All the aftershows he played durung the ONA Tour were great. But this one really has some awesome moments. The way he segues "Whole Lotta Love" into "Family Name", the male/female audience choir on "Ain't no sunshine", the bass medley with the amazing bass jam at the end of "Cool" (how great is this riff? I wish he made a song out of this) - he really was on fire that night.

But the best thing about the whole night and maybe one of my all-time favorite Prince live performances is the final jam. Kinda mellow slow/mid-tempo jam first, then he starts to sing f*cking Housequake on top of that, the audience singing "time to get funky" over and over again, some heavy soloing and then this sick horn riff... People always talk about the raw energy and funk of the 93-95 NPG, but this easily holds up to it. Got to be one of his nastiest, funkiest moments ever live.

Who was there? Hamsterhuey, I think I remember you being there? Let's hear some recollections, please!

I was there ! Just two yards away from Prince. It was an amazing aftershow. Prince turned up with the band playing some jazz stuff and he just laid down on the floor like he was going to sleep.
And that's exactly when we noticed the setlist just in front of us ! We were reading the setlist sheet and could not believe our eyes. We knew from that moment it was going to be an absolute killer show.
His guitar play was so raw and powerful. Pure genius at work.

And by the way, for those who were there, do you remeber this massive queue outside (several hundred meters of queue) ! People waiting while it was sold out and insulting us (npgmc memebers) as they thought we were taking a shortcut to get tickets. Some of the people there were hysterical.
[Edited 4/13/06 3:43am]

the aftershows from this tour, at least the european leg of it,
are phenomenal.

bataclan, night town and club vega are simply stellar and among
my fav prince moments ever.

the guitarplaying is unlike i've ever heard prince before, with
his band being incredibly tight and masterfull.

renato's solo's in the night town intro (16 minutes or somethin)
continue to floor me. it sounds as if he's pushing the keyboard
through the floor and still refuses to let go of the keys

Great fucking stuff!!!!

sarkozy2007 said:

Thanks! I also remember big discussions going on because they did not label this an aftershow (which you had free access to back then as a member with a ticket to the main show), but an extra concert, and asked $100 for it, right? I hope my memory serves me right here. I guess that's long forgotten (or better, forgiven) - what remained is this awesome, funky gig.

calldapplwondery83 said:

You are correct. The NPGMC camp pretended the $100 ticket was due to the fact it was going to be a proper show. It happened to be a long aftershow. But nobody complained about the ticket fee after the gig. We were all totally shocked by what we had experienced. Money did not matter anymore !
One of the things that amazed me on that day is that from the rehearsals in the afternoon, the proper ONA show and the Bataclan, Prince has shown an incredible versatility and diversity in his guitar play : jazz, rock, funk, pop, heavy metal.
A friend of mine told me : "I have the feeling I have seen 10 different guitar players in action today but I still cannot believe it was a single man who did that !".

Great!

This day in Paris really captured everything this fantastic tour was about, IMO. First the soundcheck, the main concert and to top it off, the aftershow. So you have seen him three times that day? How was the soundcheck? That must have been an amazing day!

The soundcheck was great. Not alot of singing but the music was just fantastic. At one point (if anyone remembers), there's this idiot who starts screaming "Empty Room!! Do Empty Room!!" Prince retorts that "this isn't TRL"...

The idiot was me...

You're lucky he didn't say "How come you know that song?"

calldapplwondery83 said:

Yeah the soundcheck was great. He did soul sacrifice. The band was tight. I prefered the rehearsals in England though. It was more intimate than it was in Paris.