Yesterday was a great day for this here Prince fan who hadn't seen him play since 1992!

A good crowd of us met early in the afternoon, guided by tourleader purplefrank. We walked around the concert venue then were lucky enough to catch a brief soundcheck. We weren't in the venue but were able to watch the stage from a nearby overhead bridge. In the soundcheck he played a medley of Elephants and Flowers and Mountains, followed by a long and funky Peach. He then played a new song which I hadn't heard before, 'Life of the party'? The new guy then played one song. I reckon the soundcheck was short because there were people photographing him from the walkway, one local guy with an enourmous zoom lens.

We met up with a few more fams and had a fun pre-party gathering at a pub. It was really great to meet all these people who had flown in from so many directions!

When we went to the venue we were anxious because we had bags and cameras and there was nowhere to put them at the venue. They said 'you can take the camera in but don't use it'. Right! John Blackwell was milling around the merchandise store and a few of us had a good chat. He's a friendly guy and his stock response to most questions 'I don't know' was pretty funny. 'What's my name? I don't know'.

The concert itself was great (what can I say, I haven't seen him play in eleven years). His performance of the past hits was tight and fresh and it was nice to see him play some less-often played oldies such as Question of U in which he really had fun messing with the guitar and his facial expressions. I had second row seats in the centre, and ended up standing just behind the barrier, so a pretty good vantage point I've got to say I could have done with some more recent songs, the only one played being Everlasting Now.

After the concert a brief message was spluttered through the PA about the official afterparty. I reckon most people wouldn't have been expecing a message and a lot wouldn't have understood it, which was fine by us. We gathered our NPG troops and ran like there was no tomorrow, through the crowds, onto the train then up the killer hill to the club. It was a fair stress outside the club because they had no way to verify our membership (grrr!). But eventually we got in. The place was tiny! My guess is that there were 150 to 200 people in there. At 1.45am the band started jamming, while Prince sat upstairs. He was wearing all black with a top hat and dark sunglasses. He casually walked around the stage, talking to his bandmembers and playing some keyboards. Eventually he gave us an ultracool verse from All The Critics. Shoot, to be honest I can't remember what was played after that. I know they weren't songs I was familiar with. He was in a good mood, throwing his towel around, laughing and smiling, and he spent a lot of time just wandering around the tiny stage talking to the bandmembers, and several times he left the stage and sat in the balcony. To me it seemed like he was treating it as a rehearsal and practicing the band's reponse to his conducting hand gestures. A highlight was Boyer and Maceo's parts. They really seemed to be enjoying themselves. Renato and Rhonda looked like they needed to sleep. The final song featured a chant 'party party' - There was a lot of crowd interaction. Then he did his Las Vagas ending and the band went up to the balcony after a 50 or 55 minute set. I passed Rhonda and with great choice of words asked her 'how's it going?' After a while the roadies started packing up, so that was about the end of a very fun day and night for us.

That's all for now!
[This message was edited Fri Oct 17 22:46:29 PDT 2003 by sabaisabai]

Thank you - very nice

just me again enjoying this saturday morning reading the nice reports from Hong Kong Show


I Internet

Hey Ben!

Glad to hear you had a great time, and thanks so much for posting your experience! Oh and how cool that you got to chat with John B!

Nice to hear a taste of what's to come for us in Oz. Really looking forward to hearing the horns.

By the way, like your interaction with Rhonda... Smoooth!

Cheers, Pandora xx

Many thanks for the great report. Sounds like a great day!

Oh man, you had a great night. Thanx for sharing it. U got a big smile on my face for the rest of the day.

Thanks for sharing you day!

so what was life o the party like?! maybe its going to be on musicology?

Thanks for the reports. Great to hear the news from Hong Kong.