Another heavy metal icon band that I hadn’t seen before. Deep Purple put on a great show although the crowd had significantly decreased in size after Judas Priest left the stage. I am not sure why people decided to leave before the headline band came on, but I suppose most of them must have been Judas Priest fans…although to be a Judas Priest fan and not appreciate the music and 50 year history of Deep Purple is beyond me, but it did leave a lot of elbow room with empty seats around me.
I did the meet and greet with Deep Purple and I have to say that this was one of the most disorganized VIP experiences I have ever done. All I got was an email saying pick-up the tickets and more information at the ticket counter when I arrive. When I went to ticket counter, they had no idea about any VIP experience so I decided to do what I usually do when I can’t get good instructions, I waited to see what other folks did. Unfortunately this VIP group was very small and I wasn’t able to observe any further direction. After waiting for about an hour and asking a number of different venue staff, I was told to go inside and meet the VIP host, which of course was nowhere to be found… I was able to find other VIP guests and collectively we found out where and when to meet. Once we got organized, it was very nice meeting the members of Deep Purple, having them talk with us, sign our badges and take photos with us.
Judas Priest came on around 8:30pm I think and played for about an hour to an hour and a half. They played a lot of music off of their newest album and then saved all of their classics to a massive set at the end of their show. Rob Halford still sings and screams as he used to and the band (minus K.K. Downing and Guess Tipton) rocked as usual. Every time I have seen these guys, I am always blown away by their power and performance, last night was no exception. I enjoyed the classics like Living After Midnight, Hell Bent for Leather, You Got Another Think Comin’ and Breaking the Law, but it seemed the crowd favorite was PainKiller.
Deep Purple didn’t come on until around 9:30, but also put on a great show. This was the first time I had seen them and it started off great with them opening with my favorite sang, Highway Star. I really enjoyed the keyboard solo by Don Airey…such an amazing sound. I think one of my favorite songs of the night Lazy and Space Trucking’ although Knocking at Your Backdoor and Perfect Strangers were also awesome and then of course their all time classic Smoke on The Water was pretty incredible.
All in all, a good show…not great, but worth the trip down from Seattle.
bryonsconcertblog 
Leave a Reply