reminiscent of their MIJ period : the intro is Lazy for a couple of minutes, then you get the track as it appears in their studio work. During the guitar solo, Ritchie will get some riffs from Child (you'll have to listen attentively though to notice this). He is gorgeous here.

We'll get the traditional drum solo of course. This is a great moment (I love drum soli) of the Purple concerts. Ian Paice is probably not the best drummer (IMO this place is deserved by the fabulous John Bonham but he definitely belongs to the top ten. Great work again.

Space Truckin (25'13). Definitely deserves the title of a Californian Jam. I have never appreciated too much this looooong jam but on this occasion I admit it is a great moment of the wieldest hard rock you will ever see. In the beginning of the long instrumental part, Hughes has a dual job : he will almost start a jam on his own (with his bass and some ... screams) trying to recreate the legendary moments from the Mark II era in Strange Kind Of Woman.

Then Jon starts the musical jam : jumping on his keyboard and playing with his knee : maybe to impress Emerson. I remind you that during the band presentation in the recording for Live In London he will pompously present himself as Rick Emerson considering himself being half of a Rick Wakeman and half of a Keith Emerson ! Bonjour l'ambiance.

This extended version works far much better in a visual document than in an audio one. It is so great to SEE those fantastic musicians. This Space Truckin is the best one of all the extended versions I know (and I know quite a few, believe me). At the end of the track (for about five minutes or so), Ritchie is effectively destroying a few guitars on stage, leaving one just in front of the stage, throwing another one into the audience (what a souvenir for the one who grabbed it) !

He was P.O. with a cameraman who did not leave enough space for him to play so he will destroy another guitar smashing it onto the camera very aggressively. Finally he will continue his solo playing with his feet. About three minutes from the end, a speaker will EXPLODE provoking a serious blow. It almost reached Ritchie and even Jon who was on the other side of the big stage. At this time, there were lots of fire on stage.

It is almost a miracle that no one was hurt but the band still goes on playing as if nothing had happened ! This can only be compared with Hendrix putting his guitar on fire during the Monterrey Pop Festival (but it was not as wild as what Ritchie achieved here).

After these wild moments, Ritchie goes on with the fury and destroys another two loud speakers (not small ones) and throw them in the audience as well. As you can read, these events can only be noticed on the video / DVD, so really don't spend any money on the CD version.

This DVD is a great visual moment. For lots of reasons.

One can really figure out how well the duo Coverdale / Hughes is working. I already mentioned in my review for Burn that one does not have to think that Purple needed two singers to replace Gillan. It will definitely give another dimension to the vocal parts.

You can appreciate the added value of this duo in songs like Burn, Might or Smoke. Ritchie is really the highlight during this show (he is even smiling at times) !

Five stars for the visual edition. It is a great document in the rock history. There is of course not a single second of prog here.

Only wiiiiiiiiiiild hard rock man.

Review by Guillermo
PROG REVIEWER
3 stars This concert video shows at the same time some "good" and "bad" things about the early to mid seventies Rock music played by some bands: by one part, some very good musicians playing and singing very well, some very good music, and by the other part, also some musical excess and "make show" excess.

This line-up of DEEP PURPLE also had very good musicians, and this time with the addition of David Coverdale on vocals and Glenn Hughes on bass and vocals. Both have very powerful vocals and the combination of their talents was then a different thing to the band which obviously made it sound a bit different. Hughes tended to sing in a higher register and with some Soul and Blues music influences, while Coverdale had a lower Hard Rock register. Both are very good singers and the band with them in the line-up sounded different but good.

This concert video has some very high points, which are the songs "Burn", "Might Just Take Your Life", "Mistreated" and "Smoke On The Water", all very well played with the combination of Coverdale`s and Hughes`s vocals. But after all these songs were played, musical excess and bad playing started to appear, first with the fragmented versions of "You Fool No One/The Mule" (which also includes a very good drums solo by Ian Paice), plus the very long, very fragmented, very boring and very noisy version of "Space Truckin¨" on which there are several solos by Glen Hughes on bass and vocals (good solos using a wah-wah pedal, I think), Jon Lord playing two synths and the organ (still good in parts but also noisy), and with the "main star" in this song being Ritchie Blackmore`s fragmented guitar solos, making a lot of noise, and finally destroying several cheap copies of "Fender Stratocaster guitars", and also exploding some Marshall amplifiers and speakers. Maybe it was funny for a lot members of the audience and for a lot of fans of the band, and maybe for the band members too, but for me it was not funny to see this done in front of the TV cameras, with one of these cameras being also destroyed by Blackmore. A show of excess, in my opinion. But...it was the typical excess in those times... done by some bands.

Well. It was not a bad concert, but it was marred by excess. And apart from all the excess, this line-up of the band sounded very well in general.

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