I know this is quite a long post, sorry....

It’s been a week since I witnessed the opening night of the ’21 nights in London’ tour. I live in North Wales and was down south for more than just the concert and only got back yesterday. For the whole of that time I didn’t have access to the internet and as every day passed I was anxious to read everyone’s reviews of the night I saw and the further 2 nights. Imagine my shock when I got online last night, scrolled back through pages of posts (11 in all) and saw so many negative comments. I’ve been a member of this site for quite a while, I have only posted a small number of times and all those have been responses but after last night I felt compelled to start a stream.

Bear with me I’ll go back a couple of years, then months, then a week. I first saw Prince in Wembley in 1986, the final night of a 3 night stint, it was incredible, possibly the best concert I ever witnessed. Why possibly? Well after Sign o The Times concerts the next time I saw him was twice on the Lovesexy 88 tour, what a show!! Possibly the best show I’ve ever witnessed! Starting to see where this is going? I’ve now seen Prince live 10 times and could find at least one reason to describe each 1 as possibly the best, even the Diamonds & Pearls tour which for me personally was the one I didn’t quite ‘feel’, I put this down to the fact it was outside in Manchester Maine Road Stadium and that as it was outside the atmosphere was slightly flat, I certainly wasn’t blaming the performance or Prince himself.

The last time I saw Prince was the Gold experience tour in Manchester’s GMEX, wow!! Possibly the best show I’ve seen!! So, it’s been 10 years.

My household were aware of was my passion for Prince (me now being in a new relationship). I’d managed to convert my girlfriend from being a M.J. fan to being happy to listen to and appreciate Prince.

For about 12 months we’ve been aware that a family wedding would be taking place over the weekend of 4th and 5th of August. When we heard the announcement of the 21 nights tour we were made up to get 4 tickets for the opening night, not just because it was the opening night but also as we were travelling down from North Wales on the 31st for the Wedding on the 4th it was the only feasible night we could attend, all was perfect.

I’d spent weeks asking myself whether it would be as good as before and after building Prince concerts as the best thing ever to my girlfriend had started to ‘hope’ that I would be proved right, but was secretly a little concerned.

I’ve bored you enough with the history so I won’t describe the entire day, I’ll go straight in….the concert. I loved it, funky, hard, fun, tight, use whatever word you like, this was it. I know Purple Rain isn’t everyone’s 1st choice of an opening number but Prince had the crowd on his side from the first chord. Yes I’d probably prefer something different as an opener but would that choice match yours? Would yours match mine? I doubt it. This guy has songs you and I as hard core fans haven’t heard and yet some on here want him to play what THEY alone want to hear. Yes sure there were a couple of songs I would prefer changed to songs I’d LOVE to hear live but this is Prince for god sake. I know so many people, me included, who are fans of bands that once they’ve seen them live think to themselves ‘I’ve seen them now’ yet with Prince we never ever tire of seeing him live, why? Because every show is different, not necessarily the songs but the whit, the crowd etc. The show was incredible. Live as live is meant to be. Encores as encores are meant to be, unpredictable. And wow was that 3rd encore worth the price of 4 main show tickets and 3 aftershow tickets alone! I loved songs that we in the UK haven’t heard yet, Musicology was incredible, I love the track. Black Sweat was so much stronger than I’d expected. And obviously the hits, Controversy rocked, Take me with you, Kiss, not a bad song amongst them, I even loved the covers, especially Come Together. This band are tight, believe me!

We have been treated to an artist who can do the lot, live and on record, we would move heaven and earth to see this guy perform like ONLY he can yet once we’ve done this we complain if he plays too much jazz, doesn’t play a certain song or plays 10 minutes less than the night before!! I’m perplexed…where’s the positivity?

As for the aftershow party………..I live in North Wales, No-one comes here to play live, saying that Stereophonics did play a one off night in May and were fantastic but generally no-one plays North wales and to the best of my knowledge Prince has never played Wales at all let alone North. So booking tickets to go to an aftershow party is a real treat, but also, a huge risk. We don’t have the opportunity to just turn up. So with that in mind I didn’t get my tickets for the aftershow until arriving at the venue. I went through all the questions ‘will he play?’, ‘is this a huge waste of money?’ ‘am I gonna look an idiot?’ and by still buying the tickets I answered all the questions with, what the hell, this is Prince, an aftershow Party!!! If you don’t go you’ll kick yourself all the way back to North Wales, whether or not he plays!!. So we went, and yes admittedly it’s easy to sit here and talk of how wonderful it was when he played, and for an hour +, rather than those who paid for Fridays aftershow party when he didn’t even turn up or on Saturday where he played for minutes but quite honestly the risk of missing him far out weighs the pain of never giving yourself the opportunity to see an aftershow party. I could have walked away from the party thinking ‘He only sang 1 song’ or ‘It may as well have been NPG live with Prince as a guest’ but no…I left there thinking ‘I went to an aftershow Party, at last!’

My girlfriend and her 18yr old daughter loved it, absolutely bowled over..the power of prince eh, to join the masses? Oh to be able to see Prince for the 1st time every time!!!!