thanks for posting the pic of the stage

looks nice:)

what was he wearing??

It seems no cameras were present to film the shows. Anybody can confirm?

funkyluca said:

Yep! No cameras, no phones, no recording devices. Strict checking, lot of security inside the hall

Partyambassador said:

The version at Montreux was much better and far less half-baked than the one at LA. I did not like the jazz set at LA at all but both Montreux shows were much better.

Gohi said:

the montreux version is the only one I really like! It is a top notch opening song. I have never really listened (carefully) to the song before then... another i-pod casualty from the 90's

boxerboy said:

The Montreux performance really brings the song alive. I never truly appreciated or even felt the dirtiness of the lyrics until jamming to that version. I didn't dislike the studio version but its always been just 'so-so' to me.

CJanssen said:

I starve when I go to see Prince.... like I'm on some hunger strike LOL.

.... and who is that in your profile picture. :jealous as hell:
[Edited 8/14/09 20:47pm]

Thanks for the reports... these are great setlists!

Kinda reaffirms my sense that the One Nite Alone/Musicology band is his best fit.

polkadotbliss said:

He's probably offended by stupidity, and stupidity is IMHO a far worse offense than being right but being an ass. It's about caring about content vs caring about style.

Just got back from Monaco. Will post longer report later but a few things to mention are firstly elton John arrived just before the 2nd show and took his seat to huge applause as did Prince Albert (when Prince sang about breaking rules in a song, he said "Careful! The Boss is in the House!")
First show had a soundcheck vibe. Prince constantly talking to the sound guys during songs and also the band (had to remind John to put the snare back into the "All the critics . . " groove!)
It was pleasure to be so close for both shows. He's still the man. The
Ooooh Monaco! was funkier than the the Ooooh Funky London chant thanks to some seriously thumping bass from Rhonda.
back later.

Anxiety said:

Tell ya what, let's make it a Wiki:

http://prince.org/wiki/Op...first_show

and

http://prince.org/wiki/Op...econd_show

Because the sticky won't be around in a couple of days/weeks.

I know the URLs aren't that great, but when I was thinking up a uniform format for adding concerts to the wiki, I couldn't improve on: Location (i.e. name of the actual place he's playing), City, State, Country, Date, Specifics (i.e. if there were two shows on one night in the same place, let's add that detail). In this case I actually left out the city and state details.

(Do NOT debate this format here, do that @ http://prince.org/msg/3/316471 which I've started for that specific purpose.)

I'd advise against posting personal concert stories in the wiki, keep those in this tread (the wiki links to this thread). However, it would be nice if some "objective" eye witness report could be added to the page -- so that means no use of "fantastic" to describe a particular version of a songs etc, stick to the facts.

Do add details like "celebrity X visited concert" etc.

Dave1992 said:

Time for some maths. let's first look up when each song was first released:

01 The Love We Make - 1996
02 Shhh - 1995
03 Little Red Corvette - 1982
04 Somewhere Here On Earth - 2007
05 Crimson & Clover - 2009 (it's actually a cover, which I'd normally ignore, but this is one he released)
06 She Spoke 2 Me - 1996
07 I Love U But I Don't Trust U Anymore - 1999
08 Dreamer - 2009
09 The Beautiful Ones - 1984
10 Nothing Compares 2 U - 1993 (actually 1985, but let's be generous and take the version from The Hits 1)
11 All The Critics Love U In Monaco - 1982
12 Purple Rain - 1984

Now, to determine the average age of the songs played in this concert: determine the age of each song (year of concert - year of song's release), add all those number up, and divide by the number of songs in this concert.

Song by song: ( (2009 - 1996) + (2009 - 1995) + (2009 - 1982) + (2009 - 2007) + (2009 - 2009) + (2009 - 1996) + (2009 - 1999) + (2009 - 2009) + (2009 - 1984) + (2009 - 1993) + (2009 - 1982) + (2009 - 1984) ) / 12

Easier notation: 2009 - ((1996 + 1995 + 1982 + 2007 + 2009 + 1996 + 1999 + 2009 + 1984 + 1993 + 1982 + 1984) / 12)

Google is a calculator: http://www.google.com/sea...+%2F+12%29

So the average age of the songs performed in this concert is: 14.33333 years.

And actually that's mainly because of him playing only a dozen songs, two of which were from 2009. If you ignore those two, the number drops to 17.2:

2009 - ((1996 + 1995 + 1982 + 2007 + 1996 + 1999 + 1984 + 1993 + 1982 + 1984) / 10)

http://www.google.com/sea...+%2F+10%29

I now challenge anyone to do the same maths for a gig from the SOTT tour, for instance.

And yet there are still people who accuse fans like me of living in the past.

BartVanHemelen said:

I appreciate your qualities in maths, but he couldn't even have played songs that were 12+ years old at the SOTT tour.

Plus, just because of the majority of fans he won't be able to play only newer stuff - there will always be people who complain. That's why I think he his setlist is a great blend out of crowd pleasers and and "rarities", who please us.

Dave1992 said:

Agreed. And one of the papers that reviewed the performance in France actually commented that the shows were almost universally liked except the reporter found one lady who requested a refund because she only knew two of the songs. Now imagine if he only played stuff from the 2000's. P could pretty comfortably assume that if he's perfoming in Monaco that at LEAST half his audience are not gonna know much of the stuff he's released.

I'm curious... did the audience sit or stand for the performance? Dunno if I would've been able to sit..

Can anyone who went report on how Power Fantastic sounded? Was it a carbon copy of the studio version? I guess it couldn't have been unless one of the audience members helped out with a flute..

thebiscuit said:

Hope this will answer part of your questions,
http://www.yourlittleplan...-a-monaco/

cool-but when did all the crowd get to dance on stage-was it all the critics ?
i take it these were from show 2-i heard he was in white for show one

polkadotbliss said:

end of the 2nd show...

cool-lucky crowd though i couldn't promise not to try and do a runner with a guitar

vivelafrance said:

Cool, thanks!

Dang, folks are all up him! Back up and give the man some space...

BartVanHemelen said:

sounds like a plan!

BartVanHemelen said:

And...you're comparing current performances to ones that are more than 20 years old. Dang, I don't get it either! Why on earth would people ever think you live in the past? Stupid people!

It's hilarious that it's so important to you, that you even worked out a mathematical formula!


Bart, pick up the book "The Power of Now" one of these days, it'll do you good.

Dave1992 said:

I repeat: DO THE MATH.

Dave1992 said:

Why would Prince care about that? Isn't he some maverick (not my opinion, FYI)? Also, so many fans claim his new stuff is just as good as the old stuff, so why would anyone complain?

Serena said:

Back then Prince did a TOUR that started even BEFORE the album was released, and yet it is regarded as one of the greatest tours of all time. How come people weren't bitching about hearing new/unknown songs back then?

Prince's current music is NOWHERE near as good as his 1980s (or mid-1990s) stuff. He knows that, and that's why he plays lots of old and very well known songs.

Serena said:

All Prince needs to do is:
a) make great music again,
b) have the balls to play it live.
That's what I loved about Prince in 1994/95: he'd abandoned the hits and instead played NEW music and B-sides.

The Prince from 1995 would BOO the guy who's impersonating him on stage now, heckle him, tell him to PLAY NEW MUSIC.

Serena said:

Tell it to prince, he's the one playing concerts where the songs are on average a decade and a half old.

BartVanHemelen said:

SOTT - 1987

1987 - 12 = 1975

1975 = No Prince music out yet; there you go.



Oh yes, I claim so too, but this isn't just about quality; actually most of the fans who crave all the Let's Go Crazys, Purple Rains and 1999s don't know that much about the quality of the music, they just have their memories and wish to see PRINCE sing their songs once more.

Why would he care? He's a professional musician, a gig in Monte Carlo wouldn't make much sense without pleasing the majority of people there. Aftershow gems are here for the aftershows and I think he knows when to play what.

Man i just heard Dreamer form show 1-extended version and all-sounds very cool

Dave1992 said:

I guess Bart didn't do the math because he felt like it was necessary to be that "precise", but because he wanted to get a point through. Well, of course P fans will ALWAYS be bragging about too less / too much (insert: hits, outtakes, cover versions, old songs, new songs, whatever..), and i don't think this will ever change. But come on: He got 2 nice albums out (in my opinion), released with a lot of hype and some extra internet-fuss, and everyone would expect him to do some of that newer stuff on stage, like - please forgive me - any other artist would do. I know, our man doesn't like to be like them, but dropping a record and playing that stuff to the fans on the next concerts isn't a bad idea at all, is it? Just because it's "common" doesn't mean it's a stupid idea. And actually, he ALWAYS did exactly this until, say, TRC / ONA.

Now, let him do Purple Rain, let him do LRC, let him do some more older tunes, of course. But, 1st: I don't think it ALWAYS has to be LRC and Purple Rain, he could well dig in his crates and pull out stuff like Pop Life, America, DMSR, Anotherlover, Anna Stesia, SOTT, Alphabet St., whatever (just naming a few coming to my mind..). Even in those "classics" slots, a bit of a change wouldn't harm IMO.
2nd: Let's play "draw your setlist" - couldn't he do, say,
- Dreamer
- Colonized Mind
- Ol Skool Company
- $
- Dance 4 Me
- Wall Of Berlin
- 4Ever
- Valentina / No More Candy 4U / Anotherlikeme, you choose
..ALL IN ONE SET, PLUS some classics, PLUS some Empty Room type of stuff, PLUS 1 or 2 covers??? Don't say it would be too much, everybody knows live concerts aren't limited neither to 12 songs nor to 1:40 hours...

Personally, it would make me think a second time about spending that much money on one of his shows. The sets he's playing recently are nice, sure, but you'll find this and that in other live periods as well (well, most of it),and it wouldn't harm to make "the 2009/2010 performances" a bit more "recognizable", eh? What he's doing at the moment seems a bit eclectic to me.

And oh yeah, I didn't get your point in the sentence i quoted.. Looking at the setlists of the last shows, I'd say he's doing a LOT of afters stuff, unknown songs, even unreleased stuff, stuff that only hardcore fans know, and so on. I love it, don't get me wrong, but I still feel he could do a bit more "recent" and "album related" stuff. And I think that was Bart's point as well.

Peace y'all...

the long and winding road....and here i thought Prince didn't know the beatles...

BlackAdder7 said:

Played it quite a few times in London and Vegas.

FunkyDissCo said:

Listen, I agree with everything you said and I was always the first to want him play new stuff, or at least Gold Experience + songs. I love Purple Rain, I love Little Red Corvette - those are great compositions and they still touch me, but I just know them already and Prince is such a good a musician that he can make it sound the same everytime he plays them. That might please many fans, but not the hardcore people like us. All true.

If I was to be the only one to attend a concert I would want to hear Lotusflow3r stuff only, just to find another way to relate to the music. But as he was playing in Monte Carlo and not all the hardcores can afford going there. That's why I don't think he did anything wrong that particular night.



But overall I do agree with everything you said - he should stop playing the old hits and bring on the new tunes live. I just don't agree with what Bart said, because I think the new songs actually are good enough to be played live.