DEEPEST PURPLE - THE VERY BEST OF DEEP PURPLE

Another failure to represent a definitive Deep Purple's retrospective. However, it's a better representation of the Mark II and Mark III career by offering 12 songs on one disc (over 60 minutes on vinyl?! Yikes!) The casual fan will be surprised by their usual hits on this album (Smoke On The Water, Highway Star, Strange Kind Of Woman, Woman From Tokyo, and Black Night) but the album cuts are just incredible. Cuts like Fireball, Child In Time, Demon's Eye, Speed King, and Space Truckin also appear. Mark III of the band gets its credit as well with their biggest hits Burn and Stormbringer. But, wait a minute, no Mark I tunes :( The sound reproduced on both vinyl and CD is also very poor. It probably was all put through a limiter, making the instuments totally out of balance. Guess by 1980, people totally forgot what DP meant to the fans. My advice, scratch buying this compilation and buy the album reissues. Wasn't worth it for me.