Malice in Wonderland

As the 1980s began, Nazareth decided to return to the AOR experimentation they had toyed with during the 1970s on albums like Close Enough for Rock & Roll and Play 'N the Game. They also made a play for AOR viability by hiring West Coast session legend Jeff "Skunk" Baxter to produce the album…

The Deep Purple spin-off project Paice Ashton Lord were formed by ex-Deep Purplers Ian Paice (drums) and Jon Lord (organ) with Tony Ashton, who had been in the Remo Four during the British Invasion era and then in Ashton, Gardner & Dyke (famous for "Resurrection Shuffle"). When they got together in mid-1976, Deep Purple had just broken up; for the sole Paice Ashton Lord album, the sound was filled out by guitarist Bernie Marsden and bassist Paul Martinez. That LP, Malice in Wonderland, was not nearly as heavy as Deep Purple had been, though it still owed much to mainstream British hard rock. However, there was a fair amount of jazz influence in the arrangements (which sometimes included brass) and some soul ingredients to the songwriting.

Paice Ashton Lord's sole album is a rather anonymous-sounding late-1970s hard rock/AOR effort. There's more funk, soul, boogie, and jazz influence than you would expect from Deep Purple alumni, but at heart these are typical period mainstream rock songs that don't lend a distinctive personality to the short-lived band. There's an outrageously blatant quote from Blood, Sweat & Tears' "Spinning Wheel" in "Silas & Jerome." The 2001 CD reissue on Purple Records adds eight bonus tracks from the sessions for their unreleased second album, which are of a similar but less polished quality. Some of the songs are instrumentals rather than fully worked-up compositions, and the fidelity on a few of them is substandard, though not truly bad. The liner notes for the reissue give a thorough history of the band.

Malice in Wonderland is the eleventh studio album by the Scottish hard rock band Nazareth, released in 1980. After the heavy lurch of the previous album, the band chose to follow a more commercial path and the album produced the hit singles "Holiday" and "Heart's Grown Cold". The latter was covered by U.S. Southern Rock band Blackfoot on their 1983 album Siogo.

Paice Ashton Lord was a short-lived British rock band featuring Deep Purple band members Ian Paice and Jon Lord with singer Tony Ashton. The band was formed in 1976, released its only album in 1977 and broke up in 1978. Recorded in 1977, on the tails of the post-Deep Purple supergroup's Malice In Wonderland album, this extremely well-recorded broadcast catches the trio (and friends) stretching out in directions that the album itself never managed. On vinyl, after all, PAL sounded constricted, forever teetering on the brink of a no-holds-barred jam, but never quite mustering the strength to leap in. On stage, however, the improvisational instincts that Paice and Lord had built their very reputations upon were given full rein to spread and stretch.