Lots of artists have played classic albums -- all the songs in the same running order -- in concert lately. I wonder if Prince was touring if he'd consider it.

The first thing I think is, "No way!" The way he likes to medleyize and rearrange all his tunes seems to cry out against it.

But he's been known to accept trendy ideas and do them right -- playing in Vegas, appearing on American Idol, or what have you. Maybe it could hold some appeal for him? After all, you don't necessarily have to have the same arrangements. I doubt Springsteen played his albums just as they are on the album. I saw Steely Dan do AJA, but they don't fool around with the arrangements too much. And they play most of that album spread out through their set anyway.

Shoot, Prince at least referenced briefly every song on Purple Rain during 2000-2001 shows. Not sure what other album he'd consider, though. Sign o' the Times? Too long.

In the end, it seems very unlikely given the way he likes to structure his shows. But it might present an interesting challenge for him.

Of course, first he'd have to tour...

He almost did that with SOTT early on. If you have the files of those very early SOTT rehearsals, you'll see that the first huge set of songs were exact order of the first disk. Prince talked about, in 1997, that he wished he could just play Emancipation front to back, because that's 3 hours right there, but the other side of him wants to play the old stuff too.

He also played the first 3 songs in a row from Parade on the Hit N Run tour.

I think he should have done this on the 2nd act of the Lovesexy tour. He opened with "Eye No" anyway, and played every song from the album anyway (except "Positivity"). It was prime for that.

I'd like to see him do SOTT, or The Gold Experience. That'd be hot.

I really want to hear/see Springsteen's complete performance of "The River" set from a couple nights ago in NYC. I heard it is fantastic.

He did talk about doing just that at one of the celebrations.

Certainly, the old 'vinyl length' albums would be quite good to hear live
in their entirety. And since they're only 35-45 minutes long generally, there'd
still be time to include other tracks and hits etc.

It's not exactly a classic but he played the 1st four songs from Planet Earth in order at an aftershow in London on 6th September 07. Was really cool and I was hoping he'd keep going with the rest of the album.