A lot has already been said about the Houston show, so I’ll just give my random highlights:

Before the soundcheck: my friends and I arrived at about 2:45 to discover that there were only about 25-30 people in line ahead of us. We figured we could handle the wait knowing that we were virtually guaranteed at least second row seats. The wait wasn’t too bad—there were always pleasant people to talk to, and I met a lot of really interesting people. An added bonus was that I got to see many friends and acquaintances who I hadn’t see for quite some time—I’m originally from Houston, but moved to Pittsburgh three years ago. The trip was a welcome homecoming.

I must say that I was quite impressed with the maturity with which everybody handled the general admission line situation. One of the first people in line had started a list, and everybody added their name as they arrived (big ups to Deborah for taking control!). I didn’t witness one instance of cutting or even attempted cutting; when they finally began letting people in, everyone waited patiently until it was their turn to go in. There was absolutely no pushing or shoving. Once inside the lobby, they had us line up outside the door to the theater for a few minutes until they were actually ready for us to go in. When they finally did let us in to get our seats, there was a very minor bit of a mad rush to try to get the best seats. I’ve got to admit that I was one of the guilty ones in this department.

The soundcheck:

We sat down second row almost dead center. Like at a lot of the soundchecks, Prince was sitting about fifteen rows back listening to the band. My two friends and I had a slight problem finding seats together as we got a little separated in the rush, and Prince said “don’t worry they’re all good seats. Sit down anywhere.” Luckily, we did get to sit together.

The band was jamming on Stevie Wonder’s ‘Another Star’ for about fifteen minutes, and towards the middle Prince finally went up on stage. For the first part, there was surprisingly little interaction between Prince and the club members; I guess I was spoiled by his extreme approachability at the Cleveland soundcheck. This all changed with ‘Last December,’ however—he invited people to come onstage and sing the song with him. One guy volunteered immediately, and Prince let him pick the other two people to come up. They gave it their best effort, and you could tell they were having a blast, but let’s just say they, ummmm…..didn’t sound like Prince. Yeah, that’s a good way to put it. I got to give a shoutout to my girl Jessica, though—she did belt out one line really well!! And my brother in the neon green shirt—you were cool as hell!

The band basically just jammed for a while after this, and they played a song nobody had ever heard before. Hopefully someone will remember lyrics or something, because they are completely escaping me at the moment. It was a nice blues/rock number, though, kind of reminiscent of ‘Beautiful Strange’ and ‘The Ride.’ Towards the end of the soundcheck, Prince started talking a lot more—he let a girl tell a story that she was desperate to tell about her ‘purple curse’ of having bought tickets to ten Prince shows but only making it to four. Prince and the audience joked around that she was leading up to asking for a refund. One kind of funny thing (at least I thought so) was that people began yelling out song requests. I dared a friend to say ‘Ronnie, Talk to Russia’ just to see Prince’s reaction, and it was pretty funny—he just totally stopped and looked deadpan because he couldn’t believe anybody had actually asked for that song. Finally he asked my buddy why he didn’t want to hear the new stuff. Another friend yelled out ‘The Ladder’ and he said that the band was learning that one. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for that one to show up, y’all—there may be hope!

After the girl began telling her story, more and more people began approaching the stage and wanting to tell Prince things like how much he had changed their lives and how much they loved him and stuff like that. The soundcheck really degenerated at this point, and Prince quickly said he had to go change clothes and left.

On to the concert:

I don’t know that I really have a lot to say about the concert, which is a huge surprise since I’ve been so verbose up until this point. For the first time in all the Prince shows I’ve attended, he started on time, which was a HUGE surprise to me because I was in the bathroom at the time. I figured I had a good half hour left, at least!

The setlist was pretty standard, except that he played ‘The Everlasting Now’ instead of the Santana medley. Having seen both, I’ve gotta say that TEN works much better as a set closer (not counting the encore, of course) than the Santana medley does. It was just incredibly high energy, and really had the crowd moving. I’ve got to make a brief comment about the boots Prince was wearing—he wasn’t wearing high heels!! Instead, he was wearing boots that looked very similar to the ones he wore in the ‘Rock n Roll is Alive’ video. They looked like snow boots with some kind of funky fringe all over them.

A HUGE treat of the concert for me was having both Maceo and Candy on sax. I couldn’t make up my mind which one I wanted to show up for last night’s show, and I couldn’t believe my eyes when we walked into the soundcheck and there they both were. They both have such a great stage presence, and their totally different styles of playing really worked well together.

The piano medley portion of the show was just incredible. A couple of songs took me by surprise—I wasn’t expecting ‘Free’ or ‘Do Me, Baby’ (is this the first time he’s done that one on this tour?). Of course, he had the crowd eating out of his hand during ‘Adore’ and ‘How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore.’

Overall, I think Prince was much more animated and more into the performance than he was at the Cleveland show I saw a few weeks ago. He danced around a lot, and his guitar work was truly inspired. The Houston crowd was one of the best crowds I’ve ever seen at a Prince show; they were always stomping their feet and starting chants to try to get Prince back on stage, particularly after the encore closer, which was ‘Purple Rain.’ It really, really seemed like he was going to come back out and do the normal closing song, ‘Anna Stesia,’ but no luck there. It was really strange—they had the houselights on during the end of ‘Purple Rain’, and when Prince said good night and left the stage, they turned the lights back off like there was more to come. From my seat, I could see backstage to where Prince left and entered the stage. After the lights had been back out for awhile, he actually came back out from backstage like he was about to come back onstage. He talked to someone for a few seconds before walking off in the other direction; at this point, the light came back on, and that was it—the concert was over. I think we were all a little disappointed that we didn’t get to hear ‘Anna Stesia,’ but after such a fantastic show, I felt bad complaining.

So that was pretty much the night for me—I met a lot of great people, and I finally got to sit with most of my best friends all together at a Prince show (for the most part—one was sitting a row behind me). I’m writing this as I’m sitting on the plane flying back home to Pittsburgh, knowing that the whole trip was money and time well spent.