Below I've tried to describe in words how I experienced 6 days in London seeing 3 fantastic shows at the O2 Arena and 2 outstanding Indigo2 aftershows as well. Simple put: We had a fantastic week!

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Prince - The O2 Arena - London - Friday 2007-08-10

My concert buddy and I had managed to get quite great seats for this one (C2, Row Q) instead of our first allocation of near-the-clouds seats (405, Row C). I admit that you are a bit too close to the stage in C2, Row Q but at least you can see Prince from a few meters away when he decides to jump around near the front of the symbol stage. The sound at our seats were very muddy and not great at all. I was wondering if that would be the case for the entire arena but I later discovered that it wasn't.

Beverley Knight opened the show and while I am not into her type of music at all I must admit that the lady can sing. Quite impressively actually. It is never easy to open a show this huge but she did very well indeed.

The Friday show itself was too much show and too little music. Almost all the songs were cut short or played as medleys and he did far too much teasing like "You're not ready for this, London" etc. Prince spend a lot of time going up and down on his elevator platform and the dancing-on-stage bit with karaoke and "Play that Funky Music White Boy" covers for more than 15 minutes is a complete waste of time and ruins the flow of the show. I wasn't happy at all with that part of the show.

The setlist was not the best imaginable but Prince's guitar playing and the fact that even on a not-so-great night he can entertain like no other human being on this planet and also the super energetic sexy dancers (The Twinz) made for a great night anyway. Highlights were the opener "3121" that is totally awesome live and makes for a fantastic opener. "Controversy" was very good as well (despite that he seems to apply censorship to a textline or two). Prince doing a solo electric guitar encore playing "Little Red Corvette", "Raspberry Beret" and "Sometimes It Snows In April" was certainly on the plus side of things as well.

The show ended with Shelby singing a great "Crazy" and then they played "Get on the Boat" that has to be one of the worst Prince tracks ever and this live version was even worse than the CD version. Yuck. The best thing about this evening was that it certainly wasn't over yet. In fact it was just about to become really interesting. We headed for a burger and then the aftershow at the Indigo2. Not yet knowing what was about to hit us.

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Prince - The Indigo2, Aftershow - London - Friday 2007-08-10

After having seen the O2 Arena gig we went to the Indigo2 and managed to get to the seated balcony having standing floor tickets since they never actually looked at the tickets. Very nice indeed since we were very tired after all the travelling, standing and walking we'd been doing all day.

The sound at the Indigo2 is totally state-of-the-art excellent and it is a really cool smaller venue. It is possible to get a great view of the stage from almost anywhere and the bars are never overcrowded when you need your next vodka-redbull to keep your eyes open.

Beverley Knight opened the aftershow playing for what seemed like an hour or so. She reminds me a bit of a young Tina Turner when she's dancing around on stage but seriously that woman can sing. She did a very great set and then real magic was about to happen.

The engineer put Prince's guitar on stage at one point during Beverley's gig and then removed it again after a while. Had Prince decided not to play? Oh, no. Suddenly it was brought back on stage. Ah, yes. The theory is that he liked Beverley's performance so much that he couldn't resist joining it, despite his official website having announced that he wouldn't perform.

In came the NPG horns (with Maceo Parker) and joined the Beverley horn section. More and more NPG musicians joined in. At one point there were countless horns, 2 bass players, 2 drummers, the twinz dancing and well, quite simply there were two full bands there. More than 20 musicians jamming on stage. Completely outstanding.

When Prince finally did enter the stage his guitar was actually "dead" so it ruined his first guitar solo and you could clearly see that he was strongly thinking about kicking his guitar tech in the teeth. But quickly they got it fixed and it rocked for the rest of the show.

Prince started taking control and slowly the band were trimmed down to mainly the NPG. Beverley stayed on for the entire gig though. I think Prince really loves her "Another Piece Of My Heart". He made her sing it one more time after the NPG had come on. I agree. It is a good song.

Prince played for somewhere near one hour and it was really excellent. We were treated with gems like "A Love Bizarre", "Alphabet St.", "Sweet Thing", "Controversy" and "3121". Prince was really in a great mood and this has to be one of those aftershow you just have to feel lucky to have witnessed.

Oh, and let's not forget the guy who sat a few rows away from us. Congratulations dude, you just slept through an entire Prince aftershow. Guess you must really hate yourself for that?

Taking photos in the Indigo2 is rather difficult since security really goes nuts about it. But from the balcony I found it a bit easier than downstairs on the floor. But obviously you'll be a bit further from the stage up there.

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Prince - The O2 Arena - London - Saturday 2007-08-11

For this gig we were seated in the VIP area (D1, Row E) and while lots of things have been said about the ticket sales it has to be added that the VIP experience was pretty pleasant. We had a good chat with a couple from Wales. There were plenty of couches, food and drinks in the lounge and the concert seats themselves were excellent. You cannot fully enjoy the lighting effects of the stage from the D1 section but you do get an excellent stage overview and you are being very close to the stage. Anyway, we had a great evening at those seats and also the sound was very good in this area.

The crowd however was lousy as hell. It is true what is being said about Saturday night crowds. Far too many people were far too drunk and kept running out to buy more beers during the concert. Some of them were too drunk to stand on their feet at the end of the gig. It was rather obvious that many of the people in the VIP area must have gotten their tickets for free or very cheap.

The concert itself was good. I felt that it was somewhat better than Friday. But I have to admit that the view from our seats and the sound quality may have some influence there. Unfortunately we had to watch the entire "fans"-dancing-on-stage-karaoke-funky-music-shit again. This time they even added a rather long horn section at the end completely loosing any momentum of the gig what-so-ever. Good thing is that they got back on track after this "break". Like Friday they didn't play anything from the new album "Planet Earth", but they played a lot of great older tracks, so it didn't matter that much. I would like to say that C.C. Dunham is "Not bad...for a girl" on the drums! "Shhh" kicks ass live.

The top highlight of the show was a synth/piano section were Prince managed to play billions of songs playing bits and pieces and rhytms from songs like "Alphabet St.", "DMSR", "When Doves Cry", "Erotic City", "I Wanna Be Your Lover", "Nasty Girl", "Sign O The Times", "Pop Life"... It was entertaining as hell!

After the arena gig we headed for the Indigo2 to look out for a possible aftershow.

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Prince - The Indigo2, No Aftershow - London - Saturday 2007-08-11

The O2 Arena gig was over so after some late night snacks and drinks we headed for the Indigo2. Unfortunately it turned out that Prince and the NPG were probably too tired after last night and had decided not to play Saturday night.

We were given the option of swapping our ticket for another aftershow of our choice but that was not really an option since we already had tickets for Tuesday and wouldn't be coming back to London after that. We decided to go in anyway and grab a drink or two and generally just hang out a bit.

Inside there were a fair amount of people dancing and having drinks and there was a DJ as well. I am not sure what his problem was but if you are hired to play to a party for Prince fans I suppose it would be a great idea to play mostly Prince tracks or at least related artists. He didn't seem to share my belief. He played mostly drum rhytms and when he throw in "Erotic City" at one point it was heavily remixed so you almost couldn't recognize it underneath the drum rhytms.

Needless to say, we left pretty early. It wasn't really worth spooling a good night's sleep for and actually we were still rather tired after Friday night's main gig and aftershow.

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Prince - The O2 Arena - London - Tuesday 2007-08-14

This was by far the best O2 Arena gig of the 3 we saw. Our seats (107, HH) were a bit futher away from stage than had been the case at the other two gigs but the view was still great being able to see a bit more of the stage and the sound was equally good. The crowd on Tuesday was excellent and it seems that the very drunk people are mostly a weekend thing because people were really into the music and the party this evening. Heeeey Funky London!

Beverley Knight opened just as she'd done on Friday and again she did a good job.

Prince and the band seemed incredibly focused and gone was the karaoke-dancing section. This time the focus was much more on the music. Most songs were not cut after just one verse and instead played in their entire glory. We were even treated with 2 tracks from "Planet Earth" those being "Guitar" and a phenomenal "Here On Earth" where Prince really demonstrated the fantastic voice of his.

Along the ride we had such nice tracks like "Forever In My Life" and "Alphabet St." I guess you will never get tired of the outstanding guitar solo in "Purple Rain" any time soon either. Prince really rocked his guitar on this Tuesday night. He has to be the most underrated guitarist ever. The man is a God with a guitar.

The show had surprisingly started with "1999" and it ended nicely with "Crazy" and "Nothing Compares 2 U". It wasn't a long gig but we knew we would be in for more just a few hours later at the Indigo2. The man was rockin' so much that there was no way that he wouldn't be playing at the aftershow.

Taking photos is an experience at these gigs. Security is all over the place and they got far worse during the 3 days we went there. If it gets much worse they'll start and strip search everybody. It seems absolutely ridiculous trying to prevent something like that. I guess Prince has an incredible fear of cameras, maybe thinking they eat his soul away or something. Sorry Prince. I just don't get this at all.

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Prince - The Indigo2, Aftershow - London - Tuesday 2007-08-14

After Tuesday night's main gig it was clear that Prince was going to perform. We had floor tickets for the aftershow and we found a spot standing at the back of the floor with a good view. Only being partially disturbed by a flock of inbred morons having had just about 600 beers too many for their small brains to handle.

Beverley Knight played a rather short opening gig that probably lasted for some 30 minutes. After that, the gig slowly evolved into a musical jam that were about to go on for a very long time. The jam started being about George Clinton related funk like "More Bounce To The Ounce", "Atomic Dog" and "One Nation Under A Groove", but would later touch lots of other genres.

Comparing the show to Friday night's aftershow I didn't like it as much. For long periods the band seemed to be jamming a bit too much for themselves rather than for the crowd. Also the many jazz fusion elements is not anything I'm likely to ever learn to love.

At one point Prince grabbed Joshua's bass and he sure can play that thing as well. It certainly got some funky spanking.

Along the way we got stuff like "Empty Room", "Peach", "I'll Take You There", "Girls and Boys" and "3121". We even had "Partyman" rocking the place during the final encore. I think Prince (and the NPG) was on stage for nearly 2 hours. All things considered it was absolutely a great experience. It just wasn't quite as great as Friday night.

This gig ended our "Prince - 21 nights at the O2 Arena" experience. We didn't really want it to end but London is not a cheap place at all to be at. We did have a wonderful time there getting to witness 3 Arena gigs and 2 fantastic Aftershows. I'd advice anybody who has a chance to go and see Prince. He is a musician of outstanding quality. You won't regret it!
[Edited 8/18/07 7:17am]

sounds like an AMAZING week in London

Nice account!