There is a brand new 2007 book out titled "The Show I'll Never Forget" edited by Seth Manning. In the book 50 writers relive their most memorable concertgoing experiences. The chapter of interest here was written by confessed metalhead Chuck Klosterman (Fargo Rock City, Sex Drugs & Cocoa Puffs). He writes about a show on December 8, 1997 at the Fargodome in Fargo North Dakota.

He begins by talking about how Prince was at the height of his TAFKAP period weirdness and he didn't have high expectations. He was reviewing the show for the Fargo Forum and had a strict deadline of 11:10 to file the report which made him nervous knowing Prince's tendency to start late. Then the music started and it was.... Larry Graham.

Finally Prince started and "He was just so amazingly good at everything. There was a sixty-second span where he played a keyboard, a bass, and a guitar in immediate succession, and I think he played each individual instrument better than anyone ever had played them before, anywhere, during any historical period over the past eleven thousand years."

another bit: "Prince doesn't really deserve credit for being a genius because he is not a normal human. His ability to create and perform music is so inherent and instinctual that it cannot really be measured against normal criteria... And I only realized this by seeing Prince from a distance of twenty-five feet. His transcendence is not accurately felt through his songs or his albums, because a lot of those songs and records aren't especially good. Some of them are semi-terrible. But bad Prince records are still valuable because he made them. They are like triptychs from Stonehenge."

It is definitely worth reading the whole thing. Actually the whole book looks pretty cool.
http://www.amazon.com/Sho...0306815087



[Edited 8/1/07 11:00am]
[Edited 8/1/07 11:05am]
[Edited 8/1/07 11:05am]