Watched this for the first time in years and although it does not do the amazing One Night Alone Tour justice it certainly has its charms. That tour was one of my favorite Prince experiences and Rainbow Children my favorite latter-years album. And so the versions of 1+1+1 = 3 and Family Name are killer. Fun band too with Sheila, Rhonda and Maceo, and I dig when Prince is the only guitar player. I did not remember that his performance of Sometimes It Snows in April plays over the end credits, so that was gut-wrenching. What do you all think of this DVD?

I haven't watched in years as well, and I was just thinking about how I'd like to revisit that. Definitely gonna pop that in tonight or tomorrow.

klick2me said:

I've avoided re-watching this for years because the presentation quality... it's like watching the concert through a film of gauze, or something. But you've inspired me to give it another go.

I watched it once, perhaps not even the entire way through. Terrible video quality. I've seen better quality on youtube.

Amazing! And I agree with breakdown2k14, the quality isn't that bad. Love it when he asks so many people onstage during 1+1+1 is 3. I'm gonna need some people who need the exercise... It's all very funky, "so funky I can't even sleep with myself!". Watched it again last weekend, loved to see his happy face throughout. Nearly made me forget that he was gone, but then I remembered, and it was tough.

I enjoy it.

Too bad it was butchered.

I mean.......ehh. Why the first few songs were not in the show is beyond me. I just was not a fan of The Rainbow Children, nor was I a fan of his jazzy period there with Renato. That's not a slam to Renato; I just didn't care for it. It got b-o-r-i-n-g after the first thousand times. He took a great song like "Whole Lotta Love" and went farkin' bonkers with it, in a bad way. I just can't.

I don't care for his preachy shit at that point either, talking to woman about their place, and chanting dumb stuff like "theocratic order". I'm like "Can you just sing 'God' or 'I Wish U Heaven' or something instead?"

There's one thing of being confident in your skills. There's another in being arrogant. I sorta feel like he had this arrogant "I know God's word and you don't! NEENER-NEENER-NEENER" thing going on. It really put me off with him for a bit there. It seemed like such a 180º from the Prince we all knew who loved God, was spiritual, and talked about acceptance for all. Then he goes all Darth Vader, telling us who gets into heaven, and who doesn't. STFU. One birth date, stauros, theocratic order - any of that I have no time for. So that tour is not anything I care to really look at.

I do give him props for a very different sounding album, and that buttery velvet sound he had translated into the concerts quite well aurally speaking. In general though, nope.

I saw him at the alladin theater ..

Didn't Prince throw candy (actual candy, not his trumpet payer) out into the audience at the begining/ during film breaks? I think thats a perfect example of how low energy this ended up being.

I loved it, I thought it had one of his all time great live vocal performances with how come you don't call me anymore. I didn't even noticed that it was filmed badly until i heard all the whining on here. In those years, prince just seemed to get better and better as a musician and vocalist to replace any of his lost physical abilities onstage.

TrivialPursuit said:

I mean.......ehh. Why the first few songs were not in the show is beyond me. I just was not a fan of The Rainbow Children, nor was I a fan of his jazzy period there with Renato. That's not a slam to Renato; I just didn't care for it. It got b-o-r-i-n-g after the first thousand times. He took a great song like "Whole Lotta Love" and went farkin' bonkers with it, in a bad way. I just can't.

I don't care for his preachy shit at that point either, talking to woman about their place, and chanting dumb stuff like "theocratic order". I'm like "Can you just sing 'God' or 'I Wish U Heaven' or something instead?"

There's one thing of being confident in your skills. There's another in being arrogant. I sorta feel like he had this arrogant "I know God's word and you don't! NEENER-NEENER-NEENER" thing going on. It really put me off with him for a bit there. It seemed like such a 180º from the Prince we all knew who loved God, was spiritual, and talked about acceptance for all. Then he goes all Darth Vader, telling us who gets into heaven, and who doesn't. STFU. One birth date, stauros, theocratic order - any of that I have no time for. So that tour is not anything I care to really look at.

I do give him props for a very different sounding album, and that buttery velvet sound he had translated into the concerts quite well aurally speaking. In general though, nope.

damn, i don't even remember most of the shit your talking about. I sold mine to a dvd store because i needed cash.

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always loved it played it again about a week ago

PeteSilas said:

TrivialPursuit said:

I mean.......ehh. Why the first few songs were not in the show is beyond me. I just was not a fan of The Rainbow Children, nor was I a fan of his jazzy period there with Renato. That's not a slam to Renato; I just didn't care for it. It got b-o-r-i-n-g after the first thousand times. He took a great song like "Whole Lotta Love" and went farkin' bonkers with it, in a bad way. I just can't.

I don't care for his preachy shit at that point either, talking to woman about their place, and chanting dumb stuff like "theocratic order". I'm like "Can you just sing 'God' or 'I Wish U Heaven' or something instead?"

There's one thing of being confident in your skills. There's another in being arrogant. I sorta feel like he had this arrogant "I know God's word and you don't! NEENER-NEENER-NEENER" thing going on. It really put me off with him for a bit there. It seemed like such a 180º from the Prince we all knew who loved God, was spiritual, and talked about acceptance for all. Then he goes all Darth Vader, telling us who gets into heaven, and who doesn't. STFU. One birth date, stauros, theocratic order - any of that I have no time for. So that tour is not anything I care to really look at.

I do give him props for a very different sounding album, and that buttery velvet sound he had translated into the concerts quite well aurally speaking. In general though, nope.

damn, i don't even remember most of the shit your talking about. I sold mine to a dvd store because i needed cash.

Well dang, I hope things are better now. He changed the "theocratic order" stuff during "1+1+1=3". The "Whole Lotta Love" thing was him breaking down to near silence. Sometimes I think Prince loses track of something on stage, or loses his train of thought, and just improvises his way through it until he gets his center back. Frankly, I'm surprised he didnt pull out that JW translation of the bible and start preaching on that DVD.

TrivialPursuit said:

I mean.......ehh. Why the first few songs were not in the show is beyond me. I just was not a fan of The Rainbow Children, nor was I a fan of his jazzy period there with Renato. That's not a slam to Renato; I just didn't care for it. It got b-o-r-i-n-g after the first thousand times. He took a great song like "Whole Lotta Love" and went farkin' bonkers with it, in a bad way. I just can't.

I don't care for his preachy shit at that point either, talking to woman about their place, and chanting dumb stuff like "theocratic order". I'm like "Can you just sing 'God' or 'I Wish U Heaven' or something instead?"

There's one thing of being confident in your skills. There's another in being arrogant. I sorta feel like he had this arrogant "I know God's word and you don't! NEENER-NEENER-NEENER" thing going on. It really put me off with him for a bit there. It seemed like such a 180º from the Prince we all knew who loved God, was spiritual, and talked about acceptance for all. Then he goes all Darth Vader, telling us who gets into heaven, and who doesn't. STFU. One birth date, stauros, theocratic order - any of that I have no time for. So that tour is not anything I care to really look at.

I do give him props for a very different sounding album, and that buttery velvet sound he had translated into the concerts quite well aurally speaking. In general though, nope.

It's funny to me how people take "spreading the good news" so differently.

I bet if you asked Prince, or anyone that "spreads the good news" frequently, they'll say that it is just what they are supposed to do. They are trying to use their platform to introduce what they feel is "the right way".

I never felt that Prince was wagging his finger at us, or being arrogant, just trying to hip us to what he believes is the truth. Honestly, I think it takes a lot of guts to stick to share your beliefs at a time when you're "preaching" to a crowd that probably isn't really in that place, at least at that moment (at a concert).

luv4u said:

I enjoy it.

Too bad it was butchered.

I enjoyed it too. Great concert, but the sound quality sucks. It should be remastered.

Yeah, he didn't do much for his legacy with "Whole Lotta Love" off this release.

Here's another way of comparing the release.

Purple Rain - Good
Graffiti Bridge - Bad

SOTT - Good
Live at the Aladdin - Bad

If you like Graffiti Bridge, chances are you'll like Live at the Aladdin. If you did not like Graffiti Bridge, don't bother. Meaning, if you like everything -- can't find wrong in anything he did, then you're going to like/love Live at the Aladdin. If you're going to watch it on a 13" laptop with a crappy video driver, enjoy. If you're going to watch it on a big screen TV, don't bother. Instead, bring up youtube and watch one of the Montreux sets instead. A million times better concert -- and the quality is actually better than Live at the Aladdin.

It was an odd release.

I don't have a problem with Prince talking abou god any more than I did when he told people to point to the sky during "I would die 4 U" or his repeatedly quoting lines from the bible.

The tracklist isn't jaw dropping. IIRC it wasn't high on production values. There were much better (by miles) shows from the ONA tour. ie soundchecks where Prince too questions from the NPGMC members.

There are some nice moments on the DVD but it's not a go-to release by any means.

breakdown2k14 said:

I don't think the quality is bad at all.there's plenty of bootlegs that are in worse quality

Oh well that's ok then. Never mind that someone of Prince's stature gave us such a poor official release, at least there are bootlegs of a lesser quality.

pdiddy2011 said:

I never felt that Prince was wagging his finger at us, or being arrogant, just trying to hip us to what he believes is the truth.

He was, though.

steakfinger said:

pdiddy2011 said:

I never felt that Prince was wagging his finger at us, or being arrogant, just trying to hip us to what he believes is the truth.

He was, though.

And I quote... "Now you can cut that how you want, but it's the truth" (when talking about how Christ died, etc).

No Prince. It was your truth, not everyone else's truth.

It was a nice reminder of the tour, which was also my first time seeing him, but I agree that the video quality wasn't very good. I also wish it was longer, and included the piano set he did.

I think the ONA tour was fantastic and the band was very tight. So I enjoy a lot of the songs on this DVD, although the sequencing is pretty poor IMO.

Unfortunately both audio and video quality could have been much better, which takes away somewhat of my viewing pleasure. But still I am grateful to have this DVD and I think it is much better than the Rave DVD which sucked bigtime in my opinion.

i dunno, i didn't even think of the quality until it was mentioned here. back then, you couldn't just pop up youtube and watch vids of Prince, so seeing him was a treat. I loved the piano version of strange relationship for two reasons, 1. i am a pianist and 2. it was always one of my favorite Prince songs and he tore it up. I bet most of you guys didn't even like his humourous "ozzy ozbern" imitation.

PeteSilas said:

breakdown2k14 said:

PeteSilas said:

i dunno, i didn't even think of the quality until it was mentioned here. back then, you couldn't just pop up youtube and watch vids of Prince, so seeing him was a treat. I loved the piano version of strange relationship for two reasons, 1. i am a pianist and 2. it was always one of my favorite Prince songs and he tore it up. I bet most of you guys didn't even like his humourous "ozzy ozbern" imitation.

I loved the Ozzy ozbern imitation .he nailed it!

Crazy, who ever thought Ozzy would outlive him?