Report: August 19, Boston (seen from row 2) - GREAT SHOW

The both of us boogied so hard the first two shows, that we were quite tired this afternoon. We had to take a nap before getting ready for the concert. We took a risk and only gave ourselves an hour to get freshened and dressed up. Mostly decked out in my wife Dragana's clothes again, we hopped in a cab as late as 7:15pm. I was a bit nervous, because that was 15 minutes later than originally planned, and I didn't want to miss anything of a possible Sheila E/The Time support act. (I am always hopeful, but they didn't play. Maceo and his band played again instead, however.) Luckily, Boston traffic was light and we were lucky with the half a dozen stop lights, so we got to the Fleet Center in only 5 minutes. We were off to a good start

Our tickets this time were for seats 11 and 12 in row 2 in section XX. No, I didn't censor the section number (as I thought someone else did in another post), this really *is* section double-X. We were sitting diagonally behind Renato's quadrant. During the show it turned out that these were our best seats of all three nights, because we could see everything that was happening on stage, plus Prince ended up coming to the end of the XX catwalk *a lot* and he *did* look a lot in our direction, while yesterday he seemed to ignore the section where we were sitting behind John Blackwell's kit. Tonight I almost felt a bit guilty for how much Prince seemed to come to our side of the stage. He did a lot of audience interaction on our side and several of his guitar solos seemed to mostly take place on our side as well. The side in front of the B section was a close second.

Before the support act of Maceo and his band started at 7:35, we tried to kiss up to Prince's security guys a bit in a pretty feeble attempt to get picked to dance on stage. That didn't really get anywhere, but it was fun trying

When we walked around the floor before the show, we ran into some friends, and also people who'd seen the photos of us from last night on the forums - that was really fun! Everybody was very nice and in a really good mood. We gotta hook up soon for a big-screen viewing of the upcoming Widescreen release of the "Purple Rain" film.

Maceo and his band, who started as the support act at 7:35pm and had Candy helping them out again for the last couple of songs, played a good set again. I think it was largely the same as yesterday: see my other reports and my set list posting.

Prince started late, delayed by a long wait and then by the showing of his new "Call My Name" video from 8:55 till 8:59pm. Luckily he also ended late! His 2 1/2 hour set ran pretty much non-stop from 8:59pm till about 11:28pm.

I don't want to make this post too redundant with my previous two reports, plus I am getting rather sleepy at this point (it's 3:18am), so here's quick overview of some observations and our personal high-lights of the show:

-> Today's dress code for the band was black and white.

-> John Blackwell wore his hat today (he didn't on the other two shows)

-> Boston was in the mood tonight! The crowd was making a lot of noise!

-> Mike Scott was in front of us the whole show. He was great. He was constantly scanning the audience and smiling and pointing at people.

-> I made eye contact(*) with Prince during "Baby I'm Star". My wife and I had put together a Lenny Kravitz-inspired look for me today. I wore her Prince heels again, tight black pleather pants with the word "S E X" embroidered all over, tight sleeveless bright-red top, and, to tie the look together, a pair of big red pimp shades which Dragana had found for me downtown that same afternoon. At one point the light from Prince's spotlight hit me full in the face. At that same time there was quite a bit of room around me. Prince looked me straight in the face and I made some funky dance move and he made this big amused face, like, you're weird, dude (for wearing these sun glasses to an indoor concert).
(*) footnote here: I am fully aware that the experience of Prince-eye-contact is a highly unreliable one and more often than not he might have been looking at someone else. Still, the way it happened made me feel that for this one brief moment I stood out to him in the crowd. And to fans like us, THAT IS A BIG DEAL!

-> During "Shhh" I noticed that someone in the B section held up high a copy of the Lovesexy tour book. He (or she) did that a few times, until Prince noticed it and smiled and pointed a finger at it. For those of you not familiar with this tour book, two things: 1) you should be, and 2) on the front page it has this pretty outrageous photo of Prince in a crazy outfit with very brightly colored make-up on.

-> "D.M.S.R.", this song was phenomenal tonight. It sounded tight as hell (John Blackwell clearly has worked hard over the years to keep his grooves always deep "in the pocket") and there was a lot of cool stuff happening. Prince picked a big white girl from the audience from somewhere behind us to come on stage. She happily obliged and rose to the occasion. Prince treated her very nicely. He settled her comfortably in Rhonda's pillows and left her lounging there for most of "D.M.S.R." I honestly don't know how on earth she managed not to get up and dance, because the funk was phat at this point. I think those "try to touch or follow Prince and I'll break both your legs" instructions before people are let up on stage do have a strong effect on some people. At one point Prince looked at the girl sitting there and asked "Do your feet hurt??" During this song he spent A LOT OF TIME on our side of the stage. We had excellent views of the man for almost the whole song.

-> During "Pass the Peas" there was a nice "Freaks on this side" chant going on.

-> During "No Diggity", Prince takes the girl by the hand and walks her around to the stage to be part of the Pimp act: "Black with some white" which is what this girl was wearing. (If you have no clue what this act is all about, read my reports of the other two Boston shows.) "Not 'pimp' as in 'People in Music Production'" is what he said.

-> "Controversy" was pumping tonight as well; sounded absolutely fantastic. The beat kept pounding. Seemed to me like he stretched the song out a bit, and kept the A Love Bizarre variations in it to a minimum. You could see Prince was in the mood to jam.

-> Gorgeous "Wonderful World" sax solo on our side of the stage. After the solo, Maceo stepped off the stage and walked by right in front of us.

-> The acoustic set was a bit shorter this time with some nice songs left out, but it was a very good set nonetheless. It felt a bit more spontaneous tonight. At the start of "Prince and the Band" he instructed us: "Yo! Give it up for Maceo and the Band", referring back to the excellent support act we'd heard earlier. He started playing some riffs and he said "I'm just jamming, you know" -- the riffs turned into "Prince and the Band". What really impressed me was the excellent Human Beatboxing Prince performed in this song. The acoustic set features some other rhythm section imitation tricks by Prince, such as hitting the hollow body of his acoustic guitar or speaking a well-time "Pooow!" in the mic (which is what he did in Alphabet St to end that quick little guitar riff at the end of each chorus). His timing with these little accents is impeccable.

-> Starting off "Alphabet St" he instructed us to clap along on each 2nd and 4th beat. Boston, we were great at it! We kept it tight When after a verse or two, the audience's clapping started fading a bit, Prince IMMEDIATELY noticed it and told us "Keep the clapping going!" real quick between two verse lines.

-> Mike Scott joined the acoustic session during Raspberry Beret.

-> A very nicely diverse group of about a dozen girls from the audience were led to the stage during U Got the Look. A pretty blonde in an all-white outfit danced her heart out on the catwalk in front of the B section. Another gorgeous girl, this one with long straight dark hair (which is my personal preference) did an absolutely fabulous job singing a line of "Kiss": "Act your age, mama, not your shoe size". She was very confident singing it, she was perfectly in pitch, her timing was excellent -- I was impressed. At the end of her stay on stage, Prince made her bow with him to the audience. When Prince bowed a second time, the girl pointed with both arms to Prince as if to say: "He's the one who deserves all the credit" -- very graceful of her, I thought.

-> Near the end of the set (before the encore) we had some funky double-clap action and very cool horn solos. While I find the horns a bit too prominent overall, like in Sign of the Times for example, they did play some really cool stuff.

-> I believe it was at the end of the main set, after "Take Me With U" had just finished when Prince walked by right in front of us to pass out copies of a Jehova's Witnesses booklet. Dragana hopped from our 2nd row into the 1st row and stuck her hand out as well. Prince had just run out of copies at that point. He looked her straight in the eye, grabbed her hand with his right hand and squeezed it with their fingers interlocked. Oh, in case you missed that: MY WIFE, DRAGANA, TOUCHED PRINCE TONIGHT WHILE HE LOOKED HER STRAIGHT IN THE EYES Cool, huh?

-> I was *very* happy when the encore started off with "The Beautiful Ones". I absolutely love that song, and he did an amazing job on it tonight. This was followed by "Nothing Compares to U", which was a HUGE sing-along, especially the chorus. Although it somehow seemed a little more inspired tonight "Purple Rain" was very similar to the previous two nights. Mind you, that still means that he did an absolutely amazing guitar solo on it.

-> After the show, we ran into John Blackwell and his gorgeous young wife. John seems very shy when you talk to him. I tried telling him that I watched his video earlier that day and that I really liked him in it (he tells you about how he grew up drumming, which drummers he studied, how he learned techniques and altered and combined them into the crazy skillfulness he has now). We just talked for a minute or two. We didn't even bother asking him for an autograph. They were both very sweet. He introduced us to his wife, and she shook our hand. They make a beautiful couple, they look very much in love. While John was a bit distracted by some commotion around us (security repeatedly telling him that he should go to his dressing room, for example), she seemed genuinely interested in talking to us.

On each of the three Boston concert nights, Prince has been hanging out in a private and tightly guarded upstairs-room at Caprice on Tremont St, right next door to the Roxy. This gave several of us hope for an aftershow tonight at the Roxy, since he's played there before and because that's such a perfect venue for it. However, it seems like there weren't any plans, not even tonight, for any additional performance. Prince staff did confirm an "afterparty", but refused to give any details.

After the concert, Dragana and I lounged out in the downstairs section of Caprice tonight, giving our sore feet a much needed rest and our sore throats a much needed drink. It was clear that Prince was already upstairs: his security staff was hanging around, the stairways were closed off and guarded, and the glass covering over the hole in the ceiling above the main bar was covered with oriental rugs to block any sneak peeks.

We had fun hanging out there for a bit, because it's a mellow place with a mixed crowd that loves to grind and dance a bit. At 1:30am we left to grab a slice of pepperoni pizza and perhaps hang out a bit more outside to see Prince and entourage exit the building. Their limos were double parked out front, ready to drive them back to the trendy Nine Park hotel.

Because we had no idea when Prince would be leaving, we figured we might as well grab a cab to go home before the 2am cab-impossible-to-get-madness

Maybe someone else can fill us in on something that might have happened tonight? Did he play the hotel piano next door for a bit, maybe?

- Erik
[This message was edited Fri Aug 20 8:49:04 2004 by vanderneut]

You guys did look great again! It was nice to meet you both and Dragana is quite stunning in black.

Azimuth

He did "nothing compares to u" for the encore not the Question of U.....he played the Question of u the night before .





peace
Mark

kokomo said:

Thanks Mark In the morning after the show I always spot so many typos in my reports -- a bit embarrassing really -- this one is so big, it gives away that I was dozing off a few times during me writing it.

I've corrected it now, both here and on housequake.com.

- Erik

What a fantastic show...

Behold the power of Prince, everybody: I dragged myself to last night's show despite having a 102-degree fever due to an ear infection and a throat infection. If it was anything other than a Prince concert, including my own damn funeral, I would have stayed in bed. But there was no way I was missing this show. And I was rewarded with first-row seats!

My only disappointment was that Prince didn't seem to spend much time on our side of the stage, and from the first row it's really hard to see what's happening on the rest of the stage (especially when you're 5'3"). I was in Section B on Tuesday night, and of course last night he seemed to spend half the show facing that section! Dammit! Also, Rhonda's fine ass didn't come over to see us at all.

But I can't complain - it was an unbelievable show, I still danced my ass off nonstop, Prince was gorgeous and on point, the band was tight as hell, and Maceo started the party off right.

Here's what we were wearing to the third show:

vanderneut said:

How adorable..there is no way that you two could not be noticed!!!!!you look like rock stars...great memories for you two to share

vanderneut said:

I saw you guys! You were so cute!!