It is hard to describe what it was like being a rock music freak growing up in Mexico City in the '70s. In the late '60s and early '70s, the Mexican government cracked down heavily on the student movement. The most violent and well-known crackdown was October 2, 1968 in the Plaza de Tlatelolco where up to 300 students were massacred. The biggest musical crackdown happened after the "Avandaro music festival":http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Alley/6115/avandaro2.htm , the Mexican Woodstock, which took place on September 11 & 12, 1971 in the town of Avandaro about an hour and a half west of Mexico City. There was no crackdown during the festival itself but the conservative elements in the Mexican government and society conspired to put an end to live rock concerts in Mexico. It wasn't an explicit law but somehow they put a stop to live concerts of Mexican bands and promoters stopped bringing American and British acts.After this major crackdown, it was a bit of a black hole -- no concerts whatsoever, no radio play (other than pop acts).Some of the bands whose careers were launched by Avandaro such as Three Souls in my Mind (now known as El Tri) and Dug Dug's continued to play live but very inaccessible places like penitentiaries or closed parties. Luckily, music labels had enough marketing power to ensure some of their records made it to the store shelves. In the rock category, they would only release albums by bands with large following. With absolutely no radio play, they would try goofy marketing things like ruining perfectly good album covers with nonsense like this "Rock Power" graphics:(as a side note, check out the renaming of the album to Black Sabbath 2!)The rock music audience dwindled slowly throughout the seventies in Mexico City. It was in this environment that I found myself in 1974 (or so) getting hooked on music and starting to buy 45s. I was decidedly into heavy rock and my first favorite band was Deep Purple. I had a bunch of 45s of Deep Purple (and Sweet, Slade -- sometimes bands that never made it in US would have hits in Mexico strangely enough) that I'd listen to over and over again. I made my first 33rpm LP purchase that summer of '74 which was Deep Purple's Stormbringer. Deep Purple would remain my favorite band for the next few years during which I followed the band members splintering up into Rainbow, Ian Gillan Band, Whitesnake, etc. which was extremely difficult because the splinter bands albums were never released locally and only available on hard-to-find imports (about 5-6X the price of a Mexican release). There was only one major store near my house that carried imports called Hip 70 and the Mercado de Chopo, a flea market where people would sell used & import records, bootleg cassettes and the like. A close circle of friends were hardcore Deep Purple fans and we'd trade records for taping. All in all, the underground rock music fans in Mexico adored Deep Purple.The fact that there were such few outlets for music had some interesting effects -- some bands and trends would reach Mexico immediately where as others would reach a year or two after they occurred in US and Europe.Towards the end of the '70s, the clampdown eased a bit. Since it was never an actual law prohibiting concerts, they slowly just started happening. Once promoters started realizing they could cautiously bring bands, they started bringing some new bands but it was safer to bring established bands since there was pent-up demand to see these bands live. Deep Purple was an obvious choice. The problem though was that they had disbanded three or four years earlier. That didn't seem to stop some entrepreneurial promoter. One of the first large concerts that was brought to Mexico in late 1979 or 1980 was a phony Deep Purple with Rod Evans (from Deep Purple Mark I) as vocalist and as the only link to Deep Purple. The opening band was none other than the Dug Dug's stick kicking around since the Avandaro days. The concert was in the Estadio de la Ciudad de los Deportes (now known as Estadio Azul) about 10 blocks from my house. The stadium seats about 35,000 but for this concert about 10 or 15,000 tickets must have been sold. No one cared that it was a fake Deep Purple. Huge masses of people congregated around the gates before they opened. For some reason, the concert time was approaching but they still hadn't opened the gates. The audience started to become somewhat impatient and began pushing itself towards the gates. The pressure and pain on my chest was intense. At one point, I thought my ribs were going to break and I had to climb up on the gates to get out of there. Eventually, my friends Dominic, Victor, Pepino, Pike and others managed to make it through and sit down. The concert sucked and it started to rain. Everybody started tearing up pieces of grass from the soccer field and throwing it around at each other.Fast forward 26 years. The same Dominic and I are planning our trip to Germany to the World Cup. It is a month of soccer but we figure we should try to take in some music in as well. We search the web mostly for music we figure we can't see in the US but would be playing in Europe. After a few searches, I find out that Deep Purple is playing in Osnabrueck. I haven't really listened to much of their new stuff but since I have been listening to Deep Purple with Dominic since the '70s and going to World Cups with him since the '80s, it just makes sense. We trekked hours out of our way to Osnabrueck StadtHalle:There was no Ritchie Blackmore. There was no Jon Lord...but it was the real Deep Purple. And it will probably be my last opportunity to catch them