Mostrando postagens com marcador Stormbringer. Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador Stormbringer. Mostrar todas as postagens

quinta-feira, 4 de maio de 2006

Rolam as pedras

Esta aqui embaixo é a capa do número mil da revista Rolling Stone, lendária bíblia da música pop. Vocês conseguem identificar algum membro do Deep Purple nesse onde-está-Wally? Eu ainda não procurei direito.



Vale a pena ler, no site da Rolling Stone, as resenhas de alguns discos do Deep Purple. Eles começam em Machine Head e resenham todos os principais discos até House of Blue Light (incrivelmente considerado melhor do que Perfect Strangers pela revista).

Como muitos de nós não vivemos a época original do lançamento dos discos (eu nasci uma semana antes da resenha de Made in Europe), ainda mais nos EUA, é sempre uma preciosidade encontrar essas coisas pra ver como os vaivéns do Deep Purple foram recebidos na época. Sente só, no original:

Machine Head - "Now, I can't be that much of a purist, because I'm sure that "Highway Star" and "Space Truckin'" took at least 20 minutes each to compose, but I do know that this very banality is half the fun of rock 'n' roll. And I am confident that I will love the next five Deep Purple albums madly so long as they sound exactly like these last three." (Ele comenta três músicas na resenha. Nenhuma delas é Smoke on the Water.)

Made in Japan - "While Purple refuses to take themselves too seriously, all of the solos on Made In Japan are technically superior to most instrumental melodramatics one hears from supposedly more serious bands."

Who Do We Think We Are - "Jeez, what an unsettling album! For the life of Reilly I can't understand how Deep Purple evidently lost the macho glory which made their In Rock LP such an Owsleyan mindfuck."

Burn - "Deep Purple's first album since last year's departure of vocalist Ian Gillan and bassist/composer Roger Glover is a passable but disappointing effort. On Burn, new lead singer David Coverdale sounds suitably histrionic, like Free's brilliant Paul Rodgers (rumored to have been Purple's first replacement choice). But the new material is largely drab and ordinary, without the runaway locomotive power of the group's best work."

Stormbringer - "While the two newcomers are just as competent as their predecessors (as witnessed on the title cut, one of the few real throwbacks to Machine Head days), the attempts that the band has made at diversifying its sound have been only partly successful. (...) Stormbringer still exhibits a few points of flash—the occasional familiar Blackmore riff or Lord organ wail—but in toto it's a far cry from the band's peak."

Come Taste The Band - "Like Blackmore, Bolin establishes tension between Purple's solid rhythm foundation and his own sustained clarity and agitated upper-fret playing. While Blackmore was largely confined by this style, Bolin employs it as only one of many. His more flexible approach to writing and arranging produces a more melodic and dynamic feel. With him, Purple's music has outgrown the predictability of the past. Textures replace a reliance on volume, and changes in tone and pace more frequently contrast and augment each other. There is evidence of give and take that Deep Purple hasn't shown for some time. (...) A visible attempt to experiment has expanded the group's music beyond the heavy-metal trap, and this could lead them to rediscover the progressive style that somehow vanished after In Rock."

Made in Europe - "Composed of five extended tracks from three European concerts in early 1975, Made in Europe chronicles the last moments of guitarist Ritchie Blackmore's membership in Deep Purple, and the opportunity to glean a few more bucks from Blackmore's currently rising status seems to be the sole reason for its release. (...) The only interesting moments occur on "Burn," the seven-minute opening cut. It's a well-done, solid rocker, but its fascination stems largely from how hard vocalist David Coverdale tries to mimic his popular predecessor Ian Gillan." (Acuma?)

Perfect Strangers - "Excepting the title cut and the rambunctious but less effective "Knocking at Your Back Door," the material consists of hastily knocked-off jams that allow guitar demigod Ritchie Blackmore to whip out his finger exercises in public. The band spent about six to eight weeks recording this comeback. (The current lineup is actually neither the original nor the final Deep Purple but the most successful – of "Smoke on the Water" fame.) It doesn't sound as if they spent much more time thinking about it, either. (...) Then again, did Deep Purple ever have more than one or two really good, concise numbers on an album? Maybe they're just making the kind of record they always did, the only kind they know how to make."

House of Blue Light - "Of the seventies hard-rock dinosaurs that still roam the earth, Deep Purple is one of the few with any credibility left in its crunch. The House of Blue Light – the second album by Purple's classic In Rock lineup since their return to active duty – is certainly a marked improvement over their lukewarm '84 comeback, Perfect Strangers, and, except for a couple of outright duds on side two, is as good as this band has ever been since its "Smoke on the Water" salad days."

O que eles falam de outros discos:

Os primeiros - "Their first two American albums on Tetragrammaton were mostly uninspired, despite some good cover versions of songs like "I'm So Glad" and "Hush." The basic problem seemed to be that the group hadn't really learned to write yet, so the covers were the best way to grow without losing the audience. Except that no self-respecting late-Sixties rock band wants to put out an album with nothing but covers on it, so we were left with a bunch of boring originals, half of them instrumental. When, that is, they weren't indulging in long "improvisational" forays such as their first album's bolero rendition of Hey Joe."

Concerto - "The pretentious side of Deep Purple found its fullest expression in their first album for Warner's, Concerto For Group and Orchestra, written by Lord and performed with the aid of Malcolm Arnold and the "Royal Philharmonic Orchestra." It was an atrocity."

In Rock - Deep Purple in Rock was a dynamic, frenzied piece of work sounding not a little like the MC5 (anybody who thinks that all heavy bands put out thudding slabs of "downer" music just hasn't gotten into Deep Purple).

segunda-feira, 13 de outubro de 2003

Ride the rainbow, crack the sky

A Deep Purple Appreciation Society botou no ar uma discografia ilustrada de Stormbringer. Foi o primeiro disco do Purple que eu ouvi, num vinil comido por traças (!), então tenho um carinho especial por ele.

Além das curiosas capas internacionais (como a argentina, em que o disco é renomeado Traetormentas, e da moçambicana, que é cor de laranja), a discografia traz algumas curiosidades que eu não sabia. Quais sejam:

1) Na Coréia do Sul, a faixa "Stormbringer" foi censurada e o disco foi renomeado "Soldier of Fortune". Será que foi por causa da "violência" da letra ("ride the rainbow, crack the sky, Stormbringer coming, time to die")? A imagem da capa, que tudo tem a ver com o título Stormbringer e com a letra da faixa vetada, foi mantida. Mais um exemplo de que toda censura é fundamentalmente burra.

2) O disco originalmente se chamaria Silence; a capa original tinha a imagem de uma mulher maquiada pedindo silêncio (é essa que vai aí do lado).

3) Quando foi decidido o nome Stormbringer, eles pensaram em usar a famosa foto que vai lá embaixo, em que uma audiência japonesa enfurecida destruiu a arena no penúltimo show do Ian Gillan no grupo. A imagem foi rejeitada por ser muito destrutiva.

4) A imagem definitiva da capa é uma pintura baseada numa foto famosa de um tornado nos EUA. Alguém conhece essa foto?

Há mais curiosidades sobre Stormbringer num artigo do xiru Giuliano Ventura para o qual eu dei uns pitacos. A coluna dele no site Backstage Pass é bem legal: chama-se "O Grito dos Excluídos" e faz resenhas de discos mezzo obscuros mas muito legais da história do rock.

sábado, 19 de abril de 2003

Hold on

O grande xiru Giuliano Ventura acaba de botar no ar uma resenha do "Stormbringer", do Deep Purple, no site floripense Backstage Pass. Stormbringer foi o primeiro disco do Purple que ouvi. A resenha do Giuliano tem um texto espertíssimo, e todos estão intimados a ir lá, ler e postar comentários.