One of my favorite late night jams is "When The Lights Go Down" off the The Vault: Old Friends 4 Sale CD. Great live version from Montreux '09 is a fun jam as well
The 80s were crazy times. Prince was definitely at his most energetic. The Lovesexy Tour was definitely over-the-top (the album retains its "unbroken single track" strangeness):
To be honest, I tend not to enjoy huge arena rock concerts but you could hardly avoid them in the 80s if you wanted to see your favorite pop artist live. Eric Leeds, longtime bandmember and the saxophonist in the Lovesexy Tour concert above, gives an insightful interview about playing with Prince and "black music", in general. It's in two parts. Part 2
This amazing book has just been released. Covers the Purple Rain recording sessions in detail. A little like Macdonalds 'Revolution in the head' . https://www.amazon.co.uk/Prince-Pur...?ie=UTF8&qid=1512110250&sr=8-3&keywords=duane
I saw Prince live in 2011 at the now-closed Northlands Coliseum here in Edmonton. He was so energetic and phenomenal. My favourite moment was "Purple Rain", in which purple and gold ribbons flew through the air during his epic guitar solo. My only gripe was that he spent a bit too much time on cover songs (like "Play That Funky Music"). He has so much superior stuff in his own catalogue that he doesn't really need to cover other artists. Still, I am so glad I got to see him, and I was only 6 rows from the stage. It was worth the $220 I spent on the ticket.
Wow. When I saw him at the now defunct Spectrum in Philly back in '84 I was close - but not that close. Cool. I don't recall any covers. He was pushing PR then, though. I like his covers; who knows what it reflects - something in his personal or professional life at that moment, obviously. My favorite cover, well, it's not really a cover, per se but a Hendrix redo: Purple House. He could have performed that every time I saw him. Ha
I will say, he did seem to have a lot of fun performing the cover songs. He was in really good spirits when I saw him. Andy Allo (one of his many proteges) was the opening act. Also, it amazes me the likes of Britney Spears say they must lip sync because they can't sing and dance at the same time; Prince sang, danced, and played guitar at the same time during his live act.
Got a good Controversy story. So we walk into the Spectrum all ready for his Purple Badness back in '84, just after Purple Rain came out. And there is - what appeared to be - an opening or soundcheck band behind a huge semi-transparent scrim vamping to Controversy - for like 20 minutes. By the end of the jam the place is capacity and though the band sounds good; funky, really getting us primed for The Revolution, everyone is like Ok, ya'll good but where's the man? Then the lights go black, that opening organ chord on Let's Go Crazy comes on, we wait in the dark while Prince does his opening rap and just after he says, "Punch a higher floor!" the lights flood the stage and the scrim comes down revealing that the soundcheck band was The Revolution! Man, what a great moment.
Endorphinmachine: Beatsloop [Sorry, am not able to embed the video here; song starts about 30 seconds into the clip] As someone who pretty much worships Sheila E., I have to say, Michael Bland was the baddest drummer Prince ever had!
Ahhh, don't get me started on PFunk. Would have been cool to see the Mothership crash a Prince party, though. Security. Security!!
Yep. Despite the tragedy it was a Prince bonanza for about a week. Then the NPG cops descended again.
