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2011 out, 2012 in10 January 2012, 12:26
And the new rockin' CF year is just about to start, as it is only 3 weeks till the big jubilee show commemorating the 25th anniversary of the first ever Deep Purple concert in Hungary as well as celebrating the 16th birthday of Cry Free takes place. The event is joined by one of the most prominent Hungarian rock music webzines, Hard Rock Magazine, which asked permission from the band to hold their annual year opening (tribute) festival together with Cry Free's unique "Deep Purple Budapest 1987 tribute" show. This way the project grew even larger turning into a huge carnival festival featuring four bands headlined by Cry Free.
But we have a tradition here at cryfree.hu that in the first days of the new year, before looking into the future, we always take some time to look back on the previous year too.
The year 2011 started with Cry Free's 15-year anniversary show, which featured a long row of special guests inc. the band's old members, and a unique setlist which contained their only self-composed song written 14 years before and a whole bunch of non-DP birthday surprises ranging from "Breed" by Nirvana to the fantastic "Gethsemane" from Jesus Christ Superstar.
Early April saw the band in Russia alongside Jon Lord once again for their second Russian tour together, which now included even more venues from the Black Sea all the way up to the Baltic Sea. Afterwards cryfree.hu made such a successful video diary of the tour, that it even won Maestro Lord's acknowledgement. The film attracted nearly 5,000 viewers worldwide within a few months, and if you happened to miss it by any chance, don't miss it now.
The English rock legend and the Hungarian musicians met again in June at the Gastroblues Festival (featuring the likes of Glenn Hughes in earlier years), and although this time Lord's show featured his old friends & colleagues from his long career (inc. Pete York, Colin Hodgkinson, and Miller Anderson) under the flag of the blues, so he didn't get to jam with his Hungarian buddies, there was some CF relevance again. Jon's instrument and backline was provided by Cry Free's keyboardist, Norbert Soós, who's the proud owner of a Hammond C3 organ and two 760 Leslie cabinets (Lord's original Cal Jam setup). Like every year, the Gastroblues event proved to be a rather uplifting experience with a great show from Cry Free and a fantastic one from the Lord of the Hammond, although many in the crowd missed the thrilling combination of the two.
Two months later, however, a really terrifying piece of news shocked the world of classic rock fans; it turned out that Jon Lord was fighting the disease we dread most: cancer. We had to wait really long for some sort of consolation until the great man's optimistic new year message posted a few days ago finally did shine the light of hope on us. You can read his words here.
Cry Free dedicated his unusual programme ("California Jam 2011") of its usual performance at the annual Halasztelek Rock Festival to Jon, wishing him full recovery, and Norbert's extra efforts of preparing an outstandingly authentic keyboard performance brought along a smoking hot result, and not only because he did set his organ on fire at the end of the show. Cryfree.hu's little "film studio" was also "on fire", as we'd planned to edit and produce our video within a few days from all the material that the 5 cameras had recorded to present it fresh and hot. We managed to complete it in 6 days, and during the first 3 months over 2000 viewers saw it.
This was not the end of the series of videos, however, as "Purple Zeppelin Jam", the big year-closing project of Cry Free, which goes beyond the barriers of a traditional DP tribute, really deserved filming as well. Continuing the successful production method of "California Jam 2011", we used a whole bunch of cameras again (this time six), and released the video on youtube right after "the second flight of the purple airship". The film featuring some of the biggest Hungarian rock and blues stars as special guests inspired by the music of Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin also proved very popular, as it attracted more than a thousand viewers within a couple of weeks.
And as to our lovely virtual home, cryfree.hu, we mustn't forget that it was last summer that we completed the two-year-plus process during which we totally renewed the Cry Free page inside and outside, establishing one of the most modern and most elegantly rockin' websites in the world of tribute bands. A little while later, following the sign of times, we added another new feature, i.e. direct links to all the popular community web pages, allowing fans to share CF contents by simply clicking one button.
In the meantime, the band weren't idle either; they played 34 concerts in 4 countries even passing the mile stone of the remarkable 400th performance, which took place in Germany in November. As the videos above show, unlike most other tribute bands, these guys don't take the easy way, and they frequently come up with all new setlists to keep their act fresh for their fans, no matter how much work that might mean for them. This will not change in the future either and what better proof of this could there be than their first performance in the new year, which will feature 5 brand new DP songs in their repertoire as well as several classics totally recovered.
So the year 2012 will get a real kickstart on 27 January with the "Deep Purple Budapest 1987" tribute night, and we can tell you that the continuation will be no picnic either. So this year we're going to try to be more up-to-date here on the English language CF site as well to keep you updated on the exciting CF news, and to create a similar type of buzz that characterises the Hungarian page, which attracts so many fans of Deep Purple, Cry Free, and generally rock music, forming a big, friendly community.