IAN GILLAN - CAIRD HALL - 1979

On this night 30 years ago, Ian Gillan was on stage at the Caird Hall.

In the mid 70's he made a couple of decent jazzy funk-rock albums that took him away from the heavy metal sound of Deep Purple. However, by the late 70's he was getting back into that heavy rock mode he is normally associated with and this show in Dundee was the "let's rock this joint" variety!

By the way, the special guest supporting was Randy California, the guitarist from legendary USA band, Spirit.

DEEP PURPLE - CAIRD HALL - 1974

On this day 35 years ago, Deep Purple were in town.

There was a real buzz around the Dundee gig because this was the first night of a brand new UK tour after having a huge success touring the States prior.
Deep Purple also had 2 new members making their British debut live on stage, David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes.
This in turn attracted the attention of the national music press, the show ending up receiving major coverage in both the NME and Melody Maker the following week.
Both music papers go into a lot of detail behind the scenes while following the band around. Interviewing them in the Tay Hotel for example.
I've chosen to showcase an edited extract from the MM write-up which concentrates just on the gig itself.
You can click on the review above to read the enlarged version.
Both Deep Purple and the Dundee crowd are highly praised on the night!
Incidentally, support band from New York, Elf, were also making their UK debut on stage.
Although I wasn't at this concert, word next day in school was that Deep Purple were so loud, chunks of plaster fell from the ceiling!
I do remember buying their single "Fireball" in 1971 when I was 13, after seeing them perform on Top of the Pops.
You don't usually think of such monsters of rock having been in the pop charts!
The singer in Elf was Ronnie James Dio, who a year or so later teamed up with Deep Purple guitar legend, Ritchie Blackmore to form another rock outfit, Rainbow, who I did manage to catch live at the Glasgow Apollo.