When I started writing this, no one had posted a full review. Now someone has, but I’ve already written all this, so I’m posting it anyway. (Sorry to Gnations; I don’t mean to steal your thunder at all!)

Here’s the setlist as I remember it; I hope I didn’t leave any out.

Jill Jones
Mia Boca

Apollonia
Take Me with U

Madhouse
Three songs (sorry, I can’t remember the numbers!)

Chaka Kahn
I Feel for You

The Family
River Run Dry (first verse and chorus)
The Screams of Passion
High Fashion
Mutiny
Nothing Compares 2 U

Sheila E.
Intro to Sister Fate
Oliver’s House
The Belle of St. Mark
A Love Bizarre (first verse and chorus, seguing into One Nation Under a Groove)
Holly Rock
17 Days
Alphabet St.
The Glamorous Life

The Time
Jungle Love

Patti Labelle
Yo Mister

The Revolution
Mountains
America
Raspberry Beret
Anotherloverholenyohead
Purple Rain
Baby I’m a Star

My thoughts on the show:
I’m still on a total high from this. It was unbelievably good, and each act sounded great. The show started with Carmen introducing Jill Jones (who, from my seat anyway, looks hotter now than she did in Purple Rain). I thought she did an incredible job on Mia Boca, but it didn’t seem like she got much love from the audience. Most of the crowd stayed sitting for it and only a few people stood up and sang. I was really impressed with how great her voice sounded and was hoping she’d do another song (I would’ve loved to hear G Spot, but I guess that wouldn’t have fit in with the family-friendly tone of the night—on a side note, I thought it was interesting—considering the songs and images all these people were putting out there back in the day—that Mia Boca was the most suggestive song played all night). For me, Jill started the show off with a bang.
Apollonia did an okay job on Take Me with U. Her voice is still not strong, but it didn’t matter. The audience stood up and took part in this one and made it a lot of fun.
Sheila and her manager, Lynn, then came out to talk about the foundation and why they were doing the concert. Sheila started to cry, and while we were waiting for her to collect herself, the audience sang happy birthday to her. Then Sheila took her place behind the drums and Eric Leeds and Dr. Fink came out, and Madhouse tore up the stage. Sheila’s drums were turned up so high that you could feel your body vibrate when she played, which reminded me a lot of the Lovesexy tour. Sheila did a nice solo as well. It was great to see all these people performing together again.
Chaka did fine on I Feel for You. Her voice is still amazing. Nothing against her, but I was kind of glad she only did one song (sorry, Chaka).
In a night filled with a lot of high points for me, The Family was the highest. To hear those guys go through those songs live was just awesome. Susannah was dancing her ass off, St. Paul really put his heart into the songs, and Jerome was working the crowd like it was 1985. The songs stayed faithful to the album versions of the songs and everyone sang along, knowing exactly where to jump in with “vogue—all the way vogue” and “money man,” etc. Hearing the original band do the original Nothing Compares 2 U was incredible.
Sheila’s set started out with the intro to Sister Fate, and I was hoping she would play the entire song, but she didn’t. Her set seemed more about having fun with the songs, getting funky, and tearing the stage up with her band than staying true to the album versions of her songs. She started out kind of mumbling the lyrics to Oliver’s House, so I think most people didn’t realize what it was until she got to the chorus—then everyone in the crowd joined in. I wish she would have played more of A Love Bizarre, but oh well. Sheila introduced Holly Rock by saying, “If my weave falls off during this one, throw it back up here; I paid a lot of money for it!” For those wondering, she skipped over the “Don’t you wanna be my bitch?” and “kiss my ever-lovin’ . . .” parts, as well as “if you got a big enough stick.” For 17 Days, Sheila mostly let the audience sing the entire song, which was fun. Sheila sang the last chorus of Alphabet St., and then the band sang, “Sheila! We need you to rap! Don’t give it to us slow,” etc. Sheila said, “Psyche!” and went into the Transmississippi Rap. Between songs, Sheila kept asking the audience what they wanted to hear next, which was kind of weird since she was going to play what she wanted to anyway. Still, a lot of us were yelling out Sister Fate and Toy Box, but it didn’t do us any good. A lot of people were yelling out for The Glamorous Life—like she wasn’t going to play that anyway. Noticeably absent from Sheila’s band was Eddie M.—anybody know why he wasn’t there?
Jungle Love sounded awesome and was fun to dance to. I don’t know why they didn’t do The Bird, though.
Patti LaBelle still has the pipes, as she demonstrated on Yo Mister. At times, her voice gave me chills. She couldn’t remember the words to the song, so she picked up some paper with the lyrics written on them. At the end, she said, “Prince wrote that song for me a hundred years ago. I didn’t know the lyrics back then and I still don’t know them now, so that’s why Miss Patti had to pick up the paper.” The audience cheered and Patti walked off the stage, still wailing and screaming (I mean that in a good way—she was hot!).
For the end, I can’t tell you how great it was to see the Revolution. Wendy sang lead on all the songs, sang beautifully, and pretty much stole the show. She thanked Prince, “the genius behind all these songs,” and told us that even though he wasn’t there, maybe his ears would start burning if we sang loud enough. I think the crowd did just that. When she sang Raspberry Beret, she sang it in the third person about Prince (“He was working part-time in a five and dime,” etc.). Their set could have gone on for hours and I wouldn’t have minded; they sounded so great. During the third verse of Purple Rain, Patti LaBelle came back out and started singing along and kind of threw Wendy off. Wendy said, “Patti, you’re getting me all hot under the collar!” and threw her head back and laughed that Wendy laugh (which, if you’re a Wendy fan like me, was probably better anyway). Then all the performers from the night (except for Chaka and I think St. Paul) came up on stage with the VIP contest winners for the finale, which led into Baby I’m a Star. Everyone on stage was dancing and having a great time, and the song stopped and started again many times. I was wishing at one of the stops, they would have sang, “Doctor!” and given Dr. Fink a chance to jam solo, but it didn’t happen.
Let’s see, what else? Carmen was fun and had a good sense of humor the entire night. She thanked Prince fans for being so loyal. At one point, she and Sheila were both at the podium and Sheila said Carmen should have done Go-Go Dancer and Sheila started singing the chorus. When Carmen was congratulated on her recent marriage, Sheila asked if Dave Navarro had a brother, then said, “Wait, I’m older. Does he have an uncle?” Then Sheila mock-whined that she wanted a husband, and she wanted to be married before she was 80, and a bunch of guys stood up to volunteer for the job, but she didn’t really pay them any attention. Sadly, no love connection was going to happen this night.
It was nice to hear everyone play full versions of the songs. You could really get into each one. If Prince had shown, they probably would have done one of his medleys of 20 songs.
The house band, which featured Kat Dyson, was incredible. They really did a nice job on each artist’s songs.
Oh, and a big highlight for me was getting to meet and sit by Rdhull, who’s truly cool. Hope you enjoyed the show as much as I did!
There’s probably a lot more, but I’ve rambled on long enough. Sorry to make such a long post, but I hope it conveyed at least some of the magic of the night. It was truly an awesome concert and I am ecstatic that I got to experience it. I have to Sheila props for doing something amazing, and I hope her charity gets all the funding it needs.

There's no stealing of thunder possible. I'm sure people are glad you posted your review. It's always great to read a couple of different reviews to get more of an objective sense of it, and your review mentioned things I'd forgotten. Hopefully it'll show everyone what a great time it was and maybe more people will come next year.

Great review, Efan!

gnations said:

I hope there is one next year and that the low turnout for this one doesn't mean it'll never happen again. I doubt all those people will ever get together on one stage again, but maybe the Family Jamm will take off in the way Ringo's All-Starr tours did, with some Prince-related acts and some not. One thing that I loved about the show was how the performers kept saying how great it was to be together again, especially the Revolution. I'd love it if something came of this and the gang started doing some songs together again, even if it is without Prince.

WOW efan...thanks so much for the review!!! I'm thrilled you got to experience that, and ecstatic that you chose to share it with us. I'm a HUUUGE Wendy fan myself, so I know EXACTLY what you mean about the Wendy laugh!

Good to hear RDHull's a good guy...I knew it. He's a sweet, sick freak who's crazy for the funk, just like the rest of us. How did Lisa look? I take it she wasn't smoking?

theblueangel said:

Yeah, RDHull's great!

To be honest, Lisa was kind of hard to see, but naw, she wasn't smoking anything except the keys. I could really only see her head! And then when everyone came out on stage, she was totally obscured. From what I could tell, though, she looked great!

Actually, after Patti LaBelle mentioned she had forgotten the lyrics, she said something to the effect of "that's why I had to get the papers and sing the damn song". Tell em' Patti!


Also at the end "Baby I'm a Star" finale, Patti was having issues with her goodies about to pop out of her top. She kept holdin her hands to her chest and Carmen was laughin with her.

It seemed Chaka wasn't too enthused to be there. But like efan said...everyone else was wonderful. Especially the Family and Madhouse. Wendy rocked! No Lisa wasn't smoking. When I saw them (wendy and Lisa) in the VIP room after for the pictures, they looked very good up close. So did Apollonia.

hey, thank you so much for taking the tim to share your experience with us. i apreciate your details.

Great report!

Efan, your review..you nailed it. It was great meeting you. You're an extremely nice/cool person. Wish we could have talked more after the show etc.Thank you for keeping us company.

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[This message was edited Mon Dec 15 1:00:23 PST 2003 by rdhull]

thanks for your report !!

Wow! Now this is a cool report!

Thanks!

awww man...i miss all the good shit. that sounds awesome!!
and you got to meet rdhull!! extra bonus!

A great summary... But I refuse to believe rd is a cool person.