After reading reports of Fans dissapointed with seating and people fighting in the seats plus the atmosphere in the aftershows I am appealing to Prince to bring back his NPGMC style priority booking for his next concerts.

This whole thing is putting a taint on this tour. When we were at the pre-show in 2002 nobody dared take a picture or try to record Prince performing.

Real Prince fans attended and got the best seats. Real Prince fans respected each other and Prince. Real Prince fans maybe like a few drinks but not enough to cause offence at a Prince Gig. Real Prince fans want to enjoy the night without incident.

I hope Prince reads this and understands our frustrations, and I hope he realises that those people pushing and shoving and disrespecting his wishes for no photos are not his real fams but people who have taken advantage of the fact that they could buy tickets with the rest of us!

Maybe aftershow tickets should only have been sold via the www.3121.com website as only true Prince fans would think to look here to get the tickets. Not just the same ticketmaster ownership of everything.

I hope you read this and understand our plight! We want to enjoy your show, your hospitality and respect any wishes you have in the hope that you will do what we all want.....to play your heart out for us! The true fans who love and respect your talent!

P.S. Please get the bouncers to manage the queues and ensure no pushing or fighting at the aftershows.

Peace!

All excellent ideas.

Savage said:

forgive the newbie here but whats a fam?

synthiarose04 said:

A 'fam' is how Prince refers to his fans. He considers the word 'fan' as not respectful enough for people who dedicate themselves to him and follow his music as it comes from the word 'fanatic'.

He therefore began to refer to us as 'fams' as in 'family' as he views us all as one community together as one.

Hope this helps.

Peace

Prince we love U and want to be able to enjoy your music for as long as you will play for us.

I fully understand why u would not want to play an aftershow when U look out across the crowd and all u can see is a sea full of inebriated faces. Yet again the few ruin it for the majority.

And I have to agree with Savage - this is unfortunately what comes from making these sorts of tickets available to all - fams will go through hell and high water - or indeed stand for 3 hours straight without so much as a sip of water in order to experience your genius in a more intimate setting.

Unfortunately non-fams are not as respectful and treat it purely as a way to have further access to alcohol - they have no repsect and their only intension is to drink as much as possible and push people out of the way, just so they can name drop into a conversation in ten years time that they were at the front of a Prince aftershow (albeit barely conscious and able to stand).

I realise this is a generalisation and there were probably some non-fams who were most respectful, but my experience at the last 2 aftershows is that this is not the case.

I love u Prince - we all do - please let us experience your music - your genius without having to combat with those who choose to drink til they drop and behave ungraciously.

Peace - life can be so nice.

Hmm, well the good news is that Im attending next week.

Its such a shame to read about these things happening, I am so looking forward to flying over to Uk for the 20th and 21st September shows and aftershows and like so many here want to go and listen to the music and watch what a great performer Prince is. Such a shame that a minority do not seem to bothered but prefer getting wasted and ruining the experience for others .

YES YES YES PLEASE.

have to agree.....the atmopshere has been terrible at times...no true fams would spoil it for other true fams....

lets hope Mr Goodnight reads this and sorts it out for the next one...next one??? will there be such a thing?

ONA for me remains the better tour purely because of the fan perks.

yeah I agree with you, a well run fan club approach I think works better.

I witnessed a number of unsavoury incidents related to VIP and auctioned Gold circle seats which were down around the back of the symbol with crap view and sound. These people were extremely disappointed and felt conned which led to issues arising.

However, selling 21*20,000 tickets means that you are inevitably going to get mostly non-fans attending as a one-off especially as actually it was so cheap. Prince's core fan base here would not sell out this number by a long shot. Of course that's fine but it won't be the same family atmosphere as at the ONA concerts in London. I mean what respect the fans showed there. I remember Prince climbed down off the front of stage, walked up the aisle in between the seats towards the back stood there, and no one made a sound or a move towards him or took a single picture.

now, it's quite well known that Prince records his every performance and watches it afterwards. How could he fail to be dismayed by the 1000s of fans just leaving the arena and 1000s more just chatting away when one of his idols Maceo and Mike P are playing their guts out during "what a wonderful world" I mean it was only 30 mins in the show.

Also, how could he not be pissed off and fed up at people's blatant lack if respect for his simplest of requests. Please do not record or take pictures of the show. I've never seen so many cameras out. The man does not like it. It pisses him off immensely and shows great disrespect.

I think this will drain his enthusiasm over the weeks and influence his decisions over how long to play and whether to treat fans to an aftershow or not.

Appollonia said:

sorry but i cant understand. prince let a lot of people down he is supposed to be a profesional all he had to was employ some more security or close the bar he's been gign for 30 odd years i'm sure he's played in far worse venues!

thats not very fair, everyone should get a chance to see Prince.
People should learn how to handle their drink and everyone will have a good time.
And as for seating, if there aren't seats left that are good enough for you then you should have got them earlier. (excusing the fact that ticket master seems to have amazing seats right before the show and all that)

Savage said:

Vote SAVAGE

I have to agree with the proposal in this post. If Prince were to say that he was holding say 7 aftershows (one in three) over the 21 nights, and sell a select few to his known fam base as priority, there would be less problems and a much better vibe the aftershows. With there being so many aftershows, it's likley that the fams will be in the minority at those he does play.

It will be interesting to see how the rest of the tour plays out.

surely it would make sense if there was a cordoned off area at the front just for NPG members [hopefully secrity could try and enforce it better?].
As for the booze situation again security should just be turning people away at the door. I would imagine that Prince's band right now dread playing the aftershows including Prince.
Alas the concept of an aftershow has been tainted badly with tickets going on mass sale to anyone.

Bring back the fan events?

So we can risk loosing hair and teeth as some of the freaking fanatics scramble over you to touch Prince or is guitar!!!!!

No thanks. Much more civil in an open environment.

just another thought, i seem to remember when the ONA seating was done this too was a balls up as there were no seating allocation, just a rush and get what you can. Again ,at both Manchester and London, this caused upset.
Prince and ticket allocations just don't mix well.

SquirrelMeat said:

lol yeah absolutely. Anyone remember the first night of the ONA tour at Hammersmith? There wasn't much "community" that night when the doors opened to the soundcheck!

People moaned their F'ing heads off about the NPGMC seating.

They moaned about the ticket availability, the website server, the queuing arrangement at the venue etc, etc.

The NPGMC itself was reported by several fans to the authorities because they didn't think they got their $100 worth. That is the reason for the title of the 'C-Note' album and why the 'Xenophobia' album title was changed to 'Xpectation'. Because people expected it for $100.

Given all that why the hell would Prince operate the NPGMC again? Blame the ungrateful bastards who reported him and spoilt it the first time.

funkyhead said:

Tickets were allocated on the night. Bit of of a pisser if you had queued for a few hours, but if thats what the NPGMC and The Apollo had decided (a bit like asking for no flash photos), then any sensible people would have followed that instuction.

Instead, a herd of self obessives decided they should ingnore the rules and pile down the front anyway.

So much for "well behaved" fans.

Rico said:

Apart from that night (you and I were quite well behaved I remember!) when I went on the third night, I was down the front, and about to get up on stage when some giant mama almost tore my hair out shoving me back so she could slobber on the stage!

SquirrelMeat said:

Totally agree.

I was at all 3 nights at the Apollo in london in 2002 and the atmosphere and the way 'fans' treated each other before the show was awful.

On one night there was such a mad scramble into the venue that a pregnant woman was knocked to the floor and practically trampled on. When she shouted for help, some fans actually laughed at her. Frankly, I was bloody disgusted!

The queue outside was chaos with a few total twats arranging an entrance system with NO authority or consideration for people who had libed up all day. Inside the Apollo the line just disintegrated into a mad scrum. It was awful and degrading.

Yes, there are more drunk people at the O2 and I've written about this. Then again there is a bar on every level next to every entrance and exit point and with a 23,000 seater there will be a lot old casual fans present.

The drunkeness and general pissed behaviour was pretty terrible on Wednesdays aftershow and was not conducive to a performance, but I'm not sure if these were genuine fans or corporate cocks wanting to get slaughtered.

Worse still, despite constant warnings over the speakers, on signs and by Prince's security staff people proceeded to ignorantly take photo's and video. This didn't happen in 2002, but not as many people had video and camera on their phones then did they?

A compromise would be good here, I felt that many of the people around me were direspectfull with there cameras out constantly. The only thing that disapointed me about Wednesdays gig was the large number of people who were more interested in getting to the bar than watchin Prince. I couldn't care less what other people want to do but got well pissed off with having to move to let them in and out of their seats.
Lower tiers could have been reserved for fans, let us get our groove on without getting shunted every 5 mins so someone can get to the bar.
If I was Prince I would have been upset at the lack of respect for Maceo although those who did stick around for it more than made up for the others.

wrekkastow said:[quote].....the atmopshere has been terrible at times...no true fams would spoil it for other true fams....

[quote]

You didn't go the ONA shows then!?

Savage said:

It is a shame that some people are ruining it for others