Since Musicology onwards he has only ever performed a small handful of his new material in his live shows, opting to perform the same tired hits and even cover versions over his new material. This doesn't show a great deal of faith in his new work.

Look at the 21 Nights tour for example. Some nights he wouldn't even perform a single track from Planet Earth, other nights he would include maybe one or two tracks at the most. Only about four or five songs from that album ever got played live.

At least in the 90s he still seemed excited by his new output. I know the man has a legacy and it's not like I expect him to completely ignore the songs which made him who he is today, but after nearly a decade of flaunting this ridiculous "per4ming his hits for the last time" slogan, it would be nice if he actually took some interest in his current output for a change.
[Edited 11/5/09 7:04am]

During the 21 Nights stint, he played Planet Earth, Guitar, Somewhere Here On Earth, The One U Wanna C and Chelsea Rodgers. That's 5 tracks from a 10 track album. Maybe the rest didn't lend themselves to a live rendition (Future Baby Mama would have bored anyone to tears live, I'm sure), and in all honesty the 21 Nights In London shows weren't a promotion of the Planet Earth album, one could say it was reversed and the CD giveaway was a promotion tool for the shows.

Shows from the past year have included numerous new tracks - Boom, Crimson And Clover, Colonized Mind, Feel Good Feel Better Feel Wonderful, Love Like Jazz, Dreamer, Dance 4 Me, Ol' Skool Company, No More Candy 4 U, All This Love, Elixer. He may not be playing one show and stuffing in the new material, but he's certainly dropping new stuff in with the old. Add to that the fact he's reaching back and pulling out some great surprises like In A Large Room and Girl.

On the face of it, it does look like it's the same guff we have heard since 2004, but look a little deeper and you will see the new material is being played. He's not launching a new tour to promote the new album, but he's at least playing a fairly decent portion of it.

thebumpsquad said:

But that's precisely what gives me the impression that he isn't interested in his current work anymore. He tosses off a new album, gives it away for free at concerts, plays the odd new track in-between U Got The Look and Let's Go Crazy... these are hardly the actions of a man who cares about his current output.

He seems very comfortable being a nostalgia act for the masses, as opposed to an artist who is still interested in creating and performing new work.
[Edited 11/5/09 6:59am]

I agree to a point.

Planet Earth (for me) is tainted by the fact it was given away with a newspaper which normally churns out The Best Of Fawlty Towers DVD's with their current issue, or some lame "made for TV" remake of a Jane Austen novel. It wasn't a smart move musically, but for an artist of his stature and as a promotional tool for the shows, it was obviously a killer idea.

As to the new material, he hasn't really given it a full scale platform to be heard by the masses. There were the appearances on Leno and Ellen where he played new material (ironically which included either a brief intro from "1999" or "Purple Rain" as a teaser), but the reason for no large scale arena tour to promote the albums is a mystery to everyone except him.

Lazy? Couldn't give a fuck? Doesn't have confidence in the new tracks? Hip too sore? Only he knows.....only Prince knows.

Ghey edit
[Edited 11/5/09 7:10am]

No he doesn't.

skywalker said:

I just wish he would have performed something from Lotus Flow3r. I prefer that album to MPLSound.

He was obviously in a funky mood that night, though.

I agree with you but I think it depends on the album. The Rainbow Children for instance seemed to be the last album he really cared about artistically, whereas with Musicology and 3131 the success in the charts kind of overshadowed the contents of both albums. TRC was the last album with an overall concept, some sort of storyline and typical sound. The sophomore albums seemed like a hotchpotch in comparison. And you could feel, see and hear that he was really focused during the ONA project while at the same time pleasing old school fans by playing rare songs from his catalogue.

Maybe it has more to do with the time we´re living in....the concept of an album seems to be a thing of the past, more and more albums come out in different versions, with or without bonus tracks, or deluxe editions come out later, or you get an album on a USB stick or whatever.

Still,he could play more of his recent material...some of the new songs, like Somewhere Here On Earth, are just as strong as his older ballads.

skywalker said:

I'm talking about the overall picture from Musicology to present day, not about individual shows.

I miss Prince touring to promote a new album. He hasn't done that since ONA.

Im loving the links lotusflow3r sent us, whos that playing harmonica? I love the image of the prince trio it was jokingly said about brias party.

I dont think he dislikes his current output far from it. I think he loves it, his current music has more feeling and vibe than it has for a few years, since musicology really.

The above mentioned tracks are fantastic live recordings which show how he can take an old song and re-work it into something exciting and new, in a sense he is 'covering' himself. The re-work of mountains is brilliant, pared done, fun and so completely unprincelike its princelike!

KoolEaze said:

People have been saying that for years and I don't think it's strictly true.

If Prince really felt that way he would just go back to releasing music via the internet.

I think fans are making excuses for him. It looks to me as if he's too scared to perform a full-scale tour with a setlist largely made up of current material. During 21 Nights he even apologised before performing some of his newer work. I remember on one show before breaking into Black Sweat he said "please allow me this one..." - I mean, WTF? Not everyone was there to hear Purple Rain.

thebumpsquad said:

did he play Boom??? don't think so...hmm

I wish he would play Boom. Great song.

Marco81 said:

At the Avalon show in February.

did nobody hear what he said in one of the interviews in Paris?

he said something along the lines of... "I prefer doing it this way, playing live. radio stations don't play my music anymore... so i'll just continue to play live and put out an album now and again if i feel like it"

seems to me like he is less interested in the album. but probably not less interested in his new music. but i think he realises that larger at shows less people will know stuff off of Musicology, 3121, Planet Earth, Lotusflow3r and MPLSound.

i mean... come to think of it... the 21 nights in London shows had lots of people, night after night, who didn't know stuff like Shhh, If I was Your Girlfriend and Girls and Boys! Forget people picking up that Le Freak was to the same tune as Sexy Dancer!

thebumpsquad said:

He played those songs a FRACTION of th etime. He opened one show with "Planet Earth". The played guitar not enough times to fill up a one-handed count. Same for "The 1 U Wanna See", and only a couple times more for "Guitar" and "Chelsea Rodgers".

The number of times he played P.E. material over the course of 21 night, each night housing approximately 20 songs, is less than 1%.

nuthinbuttamuffin said:[quote]did nobody hear what he said in one of the interviews in Paris?

he said something along the lines of... "I prefer doing it this way, playing live. radio stations don't play my music anymore... so i'll just continue to play live and put out an album now and again if i feel like it"
quote]Prince should listen to himself when he says stuff. There is a reason why radio stations don't play his material. Hmm, I wonder why that could be?

Didn't he play Guitar almost every night in London?

kenlacam said:

It's simple why radio isn't interested in Prince beyond the same 10 songs.

1) He's older, and it's become an incredibly young market in the past 10 or 15 years. VERY young. When you have Miley Cyrus and younger charting songs, that sets the standard, rather than remaining as the exception. Hannah Montana was a pre-teen when those albums/TV show started making an impact.

2) His music isn't radio friendly. That doesn't mean it has to be generic, bland pop music (although really...that's what he's been making for years, oddly enough). It means it needs to be catchy, clever, and hooks you right off the bad. We scoff at having to listen to "When Doves Cry" again, but the fact is that song was catchy. It was clever w/ no bass. It was unusual because of the percussion and drum track. It lured you in from the moment he said "Dig if you will a picture, of u and I engaged in a kiss..." I mean...NO ONE else said shit like that, and said it LIKE that, in 1984! No one started a song with a church organ with "Dearly beloved...." at the beginning, then ended it with a screaming guitar solo. It was inventive, AND radio friendly. "Chocolate Box" isn't inventive or radio friendly. Fans love it because they're fans. They learn the songs, and they find some sort of enjoyment in his new music, yet radio scoffs at it. And for good reason.

3) Prince doesn't release singles or promotes his music the way he should. Arista tried w/ Rave, yet he INSISTED on putting out the rather drab "The Greatest Romance Ever Sold", a single that Clive Davis - a man that can executive produce a record from his shower stall and still have it sell 5 million copies - frowned upon. We ALL know Rave could have been a lot more successful with singles like "So Far So Pleased", "Everyday Is A Winding Road", "Baby Knows".

Prince might be bored with the music, but there's a bigger factor going on here: Prince is more about the bottom line at this point. When he told Tavis Smiley "I'm taken care of, and Bria is taken care of," that said to me, "I got paid, the rest I don't care about." And I was right. He got his lump sum payment, plus future royalties, of course, from sales. But he's gotten his money, despite sales. He made 2 average videos, never promoted them, and bitched when people tried to share or upload them on the web. And it's JUST been in the past couple of weeks that he's played something live, and played something from the album. His temporary #1 spot on the iTunes download charts proved that promotion WORKS. But even his 3 night run on The Tonight Show didn't do enough to do anything w/ the record past a month's time.

Gohi said:

No, he didn't. Not even close.

'Everybody' is something of a generalization.

'21 Nights' was for the general public. I saw 'Black Sweat/Lolita' played four out of five gigs.

Recent set-lists in smaller venues have been much more varied. Unless you feel 'When I Lay My Hands on U' and 'I Love U But Don't Trust U Anymore' etc 'tired'.

When an artist has a catalog of music as expansive and diverse as Prince does it would seem hard to play only the newest material. I like that the more recent shows have brought out more obscure tracks and unreleased jams. Artists with smaller catalogs tend to play their entire CD at shows simply because they have no other material to drawn upon except covers of other artists songs (which can backfire in a heartbeat). i think if Prince hit the stage at his next show and opened with 'For You' that the audience would go insane (over a 30 year old track). He's never really been obligated to play the newest stuff since 'Purple Rain' because of it's immense popularity. He can afford to mix it up and surprise us with something old and unheard live before.

ernestsewell said:

The Greatest Romance flopped because the promotion was a shambles and the deal with Arista went tits-up - not because the song is "drab."

Here in the UK, The Greatest Romance is probably the last of Prince's singles to get major radio airplay at the time of it's release. I remember hearing that song EVERYWHERE when it came out. They fucked up the single release by putting too many remixes on the CD, thus making it illegible for chart entry. They also failed to complete the music video while the song was getting radio airplay. This was why TGRES and Rave bombed. I actually think that song was his last chance at a big hit. It was beyond catchy, it sounded contemporary and yet different to everything else that was around. I think it was a massive wasted opportunity.
[Edited 11/5/09 11:34am]

MattyJam said:

-----
Do you not realize that we are in the middle of a recession? What P is doing maybe for the best until the economy turns around not to mention that being an independent artist is going to keep him off of mainstream radio and it is hard to get the masses to take an interest in music that is not being played on the radio therefore, it is hard to go out and perform a bunch of songs that the masses don’t even know anything about. A large tour means a all hits tour the very thing hard core fans are complaining about. I also think that age and possible health issues may be forcing Prince slow down a bit.

ernestsewell said:

-----
I am curious to know if you attended any of the shows in London?

laurarichardson said:

Prince has been playing the hits for ten years because we're in a recession? Riiiight....

MattyJam said:

The song is horrible, and a ridiculous choice as ANY single. The video took MONTHS to put out, and with such a horrible song as its muse, people couldn't have been less interested once it finally came out.

Don't give me that "too many remixes". A lot of artists have maxi singles with more remixes than TGRES had, and they chart a lot better than that song. It wasn't catchy, it was boring. Prince squarely blamed Arista for that, yet he couldn't take responsibility for once again choosing a horrible single. Remember that SOTT almost flopped because he released "If I Was Your Girlfriend" as a lead single, and people weren't interested. It was "U Got The Look" that put life back into the promotion of that album. Yes we see it as a classic now, but what if. I had a DJ friend at a radio station back home, and the whole station laughed at "Dinner With Delores". They couldn't believe someone as great as Prince would put a word like "brontosaurus" in a song, and they hated the song in general too, because it wasn't a good single. It's how I ended up with the promo single of the song...they gave it to me, saying they'd never play the song on the radio. And they didn't.

Rave could have been a bit more successful. He certain tried to promote it, but with no real plan to release any great singles, instead just playing random songs at different television appearances (then disappearing for the majority of 1999 until the PPV special), it failed. There were at least 3 or 4 other MUCH stronger songs to release as a lead single.

laurarichardson said:

Who are you again?

ernestsewell said:

-----
" "I got paid, the rest I don't care about"

With the state that the music industry is in why would dude care about anything else. No matter what sort of promotion is done CDs are just not selling in large volumes anymore.

You may not like the reality of it all but Prince needs to focus on making money on his projects since the sales are going to be minimal no matter how much promotion he does.

People are simply not running out and purchasing music like they use to.

ernestsewell said:

---
The only person who calls you out for what you are. My guess is you did not go to any of those shows and don't know what the fuck you are talking about.
But you keep walking around looking for Prince to give you something free.
(LOL).