Ian Gillan Purple. By 1969, after having released nine singles, none of which charted in the UK, and finding their style of music too restrictive for him, he decided to leave Episode Six. By spring 1969, Deep Purple had had a top 5 US hit with "Hush", but the band, particularly Ritchie Blackmore, Jon Lord and Ian Paice, decided their future lay in hard rock, rather than the psychedelic pop sound of the early band. In June 1969, Blackmore, Lord and Paice went to see Episode Six perform at a pub gig and subsequently offered Gillan the job as new lead singer,
The Original Rabbit Foot Spasm Band skiffle on homemade banjos, ukuleles and washboards. Their first performance was at the Hollybush Inn in Oxford on 21 October 2006, advertised as "Banjo Madness". By 2007 the band had begun to shift away from skiffle and more firmly towards blues and jazz. The instrumentation of the band began to reflect this change with the addition of bass and drums and a horn section. The band's repertoire is now made up exclusively of original compositions by Macbeth. In February 2009 the band played a gig at Oxford's Wheatsheaf pub which met with a favourable review in Oxford's "Nightshift" magazine. "Oxford