Hi folks, this is my second report for the Hamburg show.
Had to catch up on some serious lack of sleep...now it´s
almost 2 AM..( last night I got home and wrote my first
"report" at 6 AM)..spend the whole day sleeping !
The concert was, of the dozen times I have seen Prince ,by far one of the best concerts in my opinion.
I My other favourites are Paradiso 95 , the night at the
Celebration when he played Something in the Water , and maybe the Gold Experience concerts and the Tränenpalast show
in 94 after the MTV Awards ( MTV ? PRINCE ??Those were the
days ...)..
Anyway, this show in Hamburg was way more focused and flawless and versatile than any concert I´ve witnessed before...
It all started with the perfect and strict but friendly and
professional way the staff organized the whole thing...no
cameras, no cell phones etc.
No standing in line for half a day or under humiliating conditions, I got there at 5 PM and the soundcheck started
comparatively early.
It was more of a "real" soundcheck I guess since I didn´t hear anything but the drums before they let us in .The band was working on PopLife and just improvised and jammed a bit
when Prince walked in, dressed in black pants and a white
sweater with a collar, similar to the one he´s wearing in that calendar from 1999, that picture on the bike with the pitbull in the back. He had shades on and a white cap made of wool, very much like the one he was wearing before the Rachel Farell gig at Paisley. Then they proceeded with the
Santana medley, which sounded great but that DJ sucks ass.
He was probably the only disappointment of the otherwise
fantastic show. What´s the use in having a DJ add some scratches to the Santana medley ?? Don´t get me wrong, I grew up with HipHop and a friend of mine is probably one of the best DJs on this planet IMHO, namely DJ Stylewarz, so I know what I´m talking about, but this DJ who´s with Prince, Dudley or whatever, is like adding vinegar to a perfect coffee...he´s that bad, and bad not meaning good..
Turntables are modern day instruments, and Prince knows best about instruments, but he seems to know very little about turntablism ann real HipHop DJing...anyway, let´s talk about the positive things, and Prince : Using a DJ with
real instruments IS difficult and not always an improvement.
The Roots are one good example to show that it can work, but
that´s the Roots...adding scratches to Prince´s music is like going to the Louvre and trying to "improve" the MonaLisa.
They did a short version of Dorothy Parker with Prince and Eric Leeds giving instructions to the rest of the band, at some point Prince said something like "Eric, it´s the 21st
century.."
Prince asked us if we were happy with our seats and if the lights bothered us and that we´d probably feel dizzy when we wake up the next morning.
The concert itself was amazing,the newspaper review posted by calldapeoplewondery calls it Prince´s best Hamburg concert ever. It was a very slick, professional and yet heartfelt performance with exactly the right amount of audience participation...I also enjoyed the Rotterdam show the night before and don´t agree with the negative reports but I do have the theory that, besides probably having simply a bad day in Rotterdam, it was the fact that Dutch fans are simply some of the most hardcore fans on this planet, and Prince knows this, so that´s why I guess the whole show in Rotterdam was a bit looser and more relxed and
easygoing compared to Hamburg, a place where he hasn´t given
a concert in ten years. I don´t think it had anything to do with the ticket prices ( approximately 90-100 US dollars in Hamburg compared to 56 in Rotterdam).
I had the feeling that the fantastic audience contributed to
the more relaxed and less tight atmosphere, I mean where else on this planet can you find 10.000 people in one room singing ALL the words to The Ladder ?? The Hamburg audience was also great, but in a different way, they didn´t sing as much so Prince sang more. What they did was giving the most
frenetic applause I ever heard.
Anyway, that´s just my theory. The whole Hamburg boils down to one thing : class .
It had more class and style and perfection than any other
Prince concert I´ve seen .The preaching was ok and he did not make it too difficult for people to relate to what he´s
driving at, which, I think, is sometimes the main problem people have with his new spiritual direction. This time it
was like the "old" Prince spirituality everyone could relate
to or at least did not feel offended by. I mean he did recommend reading the Bible and he did talk about lies and
rejection by the media, but it was all kept to a minimum.
I personally don´t like the whole Bible aspect of his shows, but that´s him and I also did not like it in the eighties or nineties, the ways people believe in religions,
no matter which religion, are too simple for me and the Universe, awesome as it is, cannot be compressed into four
books, Bible, Koran or Thora and Thalmud, so I was quite happy that the whole spiritual content of the show was kept in a more universal, accesible way. The band was tight, just
one of his tightest bands ever..even though I still miss Micheal B, Sonny and Morris. John Blackwell is cool, but he´s definitely not Michael Bland . And when theré´s Michael
you also got to haave Sonny and Morris. Anyway , this is now, that was then , and the band is tight. Still wondering
what Michael, Sonny, Morris plus Renato could do together !
Prince showcased a broad spectrum of his musical universe, from soulful ballads to funk and jazz, and I just loved his
version of Whole Lotta Love...very psychedelic, playing around with his Hohner guitar, causing weird sound effects and all...could be seen as emulating Led Zeppelin but it reminded me more of the old Prince from the Dirty Mind days, just playing around with his guitar, stroking it, punching it, throwing it on the floor, letting it reverb and
whatever...it was a trip !
Some diehard fans complained about Purple Rain being added to this tour despite Prince saying he doesn´t want to play it, but keep in mind that the majority of the fans in Hamburg paid more than 90 bucks and some people just love that song and simply expect that...I could do without it and I did not like the version at the Celebration ( never thought I would say that ) but I think it´ s perfectly OK to play Purple Rain, to many people his trademark song. And I personally think that this version last night was one of the more "special" versions of that song, long, full lyrics,
excellent and stretched guitarwork, no sermon, just beautiful.The misuc spoke for itself and he brought his message across with his music, not with his halfbaked preaching or lecturing like that horrible version during Rave 2000 or whatever. Perfect showmanship, just a brilliant
and excellent concert with the power to silence his hardest and most skeptical critics, wheter they´re his own
fans or newspaper critics.Naysayers eat your hearts out, and Prince...watch your videorecording of this show from time to time...even concerts from the socalled days of glory pale in comparison..it was a beautiful night and will surely be remembered !

KoolEaze said (in a nice review: thanks!)

:

This time I was really bothered by the religious content of the show also. I am not a religious person at all and I don't mind people being so and telling me about it. ( I had no problems with Lovesexy or the 'love is god, god is love chant at d&P).
The problem at ONA for me is that he's saying there IS only one god instead of saying he believes so and that we should ALL, at the concert, follow THE ONE. This way it appears as if he's actually denying the right to people of other religions to believe in THEIR god(s) and religion.

Eelco

Great great review. That's it man ... exactly.

I was happy to see that the religious content was reduced to a minimum in Hamburg. It was mainly all about music music music !!!

thanx for the report. good job.
going to berlin tomorrow and copenhagen next week (2000 seats!). yeee-hah.

Thanks for all the compliments...I´ll post another
review when I get back from Berlin...last time I saw him
there was after the MTV-Awards. Berlin is cool, guess
it will be another nice concert because, as far as I´m
concerned, people in Berlin appreciate Funk, Soul , RNB
and HipHop and Prince, who is beyond any category .
The guy just had some bad luck in the last few years ,but
he´ll always keep us curious about what´s next.

KoolEaze said:

One of the most uplifting things I found about being at his concert in the Club section was that everybody around was singing their heart out and knew all the words. You don't get that at the back. It's probably the only time with my not very good voice that I'll be part of a choir!