BURN

Although I have always enjoyed Deep Purple, I hadn't bothered buying much of their albums but sporadically, probably due to a lot of my years spent on buying more obscure stuff, but since a lot of the obscure stuff is just costing too much (the Italian prog, for example), I had to concentrate on lesser obscure stuff, like the Doors or Deep Purple for some catch up work. Burn brought in an then-unknown David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes from Trapeze, and for many, it's an improvement over Who Do We Think We Are (although I thought that one was underrated and I enjoyed that one too). It's been said the Coverdale and Hughes had brought in soul and funk influences in the band, but that's pretty much toned down on Burn, but brought much more in the front on their next one, Stormbringer. I remembered as a kid hearing the title track on the radio, it doesn't get the recognition of "Smoke on the Water", but still full of great guitar playing from Ritchie Blackmore, and Jon Lord does some extended organ, and even synth solos here. "Might Just Take Your Life" really features a nice organ riff from Lord, but for the most part, a bit on the bluesy side (Deep Purple only proves how much early heavy metal was rooted in the blues). "Lay Day, Stay Down" shows a bit of that boogie influence, but at least Blackmore made sure it still stayed in the hard rock/early metal vein. "Sail Away" is a bit on the funky side that I really like. The vocals sound deeper, so it's probably not Coverdale singing this one, but Hughes. Check out that big fat Moog solo Lord gives, it's brief, but you could imagine that coming out of a modular Moog, although it was a MiniMoog (except for ELP, and some electronic artists like Tangerine Dream, the modular Moog was pretty much passe in the prog rock world by 1974). "Mistreated" is another one of those bluesy numbers, while "A" 200", clearly John Lord's is much more in the prog vein, and is the one song that progheads are most likely to enjoy. But then Deep Purple did help to pioneer metal, but they frequently had prog tendencies from time to time. This particular song even had a little bit of Mellotron (Mellotron also appeared on Stormbringer, as well as The Book of Taleisyn on "Anthem"). While it's clear Burn isn't as great as the best Mark II lineup albums, it certainly is still very much well worth having, and still sounds like a Deep Purple album.