{{{"What is this, a discotheque? This is a respectable place. What's wrong with y'all? Are you trying to be funky up in here? Do you know who I am? Do you know who I am? If you try to take me there I will go there!!

On Tuesday afternoon, Prince quickly reminded his Avery Fisher Hall NPG club members that he wanted to introduce his "new personality," as soothsayer for a future in which a generation of "rainbow children" guide humanity into an era of peace. "If you came to get your 'Purple Rain' on," he said "you might as well hit the door." }}}
By the time members entered the venue for the rehearsal, Prince and the band were tearing through "Alphabet St." and most people seemed amazed at how comfortable he seemed to be with so many people watching him go through soundcheck. At one point, Prince said that he used to live in Rahway, NJ, with his sister, when he was shopping his demo.
A fifty-something guy from the audience was invited on stage because he had brought his guitar and Prince was kind enough to take a back seat and invite the guy up on-stage to show his chops playing with the band. Once the guy got onstage he proceeded to jam on exactly the same riff for a couple of minutes. Prince exchange arched-eyebrow glances with Candy as the guy continued to play the same riff over and over again.
Prince then continued the rehearsal with "Power Fantastic" and "Calhoun Square". The atmosphere was almost familial as he asked the crowd if there were any people from outside of NY at the show. At one point, a person yelled out "Play Philly!" He responded by asking where Musiq Soulchild was from and proceeded to say that he would be joining him at The World for the aftershow.
As soundcheck ended, he had Blackwell check the drums. Fooling around, he started playing the pattern from "777-9311" and the crowd went crazy. People starting singing "Housequake" with Blackwell playing the kick drum pattern. Prince said, "No, no, no! We can't play that! That's an aftershow song!" Soundcheck ended shortly after 7:00.

When the show started around 8:30pm, even as the mercurial artist focused on the jazz-fusion jams of his latest album, "The Rainbow Children," he also surprised and delighted the sold-out crowd in the 2,738-seat hall by offering a slew of well-known classics and rarely played cult favorites. Along with the strong medicine of his sometimes bizarre message, he doled out deep spoonfuls of sugar.
The two-hour set began as the album begins, with a distorted spoken word leading into the title track, a jazzy battle cry for the new Prince "concept," a continuation of the New Power Generation idea or the Controversy-era call, repositioned as the reproduction of the New Breed Leader ("Stand up, organize!").
From out of the shadows, Prince emerged to pose the question: "Is it better to give than to receive?" Teasing an audience member that he should "give up that front row seat to that brother back there," he began an old-school guitar solo, rousing fans completely before pushing them into their seats for a couple of slow numbers. A high-pitched cover of Joni Mitchell's "Case of You" included an improvised ending that Joni herself wouldn't recognize. An appropriately titled Rainbow Children tune, "Mellow," found Prince milking the audience with his trademark spins and fancy footwork while he got sexy with the mic stand.
"All right, everybody on your feet," he commanded afterward. "Let's exercise." But only a few funky notes into "1 + 1 +1 is 3" he cut the song, calling for the house lights, and chided: "What is this, a discotheque? This is a respectable place. Y'all be acting the fool up here ... What's wrong with y'all?" Egged on by the crowd, he asked, "Are you trying to be funky up in here? Do you know who I am? Do you know who I am?" warning, "If you try to take me there I will go there." Sliding into "Love Rollercoaster," the band then chilled into the smooth soul of "The Other Side of the Pillow,".
Radio station names scrolled on the screen behind him as he derided corporate ownership and how radios have become nothing more that advertising outlets for their owners, the record companies, charging, "Not one of those owners can tap their foot on the two and four." Declaring the creation of fictional station WNPG, he soon turned back to the keyboards for "Strange Relationship" then strapped the guitar on again as legendary James Brown/P-Funk saxophonist Maceo Parker wailed on "Pass the Peas."
The set quickly veered away from such seriousness, wrapping up with a run of "Take Me With You" into "Raspberry Beret" into a lengthy and energetic Santana jam, during which a woman from the audience took to the stage, dancing up a storm.
When Prince returned, he did so alone, moving to his keyboards in virtual darkness. The "Unplugged"-esque session quickly flipped the from-me-to-you nod to his fans into a sing-along show of love back at the artist during "I Wanna Be Your Lover" and through "Do Me, Baby," with the crowd hitting a high note so sharply Prince jumped back from the keyboard and quit, claiming "Scared of y'all!" The acoustic encore rounded out with "Condition of the Heart," "Diamonds and Pearls" and "The Beautiful Ones." The band reclaimed its instruments for an impromptu "Purple Rain" and, finally, "Nothing Compares 2 U."
The second and last encore found Prince continuing on the keyboards with band accompaniment for a final medley that spanned many of the pre-Emancipation albums. In a timely return to the live repertoire, the 1999 Side 3 song "Free" enjoyed a one-verse exposure before segueing into a verse of "Starfish and Coffee," then a truncated "Sometimes It Snows in April" and a bit of "How Come U Don't Call Me Anymore."
Not content to "leave it there," Prince explained, "In these turbulent times, this is the song for me," which led into a fully jammed out "Anna Stesia." A crowd-heavy "Love is God/ God is love/ Girls and boys love God above" chant marked the end of the show
Alicia Keys, George Clinton, ?uestlove and Doug E. Fresh were among the surprise guests to appear onstage with Prince early Wednesday morning at Times Square's The World nightclub at 2 a.m., a few hours after a full concert uptown at the Lincoln Center.
With bassist Larry Graham (who appeared briefly at the previous show) and saxophonist Candy Dulfer joining most of Prince's core band, Renato Neto on keys, John Blackwell on drums, Maceo Parker on sax and Greg Boyer on trombone, the freeform funk session began with Prince oldies including "Joy in Repetition", "Alphabet St.", and "Extrordinary".
As the slow groove morphed seamlessly into funk classics like James Brown's "Talking Loud and Saying Nothing" and a repeat of "Pass the Peas," the lineup altered randomly as well.
George Clinton, whose P-Funk All-Stars had played the club earlier in the evening, stuck around to play while most of his gang headed for Cleveland. Dr. Funkenstein wandered out early in the show, rasping, "We do this/ This is what we do" over a basic funk groove. P-Funker Gary Shider also hung back and later provided vocals on Sly and the Family Stone's "Dance to the Music."
Original beat box rapper Fresh, a veteran of Prince aftershows, moved the jam to a lengthy old-school rap interlude including "La-Di-Da-Di" and returned later to engage Blackwell in a beat box/drum duel.
Musiq Soulchild joined the crew for "Just Friends." At some point, so much was going on that it was difficult to pinpoint exactly when ?uestlove took over on drums and Rhonda Smith took over on bass. While Prince played bass on "777-9311," Alicia Keys whirled in like a welcome storm, improvising lyrics. Admitting an inner dialogue she enjoyed earlier, she recalled herself saying, "Self, if you were to die tomorrow, God forbid, what is the one thing you would want to do tonight?" And with that she sat with Prince at the keyboards to sing her own energetic version of "How Come U Don't Call Me Anymore?" and played on "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker." The show ended around 4:30 a.m. with "Peach", and Prince asking (rhetorically, one would assume), "Did we turn it out?"

KingOfNYC said:

After Peach, he's back for play "Everlasting Now"