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"Thank you for saving my concert" (The Jon Lord/Cry Free Bratislava12 April 2009, 02:14

Cry Free - Deep Purple's Favourite Tribute
"Thank you for saving my concert"
(The Jon Lord/Cry Free Bratislava Story)

The members of Cry Free were greeted with these words and a warm hug each by Jon Lord at the concert hall of the Slovak Radio in Bratislava, Slovakia, in the morning of 11 March, 2009. According to the schedule that evening and the following night the show called "An Evening with Jon Lord", which was performed so successfully in Budapest with a Hungarian orchestra (Danubia) and band (Cry Free) a week before was about to be presented, this time with the help of Slovakian participants. However, at the first rehearsal with Jon and his team, an unexpected problem occurred - the rock band comprising well-established professional musicians showed clear signs of unpreparedness. This proved crucial after Jon had unsuccessfully tried to enable them to play the set by giving the players all his musical support for about two and a half hours. As even all this hard work had only been enough to cover the first quarter of the complete set, it soon became evident that the two Bratislava shows would have to be cancelled unless there was a plan B. Since the orchestra and their conductor were doing a good job, it was only the band that had to be replaced, and there seemed no better (and basically no other) solution than trying to get Cry Free to travel to Bratislava almost immediately.

This solution seemed obvious for two reasons. First, the original plan was to have the Hungarian Deep Purple Cover Band play both the Budapest and the Bratislava concerts, and second, because Jon Lord was so pleased with their performance a week earlier. Of course Cry Free were more than happy to help out Jon and his crew, but it wasn't that easy to arrange, as the emergency phone call came some time in the afternoon of 10 March and the tour bus had to start as early as 4 a.m. the next day to get to the rehearsal in time. However, the band managed to postpone all their civil duties for the next couple of days to be available for Jon, and arrived at the Slovak Radio on time to be welcomed as some kind of "messiahs". With the experienced band the act soon came to life and all parties involved could finally sigh with relief. Jon's greeting sentence therefore was by no means an exaggeration, and he expressed his gratitude many times during the two days. At the end of the second sold out night he introduced Cry Free as "the guys I'd met in Budapest a week ago, and who came to help me out now, and with whom I'd made good friends in the meantime". At the short afterparty following the concert he even thanked the band in their native language, "Köszönöm!". ("Not at all, Jon, it's our pleasure! :-)")

During the two days the band had lots of opportunities to spend quality time and have interesting and warm-hearted conversations with the great man over lunch, coffee etc. He told the Hungarian musicians that he was planning to come back to Hungary for a few more shows the next year, and he would not be willing to play with any other band than Cry Free. Currently there are negotiations about taking this act to further Eastern and Western European destinations.

11-12 March 2009, Bratislava, Slovakia, "An Evening With Jon Lord" (114 min):