I won't make any secret of how awesome I think this album is. Deep Purple's Made In Japan is one of my favorite albums and would need to be a part of any "desert island" list. As with other great live albums, this one captures the most famous lineup of the band at the height of its powers. Unlike many live albums in more recent memory, this one doesn't cheat. There are no hidden musicians playing behind a curtain, no audience cheering loops grafted onto the final product, and no mugging for the cameras (it wasn't professionally filmed). Also, it captures the tail end of a different type of performance period in rock history much more akin to jazz than the "traditional" rock concert, with solos that are not replicated from the studio version and frequent extensions, improvisations, and reworkings of and on the catalog. There is little audience participation in the sense that much of the cheering is done between songs (perhaps more a product of Japanese audiences) and little to no attempt by the band to have the audience do something to heighten the mood. They are generating their own heat. Compare this to the next lineup's appearance at the Ontario Speedway in 1974. Even though the band continued to stretch out and reimagine their material for the stage, it was already a whole different world.
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