Just got back home after saturdays gig...awesome is not a word i often use.

This review of friday sums it up...a last a sensible newspaper hack!

Prince among men

Kitty Empire
Sunday October 6, 2002
The Observer

Prince Hammersmith Apollo, London W6
He's close enough to touch. It's one of the more amazing aspects of this 'intimate' show by The Artist Now Once Again Known As Prince. We're accustomed to witnessing his gyrations from a stadium distance or through the never-never veil of the video screen. And yet there Prince Rogers Nelson is, all 44 years of him, giftwrapped in a dapper grey suit, close enough for us to see the sweat. The name-changing, label-fighting, misspelling egomaniacal grotesque of recent memory? He's somewhere else tonight.

The maths of stellar decline dictates that the man should now only be able to play ever cosier venues. Prince's One Nite Alone tour is easily read as a calculated retreat from his old pulling power. More worryingly, rumours suggest raunch is off the menu since he became a Jehovah's Witness.

Not a bit of it. If ever a pop star could get away with leading a jazz band in a small space and then, after two-and-a-half hours of non-stop workouts, leave you desperate to find out whether there is an aftershow jam, it's this one. Well before he became the reclusive eccentric, Prince was a multi-instrumentalist funk prodigy. Tonight reminds you of that.

It's as though he is simply made of music, whipping his band through a (lengthy) jazz-funk set which becomes a priapic rock show, which later becomes a good-natured singalong of 'Nothing Compares 2 U'. There's a stunning interlude where he turns electric bluesman and segues into Led Zeppelin's 'Whole Lotta Love', which sees men of a certain age actually quaking with awe. The first encore? A solo soul set, with Prince at a piano emitting a seamless flow of yips, whoops, snarls and moans of finely turned ecstasy. It's a relief to find that reports of Prince's bowdlerisation have been exaggerated. The lurid crotch-grabbing routine has, admittedly, been refined. But 'I Wanna Be Your Lover' is as hormonal and direct as ever, the jealous lust of 'The Beautiful Ones' intact and riveting. He loosens his tie with a smirk and it's suggestion enough.

'If you come here to get your "Purple Rain" on you're in the wrong building,' he laughs (laughs!), in the middle of one of the absurd funk jams that begin the evening. 'I'm not interested in what you know, I'm interested in what you can learn.' From a lesser figure, this would be self-indulgent twaddle. As it is, the portentous introductory songs from his last album, The Rainbow Children - 'Muse 2 The Pharaoh' and 'The Work Pt 1' - become party tunes, and the obscurities - 'Extraordinary', 'Gotta Broken Heart Again' - reason to marvel at the back catalogue's depth. The crowd-pleasers do come out near the end: 'Take Me With U' and 'Raspberry Beret' are a double whammy of happy nostalgia, and their inclusion feels natural, ungrudging despite Prince's earlier defiance.

Granted, it is a trial by jazz at times. Saxophonists Maceo Parker and Candy Dulfer are given ample leave to solo, and the band weigh in whenever Prince leaves the stage. The dance contest for members of the fanclub also feels superfluous, and Strange Relationship's tirade against the media isn't artistically interesting.

At the end, members of the fanclub throw shapes onstage as Prince, at the back, plays a house piano rave-up. They're obviously under orders not to mob him but, as the second encore winds to a halt, one girl reaches out and just brushes his shoulder. As performances go, though, Prince's is untouchable.

http://www.observer.co.uk

tez said:

not a bad review, but the bit about being under orders made me laugh

http://www.observer.co.uk...69,00.html


... ends with ... html , break row cos its 2 long, copy and paste it.. then u get the story