From The Toronto Star, Sunday June 16, 2002 - Page D4

Unpredictable Prince's purple reign continues

"For those of you expectin' to get your Purple Rain on, you're in the wrong house," Prince told a sold-out Massey Hall last night, signalling early on that he wasn't about to string together his greatest hits from the past quarter century.

No matter. Whatever audience members imagined going in, they left having witnessed a spectacular show, one of the most memorable concerts of the year. Prince, who turned 44 this month, has been labelled many things over the years. But on this night, Musical Genius pretty much covered it.

Advance word was that he planned to stick closely to his album of last year, The Rainbow Children, a jazzy disc that offered an updated cross between '70s fusionists Weather Report and Manhattan Transfer. But, given the Purple One's penchant for unpredictability, it was hardly surprising that it didn't play out that way.

After starting the show off with the two opening tracks from the disc, a guitar-slinging Prince and his five accompanists, including sax man Maceo Parker, wasted little time in mixing things up with a soulful rendition of Joni Mitchell's "A Case Of You".

Bemoaning the disappearances of funk from the radio, Prince also led spritied assaults on the Delfonics' "La La (Means I Love You)" and Sly Stone's "Sing A Simple Song," the latter yielding a cameo appearance by bassist/singer Larry Graham.

By the time the band moved into favourites such as "Take Me With You" and "Raspberry Beret", the audience, already having spent the better part of the night on its feet, needed little prompting from the stage to start jumping up and down. "You'll make me want to buy a house here," said Prince, who is married to Torontonian Manuela Testolini and is said to have purchased a Bridle Path manse.

Suffice it to say, he's welcome to stay as long as he likes, especially if it means more dates at Massey Hall.

-- Pop music critic Vit Wagner

FunkyMan said:

It's a positive review, but not a good one, if you know what I mean. Thank goodness for reviews and reports here, like Arcamar says.

Unless its Hockey, you'll get a good review even if they sucked. That's the T.S for you...better off checking the Post or the Global Mail, now those are newspapers.