Yesterday afternoon (November 15), I was one of the lucky few who
witnessed Prince's showcase at the Mermaid Theatre in London. About 500
people, mostly journalists and contest winners (I won my ticket through
a Belgian radio contest), were invited to this special promotional
event.



Doors opened at 2.30 pm and we were welcomed with drinks and (not always
delicious) food. An hour later, we all took a seat in the theatre
auditorium for the official presentation of the new album 'Rave Un2 The
Joy Fantastic' by Clive Davis, manager of Arista. Clive Davis talked
about how he met Prince 7 months ago and how they came to a deal to
release the new album. Before we could listen to some selected tracks
from RAVE, we heard two remixes from the leading single, 'The Greatest
Romance Ever Sold': a first remix (Neptune's remix) which wasn't unlike
some of the (lame) remixes we heard from Prince in recent, and a much
more interesting 'dance remix' (according to Clive Davis, I didn't
notice him giving it another name) with a very hard beat. The latter was
only played for a minute or so, while the former was played in full.
After that, a short video film was shown, with new footage: it mainly
contained Prince talking about the new album and about the people
collaborating on the project (footage of No Doubt, Ani Difranco and
Sheryl Crow was shown). Prince said that he wanted to work with Gwen
Stefani after seeing her jump on David Letterman's desk during his late
night show.
The video also showed Clive Davis and Prince's lawyer talking about the
deal and some clips of a live performance by Sheryl Crow together with
Prince (probably at Lilith Fair). After this short video film, it was
time to listen to the album RAVE. The following songs were played in
full (each introduced with a short explanation by Clive Davis): 'Rave
Un2 The Joy Fantastic', 'Hot Wit U', 'So Far, So Pleased', 'The Sun, The
Moon and Stars', 'Baby Knows', 'Man o' War', 'I Love U But I Don't Trust
U Anymore', 'Wherever U Go, Whatever U Do', 'Pretty Man' and 'The
Greatest Romance Ever Sold (album version)'. Because of a little delay
in the program, some impatient journalist started to yell that he wanted
to see a performance by Prince, and not just a presentation of the new
album. The guy left the auditorium two songs before the end of the
presentation, and thus he missed a nice show by Prince, who started of
at 5 pm, right after the last seconds of TGRES.



Prince was dressed in a blue, glittering suit and wore a purple jacket.
His hair was like in the Graffiti Bridge days. He was accompanied by a
full band (which he still called 'The New Power Generation', BTW),
consisting of Larry Graham on bass, Mike Scott on guitar, Mr Hayes on
the organ, Kip on keyboards and backing vocals, Kirk Johnson on drums
and the Hornheads (1 female + 2 males).



They started with a short version of 'Let's Go Crazy', which was
introduced by a long organ solo, followed by a great version of 'She's
Always In My Hair', which had Prince walking into the first rows of the
audience (something he would do many times during the show). 'U Got The
Look' was next, followed by the first highlight of the show: Prince
changed to bass (he had been constantly playing his 'Blue Angel' guitar
up to that moment) and started a little funky jam, which incorporated
samples of 'Face Down', 'Love 2 the 9's', 'Live 4 Love' and ... 'My Name
Is Prince' (!!!!). He invited 3 girls and 3 guys to the stage for a
little dance, and the jam segued into 'Kiss'. Prince had the last verse
sung by the people on stage: 3 of them sang one line each, with the last
line sung by a guy who tried his best falsetto voice . By this time,
almost everybody of the audience was on his feet, which surprised me a
bit as most of them were (older) journalists. After 'Kiss', Prince
switched to guitar again and he played the best version of 'Gett Off'
I've ever heard: it was a much heavier version than usual with a long,
hard rocking guitar solo at the beginning of the song. Prince really
showed that he's an undisputed guitar genius. For a moment, he played
the keyboards with one hand, and his guitar with the other! Although
he's been playing this hits segment for 2 years now, there had been some
clear changes in the arrangements of most of these songs.



After this portion, Prince calmed down the pace and started a bluesy jam
and he took a blonde girl to the stage. The blues jam evolved into a
cover version of Jimi Hendrix' 'Red House' with Prince replacing 'red'
by 'purple', after the first verse, the girl - who's name appeared to be
Andrea - suddenly started singing with an incredible voice.
No one seemed to know this girl and it's still a mystery whether this
was a spontaneous action or not. If this girl isn't a professional
singer yet, I bet the people from Arista are already offering her a
contract at this very moment! The blues portion was followed by a long
version of 'The Jam', giving each band member the opportunity to do a
solo. When Larry Graham started his bass solo, his wife Tina came on
stage with a towel and started waving with it to cool down her husband.
Larry didn't do (almost) any leading vocals during the whole show and
that's something a lot of Prince fans will be glad about . But as he
is an incredible bass player, he does deserve a spot in Prince's band
IMO. After 'The Jam', the band left the stage.



The audience was making a lot of noise and very quickly, the band
arrived back on stage for an encore portion. 'The Greatest Romance' was
played, followed by 'Baby Knows'. Unfortunately, this was the weakest
part of the performance: although I do like the studio versions of the
songs, they didn't 'work' too well when played live and suffered from a
bit too much use of samples (even Sheryl Crow's voice was sampled).
'TGRES' had an extended instrumental portion at the end and wasn't too
bad, but 'Baby Knows' was very disappointing and didn't provoke any
emotions. I wouldn't be surprised if this would be the last time the
song was included in a live set - it simply doesn't work live! After
this, they started playing 'Release Yourself', and this ended up in a
big party on stage: during the jam, Prince and Larry Graham walked into
the audience and invited up to 40 people on stage to dance.
Surprisingly, Beck - a very talented American musician - came also on
stage, but he didn't move a lot . This jam kept going on for a very
long time, after which the band left the stage at 6.20 pm.



Although he was scheduled to play only 45 minutes, we got to see a
brilliant show that lasted about twice as long as expected. The audience
was very excited overall and Prince was clearly in a good mood. He
didn't talk as much to the audience as usual and he didn't start
preaching (something he seems to do only to his fans). A bit
disappointing was the lack of interesting new songs in the set, and the
fact that he chose to do 'Baby Knows' instead of 'Rave Un2 The Joy
Fantastic', which would have been a great closing song. But anyhow, I
was glad to be a part of this special experience and to be one of the
very few fans who saw Prince in such a very relaxed way.