I have been waiting for this video for 33 1/2 years.

Deep Purple at the California Jam in Ontario, California.

It was the second concert I ever attended. An all day outdoor festival held at the raceway. Somewhere around a quarter million people showed up. No one knows for sure how many got in for free. The crowd was amazingly well behaved and the show went on without serious incedent.

I won VIP tickets from a record store chain and got to sit right down front in a fenced off press area. Set apart from most of the crowd. I was there early and stayed all day right down front. The whole thing was filmed by ABC tv and had a lot of crowd shots from on the stage, but haven't seen myself on camera yet.

ABC tv hosted the event to provide for their show In Concert and excerpts of all the bands were shown over several weeks. And the televised segments were also broadcast on FM radio in an early version of simulcasting. I've had most of the audio ( radio broadcast ) on tape since '74, and six or eight years ago a cd of the headlining Deep Purple set came out. It included one song that the radio had skipped.

But now finally .... The DVD with every minute on stage plus bonus stuff. All the songs including several other ones the cd also skipped. With restored audio ( not bad ) and interesting extras.

As for the video, like I noted, the whole festival was filmed by ABC and parts were shown late nights, but that was before VCR's, so nobody had a copy. Actually the video is not too bad. Standard broadcast quality of the time, but very watchable.

The Deep Purple set is OLD School Metal at it's loudest. They were in the Guinness book as the worlds loudest in those days. I wore ear plugs.

Other groups were:

Black Oak Arkansas
The Eagles
Rare Earth
Earth Wind & Fire
Black Sabbath
Seals and Crofts
The Chambers Brothers
Emerson, Lake and Palmer


Who knows? Maybe I am on the camera. 33 years of waiting. I gotta get back and finish watching it.

Crank it up !!