What this country needs is a good solid evening of toked-out, pill-popped rock - and that's just what these aging rockers will bring to the Ukrainian capital Oct. 30.
a record contract. Around the same time, Uriah Heep straggled in. Uriah who? I didn’t know these gloomy monsters of prog-rock were still alive, much less playing.
And of course, this spring saw sallow guitar god Ritchie Blackmore materialize, doing that whole medieval “Blackmore’s Night” act, presumably complete with lutes, zithers, lyres and lots of Olde Englyshe faery-dust atmosphere. Maybe, like Spinal Tap, Ritchie even had his own wee model of Stonehenge around which to prance in his elfin booties. The posters plastered around Kyiv advertising the Blackmore’s Night gig (“With Their Band of Minstrels,” naturally) were hilarious in themselves. Remember those images of a shriveled Blackmore peering out from under his wizard’s cap, a sour old balding Merlin, accompanied by a lantern-bearing damsel straight off the inside cover of Led Zeppelin IV? They cracked me up. I wish I had one of those for my house.
All that said, I’m glad Blackmore’s coming back to Kyiv on Oct. 28 with his legendary flagship group, Deep Purple, even if their cumulative age adds up to something like 857 years. Why? Because Ukraine needs all the heaviness – all the heavy rock – it can get. This is a nation in which every other adult male sidelights as a house music deejay; a nation in which chirping girl-pop groups seem to make up about 50 percent of GDP. Ukraine needs The Rock, and Deep Purple’s mournful 1970s sludge, delivered at around10,000 decibels of power, is exactly what the doctor ordered. They’re a massive challenge to the syrupy Eastern European pop orthodoxy. They’re not cute at all. They’re loud, crude, phallic, and ugly. In other words, they rock.
Think Ritchie and the boys, including the walrus-mustached Jon Lord on organ, will fire up “Smoke on the Water” or “My Woman in Tokyo?” You betcha. I hope lots of Ukrainian boys attend this show and get inspired to lose the samplers and get Marshall stacks instead. I hope those loveable mop-heads in Okean Elzy attend and get blasted back through the wall of the Sports Palace, and learn something about what rock music – dense, bong-hit, Quaalude-addled rock – is supposed to be.
Black Sabbath – or Black Flag – would have been better; but Deep Purple will do just fine. Get your tickets now.
Deep Purple
Saturday, Oct. 30
Sports Palace (1 Sportyvna, Palats Sportu metro, 246-7406).
Tickets Hr 70 to Hr 350. Concert begins at 7 p.m.
