Remember the good times (Paice Ashton Lord) (LP 3439)

Paice Ashton Lord  Malice In Wonderland (CD, Repertoire Records, 1977, CD release 1995) ***  

Genre: Blues rock 

Places I remember: Real Groovy Records

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: On The Road Again, Again

Gear costume: Dance With Me Baby

They loom large in his legend (The Album Collection playlists): Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5

Active compensatory factors: Paice Ashton Lord was a brief supergroup featuring Deep Purple band members Ian Paice and Jon Lord with singer Tony Ashton. Weirdly the band boasted two keyboardists and a drummer! They were supported by Bernie Marsden on guitar and Paul Martinez was the band's bassist.

Malice In Wonderland was their only album. It's been reissued a number of times with varying bonus tracks. My version is the one with 5 bonus live songs.

It sounds pretty good - it's impossible for Ian Paice to ever be anything but brilliant, but some of the songs are standard blues rock fare, and Tony Ashton is of the gruff blues shouter school. That said, the album gets better after repeat listens.

Where do they all belong? An interesting blind alley in Deep Purple land.

Here in this prison of my own making (Deep Purple)

Mojo had a special feature on the 100 best music movies recently and The Warehouse was having a huge sale of DVDs. I managed to pick up a load of music DVDs, many of which overlapped with the Mojo list, for very reasonable prices.

Some like Deep Purple's Come Hell Or High Water will never be on a best of list. It's the 1993 reunion band filmed in England. The set list is skewed towards the album they were touring behind - the bombastic The Battle Rages On but Ritchie is there with the rest of the Mark II purps. Jon Lord is in fine form, as is Ian Paice on the drums.

Ritchie is in a moody mood - for some reason he has a spazz during the opening number Highway Star and upsets the applecart. For the rest of the concert he plays with a grim intensity, only moving from his stage right position to duck backstage whenever the opportunity arises. At the end of the show he exits quickly stage right while the rest of the band take their time and all exit stage left. All very bizarre. Having said all that he still sounds brilliant and no one plays like he does. Steve Morse is a gifted guitarist but Ritchie is stone cold original, even when he's packing a sad.

The band interviews are interesting (Ritchie is naturally NOT featured). Each band member selects their favourite DP album. Ian Gillan goes for Fireball, Paicey goes for Made in Japan but the rest highlight In Rock. I prefer In Rock to Fireball but for me Machine Head is the ultimate DP album.