BOC: Review in a Deep Purple review

[Jason Scruton]

 From the deep-purple.net website...

What saddens me is the thought that BOC "opened' for Kenny Wayne Sheppard.
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DEEP PURPLE
Ionia Free Fairground
June 17th 2005

Musically, one of the better concerts I've ever been to was the FoxFest
bash at the Ionia Fairgrounds in Ionia, Michigan, on June 17th, headlined
by Deep Purple. Nearly 100,000 were in attendance, a mini-Woodstock.

Broken Sunday, a local band, played a surprisingly (first time I'd heard of
them) good set from about 5:15pm-6pm under cloudy skies and 65 degrees. The
crowd started to build for Blue Oyster Cult, who played an excellent gig
that included a monster bass solo in the middle of Godzilla. I was
disappointed B.O.C. only played for an hour, because they're one of my
favorite bands. They played, in no particular order: The Red & The Black,
Don't Fear (The Reaper), I'm Burning for You, E.T.I., Buck's Boogie and
Dominance & Submission, among others. It was superb, as always.

Then Kenny Wayne Shepherd took the stage. I didn't figure I'd be into that
band much, because I'm not really into Southern blues rock, although
Southern hard rock like Lynyrd Skynrd, .38 Special, the Allman Brothers,
Outlaws, et al., I love. But Shepherd was extremely good. Shepherd may be
the best young blues rock guitarist out there, and that's no hyperbole. The
singer's was kind of like a Southern-flavored Paul Rodgers, if you can
imagine that. They covered a lot of vintage tunes, including a sizzling
rendition of Jimi Hendrix' Voodoo Chile. I will definitely buy their
albums, now that I've been indoctrinated.

Then, on came Deep Purple. The crowd was so huge I couldn't even see the
back of it from up front, stage right. Ian Gillan recognized me right off
and waved. The crowd went gaga. The set list was pretty much the same as in
Pittsburgh earlier in the tour. Gillan and Morse seemed impressed by the
tremendous size and enthusiasm of the crowd, based on their giggling early
on. Or, perhaps it was the shenanigans in the crowd, what with an amazing
amount of moshing and breast-baring, all of it, going on. Gillan joked that
the breast-baring was what got him into rock 'n' roll. He did some Tai
Chi-like hand movements and screamed his bloody head off. I'm just amazed
that if you listened to Gillan circa 1988, his voice sounded roached, and
now it sounds scintillating like the early '70s, but he can't scream or hit
the high notes quite as consistently as back then. But, that's no
criticism: he still sounds phenomenal.

Don Airey played better than I've seen him play before, and that's pretty
darn good. He was extremely creative, especially on the solo stuff, and the
variations from classical to piano and sound effects. Amazing. Purple has
to get more creative at promoting itself in the U.S. (or their record
company does). I've never heard one song off Bananas played on the radio,
anywhere, in this country. The last time the band got any real airplay at
all was with Ted the Mechanic ten years ago. DP has not really charted in
the U.S. since the mid-to-late 1980's, but is actually playing better than
then. Fans know the old hits, of course, and that's what brought them out
to Ionia. But I think the trick is to get on network television, like
Saturday Night Live, the Late Show with David Letterman or The Tonight Show
with Jay Leno.