Prince came to town recently to play 4 shows, 2 per night, at the very small Grove in Anaheim.
Prince can be revelatory, even transcendent, when he plays live. Or, he can be distant and even tedious. You never know if you'll get a guy strutting around posing, letting the backup singers do all the work, or a guy rocking out and playing as if his life depended on it.
One side of Prince that people forget about is the guitar side. Most of his songs were funk-based or quite poppy, but occasionally he let a hard rock tune out, maybe even featuring a blistering solo.
So imagine a concert that was almost entirely like the ending solo in Let's Go Crazy. That was the show in Anaheim.
Prince came out with his big Jimi Hendrix 'do and his guitar ablaze. In fact, he opened with the aforementioned Let's Go Crazy, but it was a slow, sludgy, heavy metal version, which eventually morphed into Edgar Winter's Frankenstein. Very cool re-working of a tune that can sound old.
When I say the show was like a show in heaven, there are a number of reasons.
Firstly, Prince is anti cell phone. That means no taking pictures or movies during the show. If you do, you're kicked out of the concert. They tell you when you go to park: no cameras tonight, be warned. Then they pass you a flyer in line: again, no cell phones. And once more when you hand over the ticket: you're warned. And finally on stage, just before the show begins, the drummer (part of Prince's current all female band of 20somethings) comes out and reminds you: no cell phones.
What this means is that everyone in the audience focuses on listening, and you don't have 100 people around you with their iphones up. It's what concerts used to be like. People are in the moment.
So when the concert began, a rather annoying fellow elbowed his way forward and planted himself right in front of me. Pretty uncool to basically cut in front of everyone to get a closer view.
This guy then pulled out his cell phone and began fairly brazenly filming. Just a handful of seconds at a time.
About 3 songs in, two beefy security guys materialized. They grabbed our cell phone rule flaunter by each arm, and escorted him out. I was very happy to see him leave!
So that made it heaven, as did the being able to show up right before the show and stand quite close to the stage.
As did the songs Prince chose to play, which, though I recognized very few, were all hard rock. Prince played the guitar on every song; rare for him.
(No, Tom Petty wasn't there, but this is what Prince looks like playing a guitar; it's a still from George Harrison's induction ceremony. In fact look for "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" on youtube and watch Prince's solo at the end to see how he plays. He basically blows all the other guitarists off the stage.)
So back to the concert at hand: The sound was perfect, the visuals amazing (Prince and his band played in front of a huge screen that provided very impressive background images. Unlike most screens which distract or are cornball, this really worked.) Here's a picture I found to give somewhat of an idea. This is from his show in Vancouver, the only one where he allowed press photos.
But most amazing was this guitar playing. Prince plays the guitar so effortlessly; it looks as easy for him as walking down the street or driving a car. Some of the songs were so heavy, it was hard to believe you were at a Prince concert; it was like Iron Butterfly or Black Sabbath or something at times.
The only downside to this show was with another show at 11:30, it ended after only 90 minutes. Pretty short given the price tag.
Knowing Prince, the next time he rolls through town he will be in another guise. Hopefully he will put on as good a show as this one.
