Nobody's Perfect O Fallon MO

Nobody's Perfect

Deep Purple

Mercury Records, 1988

REVIEW BY: Christopher Thelen

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 05/24/1998

After successfully reuniting in 1984 to record Perfect Strangers and following it up with a solid effort inThe House Of Blue Light, one wondered what possessed DeepPurple to put out a double live album.

Sure, it had been over 15 years since the Mk. II lineup of IanGillen, Ritchir Blackmore, Jon Lord, Roger Glover and Ian Paice hadgraced the world with Made In Japan, still one of the finest live albums I've everheard. And sure, they probably wanted to put out something that thenew generation of Deep Purple fans would cherish for years tocome.

It is therefore ironic that they chose to title their 1988 liverelease Nobody's Perfect, 'cause this album is far from that.

The bulk of the album is made up of tracks that the older DeepPurple fans grew up with: "Space Truckin'," "Smoke On The Water,""Strange Kind Of Woman". However, seeing that Blackmore and crewhad been playing these songs for the better part of two decades, itwas almost as if they could play them in their sleep - andsometimes, that's exactly how these live versions sound. Thealbum's opener, "Highway Star," features Deep Purple blazingthrough the track, leaving a sloppy trail along the way. I wouldhave much rather had them play it at a normal tempo and hadBlackmore actually work on providing a cleaner guitar solo. (Andquite frankly, I would have rather heard the full version of "Woman From Tokyo," thank you verylittle!)