Deep Purple – Made in Japan

I think it was about 1972 or 1973. My memory of almost 50 years ago is imperfect, but I was 9 or 10 years old, and living in Malawi in Central Africa where there was no TV and no music radio except at night when we could get some short wave South African radio or the BBC depending on atmospheric conditions.

A bizarre, utterly random Christmas present arrived out of the blue from my grandfather who I only ever met a few times in my life, and barely knew. He never sent gifts.

To this day I have assumed he walked into a record store and bought my brother and me a LP record each from whatever was in the top 10. I cannot remember the other one, but this Deep Purple record (of course I had never heard of them) was immediately imprinted on my psyche.

When this RSD comp came up, Made in Japan was actually still on the turntable from my last listen. But I did have to buy another copy as my father lent the first to his friends and they never returned it.

My wife can’t understand why I like the album, but it has been part of my lifelong love of music old and new.