Deep Purple Egyptian Cavalry

...an interesting title for what's been an excellent and interesting weekend...

First off the weather continues to be excellent - warm and sunny all weekend - warmest April since records began apparently...

Second off - the Egyptian Lancers are complete - and I think that (for me) they look pretty good. I paint to a "wargaming standard" so that they look good from the kind of distances that you would normally see them on the wargames table (well... that's the idea, anyway!) No individually painted eyeballs for me... I'm not a good enough painter and I want to get units on the table top to play with. The 3rd picture below shows you what they look like close up, therefore - plenty of washes/dry brushes.... J


Third off, this weekend was the long awaited Deep Purple concert at Brighton Centre.... been waiting for this since I got my tickets just before Christmas! Excellent lineup - at the time I bought the tickets only Styx were on the bill, but I found out a month afterwards that Thin Lizzy had also been lined up - the only fly in the ointment was the fact that my wife couldn't come, as we ended up not being able to get a baby-sitter. Talking about it on Friday however, and she had the idea of taking my eldest (12) which struck me as being a brilliant idea - so Sunday night found me and my eldest in the balcony of the Brighton Centre - eldest with eyes out on stalks as she'd never been to a concert before! J

So how were the bands??

• Thin Lizzy were good, but not as good as they used to be; for fairly obvious reasons. More than any other band (perhaps with the possible exception of Queen) Thin Lizzy has always been associated inextricably with their lead singer, Phil Lynott. His absence, I think, is strongly felt with the current incarnation... only two of the original members are present, and I thought the music was rushed, and a little bit "flash"... my little'un thought they were the best of the 3 bands though... so what do I know! J
• Styx are a bit of an unknown for me - I don't think I've heard any of their stuff - in the past I kind of lumped them in with the other big American AOR/stadium bands like Kansas, Boston, etc. who aren't really my cup of tea (I like my guitars a little more edgy and raucous). They are kind of like that but with a definitely wacky feel to them. Brilliant musicians though, just not sure I could quite get along with the wackiness...!
• Deep Purple - in all the years I've been listening to rock music, I've never ever seen Purple before so I was SO excited about the possibility of seeing them. I know it's not the the classic line up (no Jon Lord, and more importantly no Ritchie Blackmore), but Gillan was always my singer of choice in Purple (an out and out screamer...) Come the night he, and they, did not disappoint - they were brilliant! Lots and lots of tracks from the 'Machine Head' album, including "Smoke on the Water", "Lazy", and "Space Truckin'", they also did another one of my favourites "Into the Fire". The new guitarist is a guy called Steve Morse and he is exceptionally talented - he did a solo bit at the beginning where he did some of his own stuff, before segueing into a number of famous guitar solo's by other players (Hendrix/Iommi/Slash/Page etc.) that was quite stunning... superb... What was best though was the very obvious enjoyment these guys were getting from playing - this is not a dead band living off of old glories, they're playing because the want to, and they're also putting out new material that is the equal of anything from the 70's hey-day - if you get a chance I really recommend listening to "Rapture of the Deep" for example, came out last year and is fantastic...

All in all then a brilliant concert though little'un was a bit tired by the end, she's the only person I know able to sleep through a Deep Purple concert, albeit it was only the last two or three songs!J