I live in central Illinois (Springfield) and low and behold, Dr.Fink's tribute band, the Purple XPerience was in town tonight, so I checked it out.

I have no problems with tribute bands generally, even if they're not that good.

So I don't object to this band touring or playing by any means. That said, it wasn't good. The singer was pretty horrible. He was styled and dressed up to "play" Prince, and went way too far in trying to mimic Prince affectations. And, he wasn't that good of a singer.

The base music was okay (not great), and I texted friends and told them that I thought it would work better as an all instrumental set - but who would come out for that?

Maybe it was just too soon. It just made me miss Prince more and obsess over what we've lost. I just didn't like the mimicry. I'd rather have people with good voices, who look nothing like Prince, go out and give us their take on Prince songs, even if they're not the same key, arrangement, etc. as the original. I don't need some guy (and, in all fairness, I know the guy is probably a genuine Prince fan) to impersonate Prince.

The crowd was fairly lame.

The whole thing made me very sad. Fuck, what an artist we've lost.

[Edited 5/28/16 23:03pm]

coltrane3 said:

I live in central Illinois (Springfield) and low and behold, Dr.Fink's tribute band, the Purple XPerience was in town tonight, so I checked it out.

I have no problems with tribute bands generally, even if they're not that good.

So I don't object to this band touring or playing by any means. That said, it wasn't good. The singer was pretty horrible. He was styled and dressed up to "play" Prince, and went way too far in trying to mimic Prince affectations. And, he wasn't that good of a singer.

The base music was okay (not great), and I texted friends and told them that I thought it would work better as an all instrumental set - but who would come out for that?

Maybe it was just too soon. It just made me miss Prince more and obsess over what we've lost. I just didn't like the mimicry. I'd rather have people with good voices, who look nothing like Prince, go out and give us their take on Prince songs, even if they're not the same key, arrangement, etc. as the original. I don't need some guy (and, in all fairness, I know the guy is probably a genuine Prince fan) to impersonate Prince.

The crowd was fairly lame.

The whole thing made me very sad. Fuck, what an artist we've lost.

[Edited 5/28/16 23:03pm]

I'm sorry to hear you didn't enjoy your Xperience, I have seen them in Detroit twice now and I have the exact opposite opinion. I closed my eyes during "I wanna be your lover" and it sounded very much like our Prince. I thought the band was tight and having Dr. Fink involved added street cred to it. I don't like tribute bands in general, Purple X was pretty good in my humble opinion

I thought you were going to say you saw Purple Reign. They're based in Vegas. I've been to the show several times and the lead singer Jason Tenner is amazing. Great voice and looks alot like Prince.