Salt Lake Tribune

http://www.sltrib.com/200.../92377.htm


Prince Fires Up His Fans With 2 Hours of Hits, Then Unwinds at Brick's

Friday, April 27, 2001




BY DAN NAILEN

THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE



Hmm. What to do after ripping through nearly 30 songs in the course of two straight hours of the best funk, rock, soul and R&B recorded in the last 25 years?


If you're Prince and it's a Wednesday night in Utah, you throw a little post-concert soiree at a nearby club, take along your New Power Generation band and opening acts, and jam for another hour-plus. You know, just to unwind.


Prince capped off a typically stunning show Wednesday at West Valley City's E Center with an after-hours jam at Brick's, leading his band through about 45 minutes of heavy-duty funk improvisations after his E Center opening acts Fonky Baldheads and Milenia got the crowd of a few hundred stalwarts warmed up. Considering it was 1:15 a.m. Thursday by the time the post-concert jam started, the crowd was surprisingly frisky.


They were probably still buzzing from the evening's main event, Prince's greatest-hits "Hit 'n' Run Tour" appearance. Contrary to popular mythology, The Purple One is more of a "people person" than a hermit, and he charmed the house with constant between-song chit-chat, multiple invitations for audience members to dance with him onstage and sheer charisma.


"Utah, it's now official," Prince announced at the show's onset, launching into "Uptown." "You are about to have the best night of your life."


Cocky? Sure, but Prince pretty much delivers the goods every time he hits a stage. This diminutive dude naturally draws the spotlight to himself amid a stage full of world-class musicians. Some of it has to do with his borderline-illegal tangos with the microphone stand; mostly it's because he is an ace bandleader and performer -- still able to pull off a crystal-clear falsetto as if he were 20 or a sexy dance interlude with Geneva, his female foil onstage.


Maceo Parker, longtime saxophone player for James Brown, joined the New Power Generation for the night, and the duelling sax lines he provided with regular Prince sax and flute player Najee offered new twists on a set full of old favorites. Parker, a legend among funk fans, was absolutely on fire at several points, but Prince would recapture the spotlight with a simple guitar lick, dance move or piano plink. You want to see what Prince is going to do next at every moment, which instantly makes him better than most live acts.


Prince covered a lot of ground with his set list, from classics like "Do Me, Baby" and "Controversy," to more-recent material like "Gett Off" and "Diamonds and Pearls." His breakthrough "Purple Rain" album was a focal point, with "Let's Go Crazy" a perfect mayhem-inducing opener for his second set. But Prince also gave much-deserved attention to his "Sign O' the Times" album. He played acoustic guitar during a jazzy "Ballad of Dorothy Parker," then cranked up the energy for driving versions of "Housequake," "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man" and a hard-rocking "U Got the Look" during his final encore.


The addition of Parker to Prince's incredibly tight backing band -- bassist Rhonda Smith, drummer John Blackwell, Najee and keyboardists Mr. Hayes and Kip Blackshire, aided by the Fonky Baldheads' Mike Scott on keys and vocals -- led to more long, jammy passages than a typical concert, but there are few musicians you can trust more than Prince to lead you into uncharted sonic territory. The man knows how to lay down a serious groove, as when he strapped on a bass guitar for the first time all night for "Kiss," and proceeded to slap the thing silly by way of an introduction for the song.


At the post-show party, Prince played the bass exclusively until the last "song," leading his troops through monstrous jams based around simple lyrics like "Utah knows how to party!" He asked several people in the club their names, making little jokes about each one, and was obviously enjoying the vibe of playing with Parker at his disposal, judging by his smile and repeated commands of "C'mon, Maceo!" or "Maceo, if you want some of this, we in 'C.' "


"What time is it?" Prince asked around 2 a.m. Met with a roar for more music, he replied, "You know how we do. We can jam all night. How 'bout you?"


Suffice to say, if it weren't for the law, the crowd would still be there, asking for more.