Deep Purple - Shades Of Deep Purple (Remastered) (Music CD)

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The usual perception of early Deep Purple is that they was a band with a lot of potential in search of a direction. And that might be true of their debut LP, put together in three days of sessions in May of 1968, but Shades of Deep Purple is still a hell of an album. From the opening bars of "And the Address," it's clear that they'd gotten down the fundamentals of heavy metal from day one, and at various points, the electricity and the beat just surge forth in ways that were startlingly new in the summer of 1968. Ritchie Blackmore never sounded less at ease as a guitarist than he does on this album, and the sound mix doesn't exactly favor the heavier side of his playing, but the rhythm section of Nick Simper and Ian Paice rumbles forward, and Jon Lord's organ flourishes, weave classical riffs and unexpected arabesques into "I'm So Glad," which sounds rather majestic here. "Hush" was the number that most people knew at the time (it was a hit single in America), and it is a smooth, crunchy interpretation of the Joe South song. But nobody could have been disappointed with the rest of this record -- one can even hear the very distant origins of "Smoke on the Water" in "Mandrake Root" once one gets past the similarities to Jimi Hendrix's "Foxy Lady"; by the song's extended finale, they sound more like the Nice.