Prince Review... "strange"

7/7/07.... a "lucky" date for some. Me? I had a hot date to the Prince Concert in Minneapolis! Concert time was "8:30" on the ticket so at 8:00ish we made our way to the Target Center to stand in line.... in the 95 degree heat with a couple of thousand other smelly sweaty people. 8:30 rolled on by and we're still standing out front of the Target Center (Hennepin Ave Side) with everyone and at this point, there are so many people in the street that Hennepin was down to one lane. Folks watching from the hotel windows trying to figure out what was going on. 9:00 rolls in and we're STILL STANDING THERE. They opened the doors but due to the chaos that is the Target Center, Prince didn't actually make it on stage till 10pm. Luckily there was no scheduled opening forgettable band so the trade off was minor.

Why was Prince late? Supposedly it was to get Wendy Melvoin (from the Revolution days) to fly from LA to Minneapolis to play with the band... which she did.

Prince opened with a bang pulling out the Purple Rain (complete with purple lights and costume), Take Me With U, Guitar.... then it got strange..... Stranger actually. The whole evening started out weird by the whole waiting to get in. But then Prince (known for having many many hits), pulls out some covers of other people's songs. Ok, even the best do that from time to time I guess. Prince pulls fans up from the crowd to dance with him on stage, and as one white guy starts doing his thing, the band decides to break into Play That Funky Music White Boy.... strange? yes. Funny? yes. Then they played Let's Go (by the Cars). Then to get even more strange, the sax player and keyboardist stayed on stage for what turned into a Kenny G intermission. The sax player was circular breathing which kicked ass, and he was a wonderful player - but it was What a Wonderful World which didn't really fit the rest of the evening..... Strange.

On stage with him was his backup band (Trombone, Trumpet, Sax, bass, keyboards, and drum), two dancers who looked like they were making it up on the fly, and one woman who had some kind of cape and wondered around stage like a mattador is the best I can describe it.

Prince comes back out with just Wendy Melvoin and they do an acoustic set of Little Red Corvette, Raspberry Beret, some new songs that nobody recognized (or really cared to hear unfortunately).... I'm fine with bands doing acoustic sets.... U2 and Stone Temple Pilots were known for this all the time. But the songs they performed were usually just a verse, then the chorus, then time to move on. Felt very rushed.

Band comes back onstage (as do the weird dancers that were not very good at all). They break into Seven (that was cool), Come Together (Beatles rendition), then just Prince on Keyboards where he played the intro to Diamonds and Pearls only to react to the crowd's approval by saying "you're not ready for that one" and again later says "I got too many hits for y'all".... SO WHY DO OTHER PEOPLE'S SONGS?!?!! Let's Go Crazy ended the non-encores. We heard our first "Thank you Minneapolis" at 11:30pm.

Encore brought out Sheila E for some songs including Crazy (Gnarles Barkley), and a lot of songs that highlighted Sheila E which sucks considering I was there to see PRINCE!

Prince is quit a great entertainer though. My grades for the night:

Target Center - F...as usual
Rhythm section - B-... not the greatest throughout the night
Horns/Sax - A... very solid performance. The mic on the Trombone wasn't that good though but they were worth watching
Two Dancers - D... not sure what their purpose was and they really were distracting at times
Matador lady - C... still not sure her purpose other than hit the tamborine
Prince - A++... seriously, the boy has some skillz. I have never seen him play guitar and he was quite amazing and effortless with his playing. I think he shows off his all around musical skills better than most musicians plus when they would go into some "jam sessions", he showed off even more. Plus he pulled out some time on bass guitar (slap) and keyboard. I was very impressed.

Would I see Prince again? Absolutely. Just hope it'd be on a normal tour on a normal night this time. I got a free thing of Prince Perfume for my troubles. Now you can smell like Prince would if he was a woman! Or something like that. I do have to add that the best entertainment of the night was the girl next to me (not my hot date) who was probably late 20s but was doing the "Old Lady Dancing" with a mix of the "Beavis" dance. I seriously cannot replicate it but it was so funny to watch and laugh at throughout the evening.

Haiku of the Day
Waiting outside for
Prince and his Revolution
Well worth the long wait

Entertainment of the Day I watched Apocolypto this weekend which is the movie by Mel Gibson about the Mayan kingdom right before it falls. Problem was that the movie was boring as hell and the gory parts were uncalled for in my opinion. Lots of reading of the translation which I found annoying. Would have rather read a book I guess. Anyway - pretty crappy movie in my opinion.

Weblink of the Day - How to torture a gummy bear.... this is pretty funny:)