Sleeping On The Job

I love the early Deep Purple records with Ian Gillan on vocals, and I'm a huge fan of the Born Again album that he did with Black Sabbath in 1983...but between those two periods, I'm pretty much blind to what Gillan was up to. I know that he had a couple of bands going during that time, with the Ian Gillan Band, and then Gillan, but outside of the Mr. Universe album from '79, I've never really spent any time checking out what the man had been up to.

As I was reading Martin Popoff's New Wave Of British Heavy Metal series, I kept coming across the Gillan name. From '78 to '82 the band released six albums and countless singles. Maybe it was time for me to dig in and see what I'd been missing.

As I started to check things out, I came across a video for the song Sleeping On The Job. Like that, I was hooked. The song was great, and with the denim vest and long hair, the look reminded me of Ian's time with Sabbath. I knew that I needed to chase down some vinyl.

When I found a US seller on Discogs that had three of Gillan singles from 1980 available, I scooped up all without hesitation...starting with the Sleeping On The Job / Higher And Higher 7 inch.

Next in line was the No Easy Way single. Like Sleeping On The Job, the a-side here was from the Glory Road album.

This is another killer song, and I can tell that I'm going to have to get my hands on that Glory Road album soon. Another great single.

The last Gillan record that I grabbed from this seller was the double 7 inch pressing for the Trouble single. The song is an old Elvis cover, and isn't too exciting, but it is still kind of cool to add to the collection.

The bonus 7 inch contains three songs that were recorded live at the Reading Festival in 1980.

These three records were a great introduction to Gillan, and I'm looking forward to checking out more from the band.