Next to Steve Lukather and 'those guys from Iron Maiden', Ritchie Blackmore was one of my early Guitar Heroes and the reason i wanted to learn electric Guitar. Thankfully my parents owned several DP albums and played them a lot. Especially Made in Japan, it's a wonder that after 40 years and hundreds of plays the vinyls still sound great without any real scratches.
But the first i heard was In Rock and as child, the intro of Speed King, that loud guitar noise, just blew me away.
The MKII albums are classics, In Rock, Fireball, Machine Head and Made in Japan should be mandatory for every music collection, it was revolutionary, awesome and they even showed some humor (as in the weird, funny Anyone's Daughter and even though Gillan today says they shouldn't have put in on the record, i'm glad they did.)
I never could get into "Who do we think we are", it sounds....tired, boring and i can't stand Woman from Tokyo, my father loves that song and always wondered why i dislike it so much. I can't explain it, there's something about Gillans voice and the music i don't like. There are only 2 good songs imo on the Album: Rat Bat Blue and Smooth Dancer. The Anniversary Edition has another good song with Painted Horse.
I also enjoy the later Albums. Burn is awesome, Stormbringer has some good songs (i like Hold On), Come taste the Band is surprisingly good. Later it got a bit sketchy. Perfect Strangers is great, House of Blue Light has a bad production, it sounds too lame. Slaves & Master i despise, i can't stand Joe Lynn Turner. Battle Rages On has 3 good songs (Title track, Anya and Ramshackle Man)
I never could get into Purpendicular, while i like some Songs (Soon Forgotten, Somebody stole my Guitar, Cascades and Sometimes i feel like screaming) i can't stand the Rest and despise Ted the Mechanic.
Abandon...don't get me started on this one ("Any Fule Kno That", "Whatsername", "Bludsuker"...what happened here? When did Deep Purple turn into Slade and dislearned to write correctly? And who needed a bad Remake of the great Bloodsucker anyway?)
Bananas was pretty good and Rapture of the Deep was even better.
As for MKI: There are some great songs. Mandrake Root ist great, the cover of Help is really good but it wasn't that great overall. Too much like Vanilla Fudge without getting close to that band in terms of quality.
Subject: Re: Deep Purple discography 
