Yesterday evening, when I was coming home from office, the new DVD was in my mailbox.

Quality is quit good, but I hoped, that the DVD would show a whole concert.

What is suprising to me - the audience in Las Vegas was appearantly not the "loudest" one? Prince often tried to make them dance and scream but didn't get the real feedback.

When I remember my concerts in berlin and zurich the situation was completly different. People screamed, danced, cried ... absolutly amazing - he should have filmed the europen tour!!!

Whats your opinion?

netzverwalter

When I saw the dvd I had prettymuch the same impression, but this was also a theatre with all seats.. no? I think I saw people get up, while in most belgian venues, at least the complete "groundfloor is standing and dancing at all times, not inhibited by any seats there.

btw: looove the dvd! I would prefered a full concert like everyone else, and the only minusses IMO are the stills, who at times are not stills but badly freezed film shots, and others badly scanned pictures.
I prefer this over the overly clean Rave-dvd.

I haven't seen the dvd yet, but as for the concert in Antwerp, the crowd (12.000 people, full house) went nuts, especiaaly on songs like The Work, Pt 1, The Everlasting Now and Days Of Wild.

Sign 'O' The Times, Pop Life, The Beautiful Ones (in its entirety) were crowd pleasers also.

They should have filmed that one! prince was on top of his game there!



ps: which gig was that in Germany, dusring which he played a ferocious version of Peach. that was off the hook!!!

it was in frankfurt i guess

zobilamouche said:

in berlin it also was a fully seated concert - for excatly 3 seconds - when prince was entering the stage nobody was still sitting - and people danced through all the evening (with one exception, when prince asked us to sit down and relax a little bit, while he was playing the piano) - during the concert he pointed at the last rows and screamed into the micro: "they are even partying at the backside!!!" and such things. at the end he asked 2 or 3 times if we have a little more time, because he doesn't want to go now, and often he screamd "it's saturday night - what a party..."

perfect concert, perfect people in a perfect mood - what an evening that was!!!

Days of Wild an Sign o' the times were defenitly antwerp highlights

I was at the Vegas show and you are right th crowd was a bit off that night. The show was a bit different too. It did not have the same energy as the other tour dates. The song selection was more melancholy and the audience wanted greater recognizable hits.

I too felt the same way as u!!

I felt that the audience was told 2 act "well-behaved" as they were filming it(and I use the term "filming" loosely, cos it sure wasnt good quality filming, but thats a whole different story!!) I noticed that for the large part the audience just stood there not really knowing what 2 do!! Japanese audiences are renowned for being well-behaved and cordial, but I think even they appeared rowdy and electric compared 2 this crowd!!!

Also, judging by how many were in attendance at a large majority of the ONA shows, when the camera panned round the audience, the attendance was huge!! I am convinced he contacted Rent-A-Crowd 2 make it appear that he could still pull in large audiences!!!

popgodazipa said:

Yeah but Prince isn't "interested in what you know but what you are willing to learn, blah, blah, blah..."

I agree
And remember the Oberhausen concert:
That was a dance party !!!
For example the last song "Days of wild" was more than great.

Days of wild (version that played on european concerts) is my favorite

The audience might have been not as loud that night, I don't know, but it's more the way the audio for the DVD is recorded, I think. The ONA Live album sounds similar.

If he had recorded European shows the same way, I think they would sound similar.

But I agree, it's kind of strange to hear Take Me With U and you can barely hear anyone singing.

calldapplwondery83 said:

but when you see him trying to make people dance (esp. at the beginning) and he nearly have tears in his eyes because nobody is dancing and singing??? - i have to say again - the berlin concert for sure was more powerfull!

netzverwalter said:

Sorry, but I think you're seeing something that isn't there at all.

I was at this show, and am actually in a lot of the footage.

Here is what I can tell you:

-The show was Sunday night at 8pm. People got in line at 1am Sunday morning to get wrist bands. I for one, arrived Saturday, took about a 2 hour nap Saturday night, was in line at 3am, stayed up all day, went to the show, then the aftershow, and didnt make it back to my hotel room until about 6am Monday morning. To sum up my weekend, i had 2 hours of sleep between Saturday morning and Monday morning.

-There were seats in the whole theather, which were a little tight. it was hard to dance between rows.

-The people in the front row, which you see most often in the footage, had to be a bit more behaved because Tekumi was working right there, as well as there were three camera people (the main guy holding the upright, and two girls holding hand held cameras, and a still photographer). We had to be careful to let them do their job, and not bump into them. During "The Work," there is a scene where Prince is right in front of me, but I am paying attention to the camera girl who is trying to squeeze between me and the stage.

-With the show being so close to the holidays, it wasnt sold out the day of the show. I would say a good portion of the tickets were bought that day by people who were in Vegas, and were like, 'Prince is here, lets go." When Prince announced that "If you came to get your Purple Rain on, you were in the wrong house," a significant portion of the crowd left.

-Another side note, is when Prince did play Purple Rain, the NPGMC members all sat down, while the non-members went crazy.

just my thoughts...

Maybe he was more focused on performing than he was in working on audience participation at that show, because he'd realize a DVD full of him trying to make the audience sing would make for boring viewing. It's annoying as hell on ONA Live (and when I see him live, for that matter) when he keeps making the audience sing - call me crazy, but I'd rather hear HIM sing...that's what I paid my money for, right? Bleh.

netzverwalter said:

That's because the show (and aftershow) was just flat and pretty boring, save for a few parts...
The shows he did Europe and Japan though were generally all pretty good (way more energy) unlike the shows he did in the US...

Neversin.

calldapplwondery83 said:

watch the "housequake"-scene and you know what i mean - in ervery "normal" european concert, when prince asks "who knows about the quake" people get nut - while this concert 3 or 4 people sang - thats what i mean

...and I still say that it's, at least partly, due to the way the audio was recorded.

zobilamouche said:

The soundcheck in Antwerpen was amazing, like a full pre-show!!!

"but when you see him trying to make people dance (esp. at the beginning) and he nearly have tears in his eyes because nobody is dancing and singing??? - i have to say again - the berlin concert for sure was more powerfull!"

-I was in Europe and in Las Vegas and I can say that Vegas did have alot of energy, in fact the whole 3 hour show was solid!!! 20 min session with Prince on bass!!! Both Europe and Vegas were amazing...I will admit that Europe got the better aftershows in comparison to the US and Canadian ones.

There was nothing wrong with the audience, this was by far one of his best "main shows". I was there in the 4th row & the audience was all over it. Remember your basically watching a third of the show on the dvd which as good as it is doesn't accurately represent the show (Power Fantastic, Days Of Wild, etc. so on & so forth) & as far as not hearing the audience that's just a by-product of the way it was recorded.

Farfunknugin said:

You are indeed correct! My sentiments exactly.

calldapplwondery83 said:

This is because of the way the shows were recorded. What you're hearing is actually the house PA mix (with possible overdubs). The audience you do hear is just being picked up by the stage mics. No seperate mix, with audience mics, was done for ONA Live (both CD and DVD) just a DAT tape that was recording straight from the FOH soundboard. This is also the reason why the DVD has no 5.1 audio.

4 me, hearing the Rave dvd and The Aladdin dvd, it seems that American audiences are a lot more reserved and quieter than the European audiences. Manchester 8th Oct'2002 was manic!

Anxiety said:

EXACTLY. Thats what I paid the money for when I go to his shows. Not to see some bitch with the largest ass you have ever seen get pulled up on the stage to shake it at me for 15 minutes.
[This message was edited Wed Aug 27 11:47:10 PDT 2003 by GoldiesParade]

I felt the same way about the Rave DVD. That crowd was totally unresponsive, and looked tired. Almost as if there wasn't a fan in the entire crowd.

For a bunch of people who started getting in line for the 8pm concert at 1am for the distribution of wristbands at 7am, who were required to be back at the venue at 2pm, and then had to sit in the lobby until the soundcheck began sometime after 5pm, who staggered out of the soundcheck for a dinner break before going to the show, I thought we were a damned lively bunch throughout the 3-hour show.

I was fourth row and the crowd was stoked through it all -- as lively as DC, London, and the Osaka/Nagoya shows that I went to.

The Vegas DVD audio doesn't do our enthusiasm justice, but I didn't pay for the concert or the DVD $15 to hear us. I paid to hear him!

Confession: Our asses were draggin' at the AfterConcert, though. It got started at about 1:15am and smoked until about 3:45am. A lot of us were on life support by then.

OneMoJam said:

THANK YOU!!! I was sooo tired by that point, I found myself dozing off...at the (gasp!) afterparty. Not because I wasn't into it, but because I had been up for nearly 48hrs straight. Trying to see the sights of Vegas and enjoy a souncheck/concert/afterparty is no small feat...

Frank said:

See, that's what I was trying to say! I only don't have the technical vocabulary to do it like this.