I'm sending articles from the two major newspapers here in Salt Lake City. I can't wait for the show!

- Eric W.

Here's the link for the Salt Lake Tribune Article:

http://www.sltrib.com/themix/ci_2407360

And here's the story.

Purple Reign
Prince, the pop enigma, is back


By Dan Nailen
The Salt Lake Tribune

To be a Prince fan is to know the meaning of unconditional love. The man basically requires it of hard-core followers. The 46-year-old enigma essentially stopped doing interviews at his most-popular career point, right after 1984's "Purple Rain" blew up, rarely speaking to the media until this summer and the release of his new album, "Musicology." Instead, he holed up in his hometown of Minneapolis, recording literally thousands of songs through the years at his Paisley Park studio and releasing albums every year or so.
After a relatively normal career trajectory - from an 18-year-old wnderkind whose first album debuted in 1978, through his years breaking down the racial barriers of traditionally white rock audiences and traditionally black funk and soul audiences - Prince's media silence turned him into a strange, shadowy figure in the public's mind. Other than rumors of romantic dalliances with the likes of Kim Basinger, Sheena Easton and a variety of video and movie co-stars, hardly anything was known of Prince's personal life.
He seemingly fell off the face of the Earth during the '90s - consumed by lawsuits with his label and nonsensical name changes - except to fans who tracked each Internet-only album release and so-called "Hit and Run" tour that flashed across the country with little or no publicity throughout Prince's wilderness years.
For many Prince fanatics (and I will certainly cop to being one), those crazy years of our guy appearing on Letterman with "Slave" scrawled across his face, or showing up on MTV with a lame rapper and buttless pants, make this year's so-called "comeback" all the more satisfying.
Prince announced his return to the mainstream with show-opening appearances on this year's Grammys, joining It-Girl Beyonc, and at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, where he was elected in his first year of eligibility. It was a brilliant bit of public relations, because even when Prince was at his most Out There, his prodigious skills as a live performer and unparalleled catalog of funk-rock hits never disappeared. In fact, it was his live performances in the "Purple Rain" movie that inspired Middle America to go see the real thing, making Prince a superstar in the process.
"America got to look and see what this guy was doing on stage," said writer Amy Linden in a documentary accompanying the recent 20th anniversary DVD release of the movie. "And when America saw that, they said, 'Oh my God. That's what a Prince show is like? I gotta go to a Prince show.'
That's how I became a fan. It was 1997, long after any thought of Prince returning to the covers of magazines or MTV airways seemed realistic. He had announced a show at The Gorge in Washington about two weeks beforehand. I bought a ticket, figuring I might never get to see him again, and drove solo for three hours from Moscow, Idaho. That concert, a good decade after Prince's commercial heyday, convinced me to never miss Prince live if he was within a day's drive of wherever I was living. Since then, there have been three trips to Las Vegas, in addition to an E Center show, followed by a small Prince jam at Bricks in Salt Lake City a few years back.
In March, I rolled to Reno for opening night of Prince's "Musicology" tour (which stops in Utah on Tuesday), the second aspect of his remarkable re-emergence. While tours in all genres and of all sizes struggled this summer, Prince's jaunt is one of the few success stories; "Entertainment Tonight" reported he has made $1.6 million a night since the tour started. And, in a savvy bit of marketing gamesmanship, Prince is giving away copies of the new "Musicology" album as part of his ticket price, a move that has kept the album near the top of the Billboard album-sales charts all summer as Prince packs 10,000 people or more a night into the country's arenas.
"Musicology" is a solid Prince album, a bit of a throwback to the lush ballads and funk grooves that propelled his earliest work. If it's not as boundary-pushing as some of his work, it is a joyful, comfortable collection that should please listeners who gave up on Prince long ago.
The tour is being billed as the last chance to hear Prince do his "greatest hits," but I don't buy it. He is certainly a mercurial enough figure to do something like swearing off all his older music, but the opening night of the "Musicology" tour didn't feel like the end of anything. Anyone who has seen Prince in the past 20 years can tell you every Prince concert feels like a "greatest-hits show," because the man has a bag full of hits.
In Reno, he opened the show with the new album's title track, and sprinkled a good four or five more new cuts among 28 songs delivered over the course of two and a half hours. He had an ace band, as always, including sax player Maceo Parker, and Prince gave yet another performance that proved he is the spawn of some mysterious James Brown/Jimi Hendrix/Stevie Wonder mind-meld. He can dance and perform like Brown, shred guitar solos like Hendrix and construct wild flights of fancy in his songwriting like Wonder.
In other words, if you have never seen Prince live, you have never seen anything like this guy. And that's a situation you should remedy while you have the chance.

Tickets to see the prince

* Prince performs Tuesday at West Valley City's Usana Amphitheatre, 5400 S. 6200 W., at 7:30 p.m.

* Tickets are $36 and $81, available at all Smith's Tix outlets.

* "Purple Rain" on DVD

-
PURPLE RAIN 20TH ANNIVERSARY DVD
Prince Grade: B+
One of the few rock 'n' roll-based dramatic movies actually worth the film it was shot on, "Purple Rain" rocketed Prince into the highest reaches of rock royalty with its combination of mesmerizing live performances and a "Rocky"-style story line of a boy overcoming a tough background and achieving greatness. The story is reportedly semi-autobiographical, and even if some of the drama is exaggerated for effect, the music is what really makes the movie. It helps that Prince isn't totally embarrassing as an actor playing "The Kid" (something he couldn't boast in his follow-up films), and Morris Day almost steals the show as The Kid's musical and romantic rival. The extras on this anniversary edition include commentary by director Albert Magnoli, as well as the film's producer and cinematographer, and a few worthwhile documentaries on Minneapolis' First Avenue club, the main location on the movie, and the lasting impact of the movie. The best extra, though, is the collection of "Purple Rain"-era videos, including a killer rare live performance of "I Would Die 4 U/BABY I'M A STAR." The only bummer of the set: the absence of the enigmatic Prince's participation, considering he wrote the songs and inspired the script.
- Dan Nailen

Five Prince essentials:

"1999" (1982). After early albums revealed a sexually charged funk-rocker along the lines of Rick James, this album showed there was more to Prince. Includes "Little Red Corvette," "Delirious" and the title hit.
"Purple Rain" (1984). The blockbuster made Prince a household name and movie star. There's nary a clunker here, and No. 1 singles "When Doves Cry" and the title track are pop-rock classics.
"Around the World in a Day" (1985). Having established himself as a commercial entity on par with Madonna and Michael Jackson in the mid-'80s, Prince threw a curveball with this dive into Beatles-esque pyschedelia.
"Sign O' the Times" (1987). The masterpiece. A double-album of funky dance jams, powerful ballads and potent social commentary. This was Prince at the height of his powers. Includes "U Got the Look," "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker" and "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man."
"Emancipation" (1996). After years of hit-and-miss albums and a notorious name change, Prince got his groove back with this three-album tour de force. The songs are sexy and soulful, with covers of the Delfonics "La, La, La Means I Love You" and Bonnie Raitt's "I Can't Make U Love Me."

Five overlooked gems:
"The Gold Experience," 1995
"Batman," 1989
"Lovesexy," 1988
"Parade," 1986
"Dirty Mind," 198

Hello wekes! Thanks for the articles. I've been so busy with life and school that I would have missed the articles mentioned in "SL gears up... Parts one and two"

Are you going to make it to Q4U?

http://www.prince.org/msg/2/113395