Having been to the Aug 18th show, and reading other posts I felt compeled to write.

Going to a prince show the unexpected has to be expected, it is best to chill out and wait and see what unfolds. I have attended gigs by other artists and expected things only to be disapointed. If you are attending multiple shows this time around it is only natural that comparisons will be drawn between nights, I really enjoyed my experience and have sold tickets I have for next month, partly because I am working and because I do not want to spoil the memory I have of a great prince show.

I saw Prince in Scotland as part of his ACTII tour 13 years ago, at the time I was not a fan at all. I had been playing guitar for a number of years before hand. I was gobsmacked by his skills on the guitar,and still am to this day.Prince has edged ahead of Steve Vai as my favourite guitarist. A poster on another topic sujested that Princes guitar work had got worse and he was hitting bum notes at the Aug 13th show, I did'nt notice much of that going on. Prince cannot be getting worse, the guy writes music on a daily basis it is not possible to get worse with that much input.

A quick Google around finds Prince in the top 3 guitarists in the world between Jimmy Hendrix and Jimmy Page, 2 of Princes major influences, but what makes it even more interesting is that Prince is Eric Claptons favourite guitarist, quite an accolade.

I felt that the show was a little short, but most Prince fans could listen to him all night. The aftershow showed how great a musician the guy is, I enjoyed it more than the main gig, the sound was brilliant.

Finally. every magazine or article about Prince talks about his commercial decline in the 90's. Most of the work he put out during that time is reported as being poor. Prince put out amazing quality work on all these albums. The world is obsessed by record sales and number ones. I don't care if it reaches the top 10 as long as I have the album to enjoy and listen to time and again. In the 90's a magazine reported that Prince was sitting on 500 unreleased tracks, enough to let him retire and release for many years to come.

The thing is Prince is an artist and artists create regardless of money or critisism. For people who think its about the money, Prince could call it a day and live of his back catalogue for the rest of his life, but he won't because music flows through his veins and he lives to be creative in his artform.

Well said, you've hit the nail on the head...
I went on the 10 aug and had one of the best nights of my life. The next day my friend and i went to macdonalds and one of the free papers had a review on the concert. My friend said i dont want to read it, i have my opinion (he was blown away by prince) he was absolutely right.
Prince is an absolute genius and has brought great joy to me for over 20 years.
Who else has ever played 21 nights and a different show every night?

I bloody love him

Carlito

Also a few people demanding refunds for the after shows. We purchased our after show tickets upon arival at the venue. We were under the understanding that Prince possibly would not be playing after the main show and the nice lady at the desk made it clear that this indeed a possibility. The way that I look at it is, the after show is a get toghether of Prince fans to celebrate his music and keep the vibe going and if Prince himself fancies attending or indeed performing then great. Fortunetly he did appear and he played a set that was mutch better than the main event itself, showing how good a musician he really is.

Toddy, I was at that show too and it was my first for 11 years. I decided I had to go again though and booked more tickets for the 31st. Now I have decided that I need to go once more...

Agree with everything you have written about Prince.

Just the truth Abigail, whats in the charts and what the masses like don't matter as long as you like the music you hear. If a Prince album comes out and don't make the top 40 I will still buy it as Ilike his stuff, he is a talented performer. I am one of the few people I know that likes Prince, none of my freinds like him and have ribbed me about it in the past, I am proud to have my own tastes in life, you don't have to do what the radio tells you. Nor am I one of those guys who thinks it is hip to like less mainstream material, I just like what I like.

Toddy said:

Like your outlook, I come from the same school of thought, stand up for what you like, half the time people realise later and say 'oh I see what you meant now...' fools!

I totally agree - to the point where I don't follow the charts AT ALL. For the last few weeks my friends have ribbed me mercilessly about being a passionate Prince fan but none of them could tell me which artists they loved that much or which other artist was that talented. I asked them if they ever took the time to listen to some of his HUNDREDS of tracks but they closed their minds and weren't interested - which is really sad as I KNOW that there are so many songs that they would love. I sometimes find it frustrating as I know that their perception has been formed by the media, with their 'pintsized pop star' and their 'diminuntive purple one' bullshit - what the hell does it matter what bloody size he is, what clothes or what sized heels he wears? What matters most is that he's the most talented, creative, poetic, masterly, productive guy on the planet and I love him.

Most people that don't like Prince will admit that they do actually like at least one of his songs.

People like music because of artist image, like he has cool hair or he wears hip jeans and the radio says he's cool and the papers are printing pictures of so called artists walking about smashed on drugs.

At the other end of the scale ts like "don't listen to Prince man he wears funny clothes or I don't like Oasis because I don't like the Gallaghers.

Forget the image in your head listen to the music and let the notes do the talking.If the music appeals to you then don't be afraid to listen to it whoever it is written by.