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The highlights of the spring season in retrospect (Pt.1.)12 June 2012, 00:33

Cry Free - Deep Purple's Favourite Tribute
The statistics have been publicized about the 21st annual Saint George Days in Sfantu Gheorghe, Romania, where Cry Free was performing along with some of the greatest Hungarian, Romanian, and international stars back in April as this year's only tribute band, chosen from the top 40 of tribute applicants that qualified after the "first round". Among the figures are some really astonishing ones, e.g. the total number of visitors being over 100,000 people, and the closing act (internationally acclaimed Hungarian classic rock band Omega) alone attracting about 50,000 fans on the Sunday.

The Saturday programme on "Stage A" (see illustration -picture taken before the show) inc. the Cry Free gig also attracted an estimated 35,000 people. Although being the opening act, Cry Free only saw a few hundreds of the thousands at first, by the end of their concert a decent crowd had gathered in front of the stage and in the neighbouring park as the exceptionally hot spring afternoon proceeded on.

Here's a video made by one of the two cameramen constantly working during the performance to provide the giant digital "backdrop" screen with live camera footage. The recording starts about 10 minutes into the show with the end of "Strange Kind Of Woman" and continuing to give you the complete "Perfect Strangers" track. The huge stage with the top sound system and the legendary soundman of Omega behind the mixing board enabled Cry Free to give their audience the illusion that Deep Purple themselves were performing -as fans, promoters, and journalists reported after the show.



Just a week before the Romanian trip, Cry Free took part in an exciting new project in the Hungarian capital city of Budapest too. After having successfully established their classic rock super-act "Purple Zeppelin Jam", in which they pay tribute to two of the greatest bands in the history of rock 'n roll, they now teamed up with one of the most popular Hungarian Queen cover bands for a similar project.

The acoustic group called "Queen Unplugged Project" became "Queen Rocks" for this night performing some of the hardest songs ever written by the legendary English melodic rockers. The show was therefore aptly named "Deep Purple & Queen In Rock", which also gave a hint about what Cry Free was about to play. Yes, indeed, after 6 years they performed the complete "Deep Purple In Rock" album material once again like they did back in 2006 as can be heard and seen on their official CD/DVD "Ten Years In Rock".

And to lead up to that exciting Purple album, they opened with a rare "mk1" set including songs like "Hush", "Wring That Neck", and for the first time, "Mandrake Root" in its extended live version, which was to lay the foundation for later DP masterpieces like "Lazy".

Watch this space as we will post a short video of that event very soon too, and we will also give you Pt.2. of this report.