i love prince's guitar playing.

most of his guitar solos are pretty on point.

but something bothers me about his guitar playing during rave period,
especialy on rave 2000 dvd.

his playing on it was strange,
he sounded like he didnt practise guitar for a long time.
solos are without structure,sloppy.i never ever heard him again playing that weak.

his solo on fly away is his worst ever.
purple rain have many mistakes on rave 2000 dvd.

of course there are some briliant moments like red house intro,

purple rain intro but the best solo on prince concert wasn't played by prince,mike scott played great solo on gett off house style.

musicology dvd from la kills rave 2000 dvd in every department especially guitar playing by prince.

most emberresing moments on rave 2000 dvd (guitar related)
his sintetic distortion he used on all songs

you got the look

fly away-just awful

gett off-bum note by prince

purple rain-many mistakes on purple rain

baby knows-did he play anything???

red house blues solo-many people praise this one but the real truth is only intro is good but the main solo is not,
its totaly out of focus.

If you complain about P's guitar playing, then what the hell is Lenny Kravits doing ???

lenny is awful,prince is mediocrite there

not just the guitaring the whole show is weak.
She's Always inMy Hair is the only reason i watch the show.

yeah band is weak but guitar is very weak

i thought his performance in that was totally distracted and phoned-in.

When prince has directorial control (Graffiti Bridge, Rave) the video performance come off to me as way overproduced. Glamour shots, special effects etc. Just film it man. PR was awesome because it felt raw.

Can you do better?

wlcm2thdwn said:

given the same resources and assistance that prince had access to when he oversaw this project, i would say yes. i could. musicianship-wise, of course not. but we all know the quality he's capable of on an eerily consistent basis, and it wasn't present on that concert special.

I thought Rave was incredible!

I hate to say it, but I'm kinda glad his performance wasn't that great. It makes having stood out in the artic cold for hours waiting to get in that night only to be turned away not hurt as much.

yeah he should of released a dvd from the ONA tour that really represented what he brings every nite, oh yeah there was that vegas thing...

i dont think it was bad but the PR sounded rushed and sloppy compared 2 his earlier work. She's Always in My Hair was painful and Let's Go Crazy was weak. overall, not a terrible concert but not a good one either

Yeah 1999 was "weak", kinda let down there after waiting 18 years for it to come.

I love the raw-ness of rave!! Everything about it was simple and personal!I'm glad he released it..and i have a copy! A personal favorite! Rock on Prince!!

On Rave 2000 Prince had a bad day! I don´t like the concert and i don´t like the guitar sound ( so thinn) and there are really no good guitarsolos (except Mike Scott during Gett off housestyle).

you know there are days where he plays fantastic solos and there are days he plays weak solos.

But most of the time he plays wonderful guitar. I love his style!

Peace and b wild

I liked his playing on Purple House. I could really feel his pain!

2funkE said:

Yea I agree. For some reason the show is lit very dark. I was at that show and it was electrifying, over 4 hours long, the video doesn't do it justice.

It just goes to show that P is human. Obviously the man's state of mind effected his playing.

I dug it - dug his guitar playing, especially with the cloud (my fave of all the P guitars). "She's Always in My Hair" was the highlight, imho. I'm just not a big fan of the purple symbol guitar - I think the sound pales in comparison to the white (the Rosie 'O Donnell performance) and gold symbols (the Dave Letterman performance). Could also have to do with his choice of pedals (I'm not a big fan of BOSS pedals) or amps. Still, overall, it had some cool guitar moments and it was $19.99 well spent (ordered it on New Year's Eve).

That blue suit, though, was kinda

One thing is certain, though - if you listen to P's overall guitar sound from the "Dirty Mind" concert tour, he's come a LONG way. I'm talking SOUNDWISE, not chops-wise. The hohner(back then) was great for funk, but as far as leads go...but then again, he was going for more of a punk sound during that period.

The one consistent knock against Prince from other guitar players, has been his, some would say, overprocessed sound. I remember Jake E. Lee, in a Guitar World interview back in the '90's saying that, while he dug Prince's funk playing, his rock playing sounded overly processed. Taste is a subjective thing, though...

And before anyone asks, Jake E. Lee played in Ozzy Osbourne's band and is best known for "Bark At the Moon" and his own (excellent) band, Badlands. Dude's a great guitar player and is actually has some funk elements in his playing.
[Edited 11/7/06 1:36am]

well i dont think prince sound is procesed.well on rave dvd it is .its awful.
but from 2001 prince started using more natural distortions.
he plays 10 times better now then during rave 2000 days.
he played better before rave also.

Agreed, guitar playing and in fact the whole concert makes me cringe! It's totally uninspired! Thank God for The Rainbow Children. Even if you don't dig the album, it led to a tour that brought musicianship and guitar playing back in a big way and deciding not to have a second guitar player on tour I think was actually Prince realising that perhaps he needed to challenge himself and focus on playing the guitar rather than posing with it.

It's such a shame that one of the greatest live performers of his and other generations will leave such a poor dvd/video legacy behind which in the future is all people will have to judge his live performances by. Rave: Cringeworthy CRAP! Aladdin DVD: Could have been great but badly circumcised and ultimately a disappointment misrepresentation of the tour.

Im no fan of the rave show. however, to my mind there is one flash of guitar brilliance. It is when prince motions to lenny kravitz if he an take a solo (think its during american woman). he had taken a back seat for pretty much the entire song. its as if he just cant hold te solo in any longer but he still nods to lenny for acceptence to reign. he thn hits a crazy fluid solo chanelling straight out of his heart and through his fingers. love it

prnelson you are absolutley right he played great solo on american woman

now days prince plays like somebody injected ernie isley in him

I think the music & performance isn't so bad, but the way it's filmed and the fact that it's not really a concert kills it. There's no energy from the band or the crowd.

It gains a little momentum around Gett Off and onto the end, but the beginning sucks, and it would have been amazing if it had been a real concert.

The setlist for Vegas Alladin sucks in comparison, but it is a thousand times more exciting

i doubt it would be better if it was a concert.
prince wasn't one with his guitar like usual.

in that period prince just wasn't capable of epic guitar solos such as joy in repetition ona live or just my imagination.

prince's imagination is still present(american woman,purple rain intro,red house intro) on that dvd but you can clearly see he was struggling to play decent solo.

thebanishedone said:

I don't see that, I thought his solo on Fly Away is great. I also don't think he's ever been "one with his guitar." I think he's always "very good with his guitar."

To me what's missing is energy, not musicianship