Yeah, I was stupid and crazy enough to brave the cold for 6 1/2 hours
(got a little frost bite on my ear to prove it) but I finally did get
in. I'd say there were several hundred people that tried and gave up,
maybe only 40 or so (let in only 10 at a time) that finally got in at
11:30pm and after.



Here is a quick summary of stuff I can remember:



+ Lenny and Prince entered the stage by marching through the crowd.
They then played "American Woman" and "Fly Away." If I remember
correctly both were playing guitar during these two songs.



+ Prince unveiled his new black grand piano. The piano was off on a
little island away from the stage and Prince actually let the audience
carry him (crowd surfing style) to the piano. He then had fun showing
that he could move the top of the piano up and down with a wave of his
hand. After he got done showing off what certainly must be the most
expensive piano he's ever owned (wait till you see this one!) he, much
to the delight of the crowd, ripped into "Nothing Compares 2 U" with
Rosie Gaines.



+ During George Clinton's set, Prince played his one-eyed bass for a
medley of many different Pariliament/Funkadelic tracks, along with the
full version "Brother, Can You Paradigm?", a new song Prince wrote and
gave to Clinton for an upcoming P-Funk album. This is the first time
I had heard this song, and usually I don't make a comment after only
one listen, but this came across to me as particularly funky and
tight.



+ George Clinton has an incredibly beautiful dancer that joined him on
the stage, and I believe she may have been on the stage at other
points in the night.



+ During "Baby Knows" Prince very slowly mouthed the word "shit"
instead of singing the line "she'll make you feel like your stuff
ain't brown tonight." He had a "shit eating" grin on his face when he
did it, too. It was rather humorous.



+ The long rest of his voice certainly paid off as surely was evident
during the singing of TGRES, which he absolutely nailed. There was no
lip-synching tonight.



+ Prince played a lot of guitar all night but he also played bass,
piano, jammed on the keyboards, and played on a percussion set that
lights up when struck.



+ There was plenty of free-style jamming going on with Prince playing
the role of band leader. He was starting and stopping them, and
having them change keys on the drop of a hat. Maceo Parker soloed
many times. My fear is that all this jamming is going to get edited
out of the show.



+ Including The Time's set the previous night they must have at least
6 hours of tape in which to edit from.



+ After "1999" was played people were starting to leave thinking the
show was over. One of Prince's techies was walking through the crowd
and was telling everybody that Prince was just warming up. He wasn't
kidding, as he played for what seemed like another couple of hours.



+ He played like a 15-minute version of "Purple Rain," the first part
of which had Prince playing guitar backstage as a male and female
dancer interpreted the song. (I have no idea who these 2 dancers
were.) There was a very neat effect where the dancers were standing
moving their arms through the laser light beams that were projecting
out from behind the stage and up to the ceiling like strings on a
harp.



+ Prince had been egging Jonny Lang to get on stage earlier in the
evening but there was no sign of him; that is, until the grand finale,
when Prince came out and they went on a 10-minute freestyle blues jam
on the song "Baby Knows." For those who might not know Jonny Lang is
probably one of (if not the most) respected young new guitar
geniuses. At one point Jonny and Prince just went head to head, in an
old-fashioned, I-can-do-one-betta-than-you thang. Lang had this huge
smile on his face like he couldn't believe what was happening. The
whole thing was spectacular and completely improvised.



+ The Sounds of Blackness joined Prince on stage for a rousing version
of "The Christ." Lots of hard-rock guitar mixed with tons of
gospel-fied soul.



+ Tons of purple feathers, fake snow, confetti, gold and purple
balloons were dropped on the patrons at many different dramatic
points. There were laser lights, all kinds of colored spot lights,
and even some indoor fireworks at the end of "1999."



+ The soundstage was flanked by two very large video screens and two
remote control cameras on 20-foot arms that continuously roamed over
the top of the crowd and up to the stage.



+ For whatever reason he had the crowd count to 7 (possibly because 7
is a holy number) before he ripped into "1999" for the last time. No
"10...9...8...7" countdown for Prince. I guess by now we should all
know he does almost everything a little differently than anyone else.




+ Prince and his 3 new backup singers and some others did the "wooden
leg" dance during some song. Hey, forgive me, but the memory fails a
little when you are on your feet for 11 straight hours and are damn
near frozen.



+ At one point Prince wore this futuristic outfit with these metallic
looking columns in his hair that made him look like an Egyptian
pharaoh while he went on a nasty 5-10 minute jam on a whole array of
keyboards, complete with a light show completely surrounding him and
his keyboards. He was truly a one-man band there for awhile.



+ I'm not exactly sure when the show started, as it was already
underway at 11:30pm when I got in the building, but they did play
until about 4:00am. I stood around soaking up the whole experience
while people were leaving and Lenny Kravitz and Prince marched out
together by themselves right past me and right through the middle of
the soundstage probably to their waiting, warm limousines.



+ I tried to construct a play list but found it nearly impossible.
With 4 1/2 hours of playing and then being faced with Prince starting
off as if he were going to play one song (like he did with "Willing
and Able" for example) only to have his band warp it into like 2 or 3
others before they finally started playing the actual song I just
completely lost track.



I must say the crowd outside was treated very poorly. Lots of people
went home angry, frustrated and lucky if they did not suffer health
problems. While it's true we were all standing in line of our own
free will, once again things were handled just about as badly as you
can imagine. We stood there for hours freezing while watching limos
pull into the parking lot with all the "beautiful" people. This was
one of the main problems. People with tickets should have been told
to arrive at 8 or 9, they were still arriving at 11 and they couldn't
let any of the devoted frozen in until they figured out how many of
the invited guest were going to show up, thus being able to tell how
many more could fit and still be within the fire-code regulations. There has got to be better ways to handle these things.



Maybe simply stating something on the Love 4 One Another site like,
"Hey, there might be a couple dozen people who could get lucky and get
into the show if not all the invited guests show up. If you really
want to brave the cold you can start lining up at 5:00pm, but be
warned you might have to wait until 11 or 12pm before being let in,
and even at that there is a very good chance you won't get in at all."



If you know the rules and are leveled with from the start I believe
there would be a lot fewer problems. There very well could have been
a riot considering the conditions. If people wouldn't have been
fairly cool a very ugly scene of the crowd pushing their way straight
through the gate, possibly crushing people along the way, could
definitely of been the result.



Prince said something during the show about not believing in time,
well I bet his ass would have believed in it had he stood out in the
below zero wind chill for 7 hours!



I want to give a shout-out to those cool people I met in line and
froze with. To the guy that let me use his gloves after he jumped
into his sleeping bag, and to the girl (I won't use her name, she
knows why who kept putting her gloved-hands on my ears to keep them
from freezing, I want to say, "Thank you very much, you may have kept
one of my appendages from dropping off!" Prince fans I find for the
most part are very kind and cool people.