My Review Of Deep Purple’s Come Taste The Band

#32. Deep Purple, Come Taste The Band
A new album, a new guitarist, a lot of funkiness, and a lot of angry Blackmore fans. Tune in for the band’s only album with its fourth lineup.

 

wow, yeah.. i had forgotten how good this was. i'll be retrieving it from the "archives" this afternoon.

 

As much as I disliked Blackmore for his attitude, when he left the band DP just wasn't the same band anymore. The signature sound was gone.

 

It seems to get mentioned more than Stormbringer, put it that way.

 

Bump

 

Come Taste The Band is a really good rocker in my opinion. I'm a big Tommy Bolin fan as well as a huge Deep Purple fan. Stormbringer I never liked what a big letdown from the brilliant Burn. No wonder Blackmore left Glenn Hughes was obnoxious on Stormbringer hated the new vibe Hughes was doing.

 

I'm fairly new to Deep Purple outside of their two hits, Smoke On The Water and Highway Star I heard back in the '70's. Now that I got the In Rock anniversary edition CD several days ago I'm obsessed with the sound of the Roger Glover remix of Black Night.

I actually brought out the drums and added clarity to the vocals while maintaining that boxy sounding howling organ doubling the guitar. Man they knew how to record drums!

I'm not feeling it with whatever this Come Taste The Band is. It doesn't sound like what I'm hearing in Black Night. What happened to the vocalist from that song. Bring him back. He gives their sound a youthful Gothic vibe. I was never a Deep Purple fan but now that I'm hearing their non hits that sound really fresh, I don't think I can take their new stuff.

 

Purple could do no wrong in my eyes and CTTB is one of my favourites.

 

If you like this album for its funky-ness and great engineering I would reccomend the Paice Ashton & Lord album. It is by no means anything close to how Purple wrote songs but it's an interesting piece of Purple history. Ghost Story rips.

 

Thanks for this. I'm a big DP fan but mainly Mark 2 ( though love the Burn album). Saw Glenn Hughes a couple of weeks ago and he played a couple of songs from Come Taste the Band. Need to finally get hold of it.

 

I always had a soft spot for CTTB. But then, I've always had a soft spot for Stormbringer, so what do I know? I was too young to experience first hand the controversy over Blackmore's replacement so I never really had that prejudice against Bolin. It's just too bad Bolin had such an extreme drug habit. Age 25 is way too young and while his roster was already impressive, I can't imagine what else he might have given had he lived.

 

I just listened to all the YouTube links in that article. What is up with DP's constantly changing their sound? It doesn't even sound like the same band. Well I guess it explains all the drug addictions reading up on DP's history. I couldn't sit through that without being medicated either.

GO BACK TO THE SOUND OF BLACK NIGHT! Don't care if the bass line is from Ricky Nelson's "Summertime". Guess it's too late now that they're old. I just sampled their recent "Infinity". That's not a Deep Purple sound. They might as well give them self a different name. No one would know the difference. I know I wouldn't.

Why after 49 years am I all of a sudden attracted to this band? Certainly not for the "chicks" or to impress the cool guys! They had so much potential.

 

There were four different era's of Deep Purple MK II with Ian Gillan is the singer you liked on In Rock remix. I like MK II version of the band the best also. But all era's of Deep Purple have their distinct charm. Saw them live many times in the early to mid 70s. Try the live album Made in Japan, Fireball, Machine Head,Who Do We Think We Are, all MK II with singer Ian Gillan & Roger Glover.

 

All those different sounds I've heard from other metal bands from the '80's & '90's that drove me away from them and now I'm having to assume were influenced by DP. Or was it the other way around? I'm talking about the different attenuation, texture and balance of the guitar, bass, drums and vocals. What happened to the creepy sounding far left bass keys on grandma's Wurlitzer organ in Black Night? That freakin' has so much character!

Successful musicians just don't know how good they've got it. Obviously DP couldn't hear what I'm hearing 49 years later I guess. They just got to mess up a good thing.

You'll have to forgive me...what does MK II stand for?

 

Excellent review. Fantastic record. Shame the commercially available live recordings of this line up are so self indulgent and unfocused compared with MK III. Anyway ... for the less fully committed Purple fans. if you like the silkier, funkier side of CTTB then I would highly recommend GH's "Play Me Out" which is basically a soul album complete with "Young Americans" horns, loads of clavinet / electric piano, Norman Whitfield strings and Humble Pie style backing singers. The bass playing is of course fantastic. While the singing is top notch it does (with the benefit of considerable cultural hindsight) come with some slightly iffy vocal mannerisms here and there (I can't be doing with British singers overdoing the cod American accent thing) but you can listen around that stuff easily enough. Lyrically it is leagues ahead of most Purple fayre, musically it is really beautifully put together and (like Jess Roden and some of Frankie Miller's stuff) if you are not a big 70s soul fan then there is just enough edge to the album for it to still qualify as rock. Bootsy and Graham Central Station spring to mind at various moments and lots of Stevie (obvs). You can stand it up next to any of the great AWB albums. It's that good. Check out "Space High" as a starting point.

 

I checked out the Live album made in Japan on YouTube. Not the sound I'm after. Hard rock has to have a big bottom end kick drum that produces frequencies into the subwoofer regions but still sound like a natural sounding kick drum IOW hitting skins.

 

MK II refers to second line up change. Jon Lord used a Hammond organ run through Marshall amps so he could be heard over Ritchie Blackmore's guitar.

 

Well, of course it’s not the same band as on In Rock, nor does it sound the same. It’s only 2/5 of the same lineup.

You missed the mark, I think. The drug problems have nothing to do with the musical sound changing. As members come and go, a band’s sound is bound to change. It’s a natural progression. After all, we’re not talking about AC/DC. I can enjoy and appreciate the band’s natural progression in their 1968-75 run of albums.

 

Didn't say the drugs caused the musical sound to change. The change in sound caused them to take drugs.

We could probably start a thread that would go on for pages on the subject of listing bands that retained their original sound and style the longest throughout their entire career. DP would be on the shortest list for not keeping a consistent sound and style.

After this thread I don't know what DP's sound is suppose to be.

 

One of the greatest live albums ever. Get the DCC gold disc you'll hear the bass drum just fine.

 

Why is it there are no YouTube samples of DCC gold discs? It's not like regular CD's can't reproduce kick drum frequencies.

 

Back to the thread topic, I really like CTTB, I had the original vinyl back when, the first CD release, I now have the two disc rerelease from which I think the Kevin Shirley remix sounds fantastic as does the remaster of the original. I also have the recent purple vinyl release too, that sounds fantastic. It's a real shame that TB Od'd himself out of this world because Deep Purple Mk IV could have gone on to much greater things.

 

The 3CD set is the way to go. It's remixed and sounds wonderful but the price has gone up in recent years.


Live in Japan by Deep Purple, Deep Purple (Rock) (CD, Nov-1993, 3 Discs, Emi) | eBay

Deep Purple - Made In Japan // BEST VERSION EVER! RARE!! HD Gold disc DCC GZS-1120 (1972)

 

None of those two samples delivers the kind of kick drum bottom end you'ld feel coming from at least the 50Hz region. It sounds like a high quality recording of a garage band playing live outside at an arena center.

But I thank you for posting the link to what a DCC gold disc sounds like.

 

This album did nothing for me when it came out.