Perhaps if this concert had been billed "Evangelist Prince sings the hits"
I would've felt better about things, but this show was a serious letdown.
The band might as well have been tape recorded for all the heart they
showed, and it was far from the balls-out funk party of a couple of years
ago, that's for sure. (Larry, *please* come back!) Problem number one was
that nearly every song was in the middle of a medley, so whenever a number
really got cooking, it was abruptly abandoned for the next snippet of a
song. Now I know why nobody from previous shows could come up with a
straight setlist on this site!!! To make matters worse, Prince started
going off about god way too much, making "Purple Rain" into a hymn or
something, including making the previously spontaneous crowd participation
into something quite contrived. On top of all of this, there was a sound
glitch in the form of crackling in the stage left speakers, which was
disconcerting. Given all of this, Prince was still in fine form working
the crowd and he spent a considerable amount of time on guitar, playing the
rock star thing to the hilt. He still drips charisma, but I must say that
he came across as pre-packaged and very much soul-less tonight. Doug E.
Fresh came out for some so-so rapping towards the end, and then the band
actually got a fat groove going as audience members were invited on stage
to shake it, but it was too little too late, in my opinion. Perhaps my
disappointment stemmed from the fact that previous Prince shows set the bar
so high that it's very hard for him to live up to it as he ages and decides
to get on a soap box instead of get funky. Oh well.