Jon Lord

Okay, I'll admit that this blog entry is more reflective of my influences than necessarily the other guys in Rule 17. I'm the biggest Deep Purple nut in the bunch, so the passing of Jon Lord bothers me the same way losing any big musical influence bothers you. While I'm trying to avoid putting too much non-band-related stuff in this blog, I have to admit that without Jon Lord, Rule 17 would either not exist or would be musically somewhat different than it is.

Musicians are the products of their influences along with whatever percentage of themselves they bring to the table. Most of us could probably list 20 other musicians who influenced us in some degree within a few minutes. In that sense, the musicians from a previous generation almost have some level of parentage to those of us in the generations that follow.

When one of your influences passes on, it takes a bit out of you. In some ways, it’s more understandable when you look at the shocking and tragic deaths of young musicians, particularly when they seem random like the crashes that killed Ronnie Van Zant, Cliff Burton, and Randy Rhoads; or the senseless shooting of Darrel Abbott. But time rolls on and, I hate to say it, but as we get older so do our heroes.

This was the case with Jon Lord who died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 71. Granted, I’d be hard-pressed to call 71 years a particularly long life, especially in this day and age. But after his retirement from Deep Purple in 2002, and even after his diagnosis, Jon Lord was still making music...and it was good music.

Jon Lord is responsible for giving me a case of “Hammond envy” that has not subsided since I first started actively listening to Deep Purple in the early 1990s. To be honest, I started listening because of Ritchie Blackmore, but it didn’t take long for my attention to turn to the real weight of the band, which was Jon Lord hammering away on a Hammond B or C3 through a distorted Marshall stack. The power of the combination dwarfed most of the distorted guitar sounds of the day. The harmonic content generated by the tonewheels of the Hammond created all sorts of interesting growls and textures, which he would further accentuate with ring modulation, shutting off the drive motor and leaving the amplifier on, which allowed him to “divebomb”, and shaking the Hammond itself to make horrendous “Crashes” of the spring reverb that would place a jarring exclamation point at the end of a jazz or R&B influenced run. In this sense, he was something of a Hendrix of the Hammond.

At the same time, he was a very schooled musician, well versed in the orthodoxy of the classical world. The second Deep Purple lineup is probably the most well-known, although it’s not particularly well known for its earliest output, which was built around Lord’s “Concerto for Group and Orchestra”, which was followed up by “the Gemini Suite”. In fact, prior to the release of “In Rock”, Deep Purple risked being pigeonholed as a quasi-classical sort of prog-rock experiment. Ritchie Blackmore is most often cited as the one who brought classical music into heavy rock, but Jon Lord deserves at least equal credit. Due to the nature of the instrument and his musical background, it wasn’t at all unusual for little bits of Bach to show up in a blistering, 120 decibel keyboard solo.

Of course, Lord’s musical output greatly exceeded his pioneering work in Deep Purple, but that’s definitely the element that drew me in. I can’t honestly say that there’s another modern keyboard player who has had a similar influence on my guitar playing in the sense of composition, phrasing, even tone. Realistically, speaking as a guitarist, the guitar players in classic bands tend to get too much credit for the band’s sound. John Bonham had as much or more to do with Zeppelin being heavy as Jimmy Page. Geezer Butler should get as much credit for the sonic weight of Black Sabbath as Tony Iommi. And Jon Lord added much more weight to the Purple sound than Ritchie Blackmore ever did - even if “going heavy” was Blackmore’s idea in the first place.

So farewell, Jon Lord. He did good work, and even though he wasn’t young, when the good die we very quickly realize how much they still had to offer.

Upcoming shows

Well, things are moving along quite nicely here in Rule 17 Land. We’re taking a little “summer vacation” for the rest of July and the first part of August, then our schedule of a gig a month starts in August.

On August 18th, we play the Shoreham Block Party, which should be a great time. It’s out by Detroit Lakes, right off the lake - we'll have directions available. It’ll be a nice “end of summer” type of gig. It’s open to the public, so if you want to go just B.Y.O.B. and a few bucks to chip in for paying the bands. Chris’ other band “Relevant” will be playing after Rule 17, and that show will be my final performance with “Back For More”.

Moving into September, we’ll be headlining two nights at Rick’s Bar in Fargo - September 21 and 22. We’re really looking forward to being able to play a whole lot more of our songs, since every show up to this point has been in the one hour range, and we have nearly two hours worth of songs. The extra time, plus the extra night gives us the opportunity to play with song selections and setlists a little bit more so we can offer a different show on Saturday night than on Friday night.

On October 20, we will be playing at the Nestor, which was the site of the final 7th Seal show in 2008.
More details about other bands and whatnot are forthcoming. This will be another full night for us, and once again we look forward to being able to play more new and new-to-us material for everybody.

If you have any ideas for places that you'd like to see us play, just leave a comment below!

Gig recap: June 30, 2012

So, it's been a week since Rule 17 officially played the last note of our "first" gig. Special thanks go out to everybody who came out to support us, and also to Vindictus for inviting us to play.

So, the last note was played, and it was hot - really hot. The four of us sweatballs hustled to get our stuff off the stage so Vindictus could get rolling, and the thought immediately crossed my mind: this is totally worth it.












Economics being what they are, we probably broke even money-wise that night. We intend to ultimately turn that around somewhat, but the important thing is what the real payoff was. We had a blast, and played pretty well too. Ultimately, that's what keeps you wanting to play music. There's a lot of work involved, and it's easy to get done with a set and wind up thinking, "well, that went okay". Nobody does all that work to wind up with "okay". Nobody writes a song hoping that it'll be "fine". Nobody spends years of their lives practicing an instrument in hopes that their playing is "competent", and nobody spends hours sweating in a humid basement with the desire to play a show that is "good enough". The Rick's show wasn't "good enough", it was just plain fun.

That all being said, we are planning on adding some more dates through the fall. We are finally moving into the position where we will have more material than we need for a given night, and intend to keep adding to that list. As I mentioned in the previous blog posting, there are a lot of new original songs to work up. Further, there are a lot more ideas for fun covers to do than we will ever have time to work up. That means that we will soon be able to offer considerably different sets for different nights. On June 30, we did a 7th Seal-heavy set, with a couple of newer originals and a couple of covers. Other nights, we might play more covers, or we might focus on new originals. Changing it up makes it more fun for the audience and for the band.

After all, if it's not fun, why bother?