WELL EYE SAW 3 PRINCE CONCERTS 4 THE PRICE U PAID 4 ONE SO EYE FEEL MUCH BETTER NOW ABOUT VEGAS LOL...

legna said:

SCREWDRIVER ... He began by playing his "lyric" video and asked us if he could lip sync one song because everyone else was doing it. I'm assuming that's a reference to Beiber. As far as the late gig, for me, EVERYTHING worked. The set-list, the band, the stage show. Was it worth the price? I got about 100 minutes of watching him at his at his musical essence . IMO, this was better than the first Troubadour gig... So my answer is ¡YES!

He also did THE MAX wile at the keyboard

rasputin1981 said:

Let's go crazyEndorphinemachine Screwdriver Liathatch? Some instrumental I didn't recognize. She's always in my hair I could never take the place Sometimes it snows (guitar version) Guitar Bambi Fixyourlifeup Cause and effect Plectrum electrum -Encore Totally blanking on the first song right now Sampler set (only including semi full songs played) When doves cry Sign o the times House quake Forever in my life Pop life Love bizarre How come you don't call me (solo piano) Nothing compares Purple rain [Edited 5/8/13 8:37am]

I was there for the early show & loved every minute of it.

I wasn't able to line up early, had to take my wife to a dr's appt and left Burbank at 6:30. Luckily hit no traffic & got there about 30 min before show time, made it through the long line quickly, grabbed a drink & found a place toward the back of Tier 2, right in front of Ida - I'm a tall guy so being at the back of the section was fine. I'd estimate if it was a seated show I would have been about 15th row. The way the Grove has the floor sectioned out meant we were not all crushed together at the front, and made it easy to move around. I was even able to hit the bathroom at the encore break & return to my spot, try doing that at the Palladium.

I didn't write down the set list but it seemed like most of the familiar stuff that has been done on this leg so far, with no sampler set. I'm not sure if they had done Little Red Corvette before this show, it was a slowed down guitar heavy version similar to the re-takes of Let's Go Crazy and Never Take The Place OF Your Man. Highlights for me were: Endorphinmachine (storming out of the gate), When We're Dancing Close & Slow (a new one to me, and one of the few mellow songs of the night, I was really blown away), Down (another new one to me that was just great), Cause & Effect, Bambi (was hoping he'd come back to this one tonight after skipping it a few times), and a really excellent She's Always In My Hair. Let's Go in the encore was good fun, and dug the cover of Crimson & Clover. No special guests except for some woman who came out to sing on U Got The Look, not sure who that was. Possibly a stray audience member?

It was really focused, only a few extended jam segments amid a lot of short, tight songs. It looked they skipped the first encore break and went straight into what would have been the first encore - the curtain started to drop, then rose back up. And except for a couple of breathers, a high energy loud show all the way. Not much in the way of dancing, he had the guitar on for most of it, and when he went to the piano he disappeared from my view completely.

I like this band! They may not have the improv chops of John Blackwell/Renato Neto type players but they're perfect for the job at hand, hitting hard and keeping it straightahead.

Sound was excellent, with the exception of the drums, which sounded muffled, as if they put the mics behind a pillow. But the two guitars were really fierce & full sounding and the vocals were crisp.

Complaints? The piano version of Purple Rain was missing the guitar climax at the end, which was a bit of a letdown, it would have been so appropriate given the theme of the show. But also having heard so much wailing guitar all night, it was not the worst thing to get a brief break from it. I can't think of anything they did that I really didn't dig. A lot of the audience was not very visibly into it, very few people dancing, and several yakkety yakkers shouting over the show they paid $200 to get into. But some were clearly way into it, myself included, so it didn't get me down.

I'd say it's one of my favorite Prince shows ever, I've always wanted to see a heavy guitar blowout from start to finish. I had a good vantage point, great sound, friendly neighbors to chat with, and at just about 2 hours it didn't seem like a short show.

http://blogs.ocweekly.com...rove_o.php

Prince
City National Grove of Anaheim
May 7, 2013 (Early Show)

The Crowd: People who didn't care about the hefty ticket prices.

rasputin1981 said:

antoinet said:

No I'm anxiously waiting too! I wanna know what went down last night. I have 4 friends who went last night, 2 to the early show and 2 to the late show. They must be recovering or trying to make it to work today. ONe friend messaged me that they are being VERY STRICT ON cameras and cell phones and escorting people out who even bring out their cell phone for a second. Beware.

I was at the late show and was lucky enough to get a VIP wristband (I showed up around 7:45-8:00). I thought the show was really great.. After seeing many forum sampler sets it was nice to see him use the sampler as a tool to create interesting versions of songs rather than just a gimmick to run through some hits. The band accompanied him on most of the "sampler" songs so I really don't think it was a cop out. Just my opinion I guess. Anyway, setlist ... What I can remember and in vague order Let's go crazy Endorphinemachine Screwdriver Liathatch? Some instrumental I didn't recognize. She's always in my hair I could never take the place Sometimes it snows (guitar version) Guitar Bambi Fixyourlifeup Cause and effect Plectrum electrum -Encore Totally blanking on the first song right now Sampler set (only including semi full songs played) When doves cry Sign o the times House quake Forever in my life Pop life Love bizarre How come you don't call me (solo piano) Nothing compares Purple rain [Edited 5/8/13 8:37am]

excellent...thank-you for your walk through the night and and the feel of your experiance. Love your take on the "sampler" and how it was used a musical journal and a fresh re-tooling of wonderful classics. How songs were delivered as well as the instruments used to share those initimate moments... was a welcomed and refreshing approach...thanks so much

rasputin1981 said:

antoinet said:

No I'm anxiously waiting too! I wanna know what went down last night. I have 4 friends who went last night, 2 to the early show and 2 to the late show. They must be recovering or trying to make it to work today. ONe friend messaged me that they are being VERY STRICT ON cameras and cell phones and escorting people out who even bring out their cell phone for a second. Beware.

I was at the late show and was lucky enough to get a VIP wristband (I showed up around 7:45-8:00). I thought the show was really great.. After seeing many forum sampler sets it was nice to see him use the sampler as a tool to create interesting versions of songs rather than just a gimmick to run through some hits. The band accompanied him on most of the "sampler" songs so I really don't think it was a cop out. Just my opinion I guess. Anyway, setlist ... What I can remember and in vague order Let's go crazy Endorphinemachine Screwdriver Liathatch? Some instrumental I didn't recognize. She's always in my hair I could never take the place Sometimes it snows (guitar version) Guitar Bambi Fixyourlifeup Cause and effect Plectrum electrum -Encore Totally blanking on the first song right now Sampler set (only including semi full songs played) When doves cry Sign o the times House quake Forever in my life Pop life Love bizarre How come you don't call me (solo piano) Nothing compares Purple rain [Edited 5/8/13 8:37am]

Thanks for a pretty comprehensive set-list as you recall it. I always love the personal commentaries about the "sampler" which I love by the way, and really appreciate when someone can't recall all his songs...Prince has an incredible catalog and to remember everything on the initial recall is ...difficult and challenging. I'm so happy you were blessed to go and really enjoyed it...appreciate U very much and the time U took to share it

whats the deal with the sampler sets? If this is a tour for the die hard fans I wish he would give us some die hard material. I would much rather see something like colonized mind, empty room, boom, wall of berlin or even some old classsics that he never performs like paisley park, dolphin, WYWTMSB, etc. I am feeling the show up until the sampler set and with the length of the show being so short I just cant make myself buy the tickets with the karaoke set included. I hated it in Chicago and will again(especially for the price). I hope everyone else enjoys it though but I just wont do it.

trax said:

bobzilla77 said: No special guests except for some woman who came out to sing on U Got The Look, not sure who that was. Possibly a stray audience member?

artist76 said: U Got the Look - Nicole Scherzinger came on stage with him for this

Prince, the Ultimate Guitar Hero, Indulges his Rock Side: Concert Review

3:15 PM PDT 5/9/2013 by Chris Willman

Vimeo

A shot of Prince from official rehearsal footage

The Bottom Line

With all-female band 3rd Eye Girl backing him, the Purple One proves -- yet again -- why he might be music's most dynamic live entertainer.

Venue

City National Grove of Anaheim
Anaheim, Calif.
(Tuesday, May 7)

Prince’s history is inextricably linked to the Rolling Stones’ own, thanks to the legendary 1981 shows where the fledgling artist was booed off the L.A. Coliseum stage by Stones fans. Over the past week, Prince and the Stones returned to L.A. with premium-priced tours, but their wholly different philosophies about what it means to give devotees their hundreds of dollars’ worth is an instructive sign of both artists’ times.

OUR EDITOR RECOMMENDS

The Stones seemed to assume that folks willing to pay up to $600 a ticket must be well-heeled, casual fans whose dates would grumble if the band left a single up-tempo classic-rock staple out of their set. Prince made the opposite presumption, taking it on faith that anyone willing to meet his $200 asking price must be a hardcore fan who’d be ticked not to hear new material and obscurities alongside severely rearranged perennials. Both acts proved again why they’re among the dozen most exciting live acts in music history, but only one has any investment in being celebrated for his creative present as well as past.

In 2013, Prince still has the ability to pull surprises on us, and this one’s a doozy: He’s undertaking the first tour of his career that’s truly devoted to rock & roll with a pair of capital R’s. What’s been fascinating and occasionally confounding over the past three decades is how natural and brilliant Prince is as a pure rocker -- especially when it comes to peeling off convincingly Hendrixian solos -- but how that mode has always been a mere trifle to him, one of many in a bag of stylistic tricks that always veered back toward R&B. In 2007, in the single “Guitar,” he bragged, “I love you baby, but not like I love my guitar”… but fans were still left waiting for him to put his money and six-string where his mouth was. Now he’s finally done it, presenting himself as not just a rock moonlighter but full-on Guitar Hero. And it’s as glorious a wall of sound to behold as we always figured it would be.

In short: He’s set aside the sound of records like “Cream” to sound like… Cream.

Prince isn’t even the only featured guitar virtuoso in his new band. His current support crew, 3rd Eye Girl, consists of three women he found on the web or through recommendations and started playing with in January. The quartet’s bare-bones approach is the very opposite of the soul-based, big-band style favored by Prince on other recent tours, but there’s hardly anything minimalist about their turned-up-to-12 racket. And while Prince has had strong female guitarists in his crew before -- perhaps you remember Wendy -- he’s never had an accompanist of either gender before that he let solo as much as this band’s Donna Grantis, who takes almost as many leads as he does and officially qualifies as a shredder.

The other players are drummer Hannah Ford and bassist Ida Neilsen, who got one fuzztone solo in early on that took place high enough on the fretboard that you could have mistaken her for a third guitar player. Prince seems devoted to creating websites and iconography for 3rd Eye Girl, so you can only hope he plans to keep this outfit together for quite a while, notwithstanding our habitual need to hear him stop and start a James Brown-style horn section again someday. The J.B. side of him can wait, now that’s locked into an earsplitting style that would have fit well amid the heavier side of Monterey Pop.

No two sets on his current tour have been remotely the same, though he’s shuffling a lot of the same material. At the May 7 late show, he picked an interesting structure for the set that broke things up by genre. First, he did a solid hour of nothing but his loudest rock material, including a few new songs destined for a projected summer album. Then the first encore consisted of what fans call his “sampler set” -- a 20-minutes-or-so dance-party medley that had Prince basically acting as his own DJ, putting on snippets of the rhythm parts of his biggest hits while his band played along and a couple of dozen partyers danced on stage. For the second and final encore, he retreated to a lower-key R&B mode and brought out his die-for falsetto for a trio of more sensitive ballads, including “Nothing Compares 2 U.” By the end of the 100-minute show, even fans who might have been a little taken aback by the hardcore rock emphasis felt fully serviced.

But it was that first hour of pure rock that was the night’s real revelation. He’s done the very rare all-rock show before, including a short set of heavy stuff for a couple of hundred folks at L.A.’s Conga Room in the mid-2000s. But Prince has certainly never allowed himself to be consumed by the genre the way he is on this tour.

That led to some transformations of his better-known material. “Let’s Go Crazy,” which he’s been opening nearly every show with, was no longer a synthy, spasmatic ‘80s romp, but a medium-tempo blues jam. Ditto for the initially almost unrecognizable “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man,” which was actually pitched at a different key up to the last part of the chorus. The minor chords took a little less delight in giving that pregnant girl the brush-off, but it still felt weirdly celebratory, leading into the faster and more unabashedly cocky “Guitar.” A pick from early in his career, “Bambi,” fit in just fine with this Monsters of Rock set, going over a lot better now than it did at the Coliseum in ’81. Maybe the parade of Bond-credit-sequence-style female silhouettes on the rear LED screen helped.

“California, where you from?” he asked at the outset. “I’m from funky rock & roll.” We’re not sure if that’s a place that has an actual passport stamp, but the Grove crowd was certainly glad for the export. Will the excitement translate to the album he’s expected to put out in June or July? Prince has thrilled us on tour before—his in-the-moment-favoring DNA won’t allow him to do anything but—only to put out albums as insular and wan as Lotusflow3r. But if the women of 3rd Eye Girl are playing on the new stuff, there’s not much danger of it seeming hermetically sealed; these gals can definitely take the place of his men, for the foreseeable future.

Set List:

Let's Go Crazy
Endorphinemachine
Screwdriver
She's Always in My Hair
Liathach (instrumental)
I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man
Guitar
Plectrum Electrum (instrumental)
Fixurlifeup
Sometimes It Snows in April
Bambi
Cause & Effect

Encore 1:

Medley: The Max/When Doves Cry/Sign O The Times/Forever in My Life/A Love Bizarre/Pop Life/I Would Die 4 U/Housequake

Encore 2:

How Come U Don't Call Me Anymore
Nothing Compares 2 U
Purple Rain

legna said:

During the Late show and in early part while at the keyboard, there was an extra band member playing the cow bell and a cymbal. I think he only did that for one song, but stayed up there as a dancing. Can someone identify him?

Hannah's husband, Joshua...

Marco81 said:

legna said:

During the Late show and in early part while at the keyboard, there was an extra band member playing the cow bell and a cymbal. I think he only did that for one song, but stayed up there as a dancing. Can someone identify him?

Hannah's husband, Joshua...

Thanks... He sure was enjoying himself

I read in one report that Josha also played keys on one song but without any other mentions of this, I didn't include it in my review. I had a hard time seeing the keyboard at all so i can;t confirm or deny that.

Here's my full review for the LA Beat:

http://thelosangelesbeat.com/2013/05/live-review-prince-at-city-national-grove-of-anaheim/