Dearly beloved....
We are gathered here today to get through this thing called life......
And so started last night's Prince concert at the open-air Usana Amphitheater. And lo, for it was totally awesome.
I didn't care much for the warm-up act, but when she'd finished they started prepping the stage for Prince. A huge projection TV screen above the stage showed some adverts for the NPGmusic website - Prince and the New Power Generation. Then the stage went dark and they started by projecting on to the big screen Alicia Key's speech at the inauguration of Prince to the rock and roll Hall of Fame. Everyone was on their feet by now and when she said "let me introduce........Prince!" The stage lights came on purple and yellow and there he was, standing front and center. Guitar riff....."Dearly beloved....." and the crowd went bonkers.
From that point on it just got better and better. High speed lighting effects, classic 80's and 90's Prince. A bitchin' medley of Kiss, When Doves Cry and U Got The Look. Candy Dulfer played some classic sax and he did a brilliant bass drum set. His new keyboard player is a total wiz and at the half-time break he finished with a huge R&B number and the stage went black. A single blue spotlight picked out the keyboard player doing his thing for a bit. It gave everyone a chance to sit down again.
When he came back out, he did 4 or 5 purely acoustic numbers sitting on a chair mid-stage with his guitar. One of which was a totally transparent dig at Sony Music and Warner Brothers. About half the audience got it.
The second half was more new stuff and R&B. Up-tempo stuff came along and he then had 10 or 15 girls come up on stage and strut their thang. When he came to do "Kiss" he gave the mic to one of the girls and she belted out a chorus really well - obviously to Prince's surprise. At the climax, he had all the fans, smoke, spotlights, audience lights, and everything going followed by a blast of white light and the stage went dark. The video screen faded in a spinning Prince symbol and blue spotlights slowly scanned the stage with a darth-vader-esque breathing/heartbeat noise. The house lights didn't come on so everyone started cheering, chanting, screaming and banging the seats to make some noise. After 10 minutes of this, he came back on with the warm-up act and did a piece, then she left and they went around the band, member by member doing solos. The show culminated when the purple lights faded on and the stage filled with smoke. For the last number, Prince walked up front and center wearing the old purple suit, high heels, and carrying the Symbol guitar. He performed a pitch-perfect, 10 minute rendition of Purple Rain and that was it. End of show. Amazing. Well worth the $160 it cost me in tickets.
The only disappointment? He didn't do Sign 'O the Times. Not that it was a real disappointment - just I would have liked to hear it live one last time.
And so started last night's Prince concert at the open-air Usana Amphitheater. And lo, for it was totally awesome.
I didn't care much for the warm-up act, but when she'd finished they started prepping the stage for Prince. A huge projection TV screen above the stage showed some adverts for the NPGmusic website - Prince and the New Power Generation. Then the stage went dark and they started by projecting on to the big screen Alicia Key's speech at the inauguration of Prince to the rock and roll Hall of Fame. Everyone was on their feet by now and when she said "let me introduce........Prince!" The stage lights came on purple and yellow and there he was, standing front and center. Guitar riff....."Dearly beloved....." and the crowd went bonkers.
From that point on it just got better and better. High speed lighting effects, classic 80's and 90's Prince. A bitchin' medley of Kiss, When Doves Cry and U Got The Look. Candy Dulfer played some classic sax and he did a brilliant bass drum set. His new keyboard player is a total wiz and at the half-time break he finished with a huge R&B number and the stage went black. A single blue spotlight picked out the keyboard player doing his thing for a bit. It gave everyone a chance to sit down again.
When he came back out, he did 4 or 5 purely acoustic numbers sitting on a chair mid-stage with his guitar. One of which was a totally transparent dig at Sony Music and Warner Brothers. About half the audience got it.
The second half was more new stuff and R&B. Up-tempo stuff came along and he then had 10 or 15 girls come up on stage and strut their thang. When he came to do "Kiss" he gave the mic to one of the girls and she belted out a chorus really well - obviously to Prince's surprise. At the climax, he had all the fans, smoke, spotlights, audience lights, and everything going followed by a blast of white light and the stage went dark. The video screen faded in a spinning Prince symbol and blue spotlights slowly scanned the stage with a darth-vader-esque breathing/heartbeat noise. The house lights didn't come on so everyone started cheering, chanting, screaming and banging the seats to make some noise. After 10 minutes of this, he came back on with the warm-up act and did a piece, then she left and they went around the band, member by member doing solos. The show culminated when the purple lights faded on and the stage filled with smoke. For the last number, Prince walked up front and center wearing the old purple suit, high heels, and carrying the Symbol guitar. He performed a pitch-perfect, 10 minute rendition of Purple Rain and that was it. End of show. Amazing. Well worth the $160 it cost me in tickets.
The only disappointment? He didn't do Sign 'O the Times. Not that it was a real disappointment - just I would have liked to hear it live one last time.
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