SquirrelMeat said:

The list is misleading as it includes one off performances.

Everyone that has attended the regular live shows in the last 5 years knows that the core set list has become very stale and samey. The exact opposite of what Prince used to be about.

He should try dropping for 5 years: Lets go crazy, Raspberry beret, Take me with U and all the damn cover versions.

He should try Purple Rain and Kiss as an acoustic set. Bring in SOTT, Doves, Most Beautiful Girl, Gold.

So many hits, so little time. More like t0o lazy to change.

Come on...the list speaks for itself....Criticism is one thing...Hyperbole is quite another...

murph said:

SquirrelMeat said:

The list is misleading as it includes one off performances.

Everyone that has attended the regular live shows in the last 5 years knows that the core set list has become very stale and samey. The exact opposite of what Prince used to be about.

He should try dropping for 5 years: Lets go crazy, Raspberry beret, Take me with U and all the damn cover versions.

He should try Purple Rain and Kiss as an acoustic set. Bring in SOTT, Doves, Most Beautiful Girl, Gold.

So many hits, so little time. More like t0o lazy to change.

Come on...the list speaks for itself....Criticism is one thing...Hyperbole is quite another...

Sorry, I don't get it. The list clearly doesn't show anything until it shows how many times each have been played and whether the whole song was played. That will tell the story.

Look what happens to the list when you take out any song that has not been played 3 times or more, the not Prince orginals, snippets and tracks like "sampler set".

1999
A Love Bizarre
Adore
All The Critics Love U In NY
Anotherloverholenyohead
The Beautiful Ones
Beginning Endlessly
Controversy
Cream
D.M.S.R.
Delirious
Dreamer
Future Soul Song

Guitar

If I Was Your Girlfriend

Joy In Repetition
Kiss
Laydown
Let's Go Crazy
Let's Work
Little Red Corvette

Mountains
Nothing Compares 2 U
Partyman
Pop Life
Purple Rain

The Question Of U - The One
Raspberry Beret

She's Always In My Hair
Shhh
Take Me With U
Welcome 2 America

toejam said:

1999 1982

17 Days 1984
A Love Bizarre 1985
Adore 1987
All The Critics Love U In NY 1982
Anotherloverholenyohead 1986
Baby I'm A Star 1984
Bambi 1979
The Beautiful Ones 1984
The Bird 1984
Beginning Endlessly 2010
Condition Of The Heart 1985
Controversy 1981
Cool 1981
Crazy* Cover
Cream 1991
Crimson & Clover* 2009 and cover
D.M.S.R. 1982
Dance (Disco Heat)* Cover
Delirious 1982
Diamonds & Pearls 1991
Do Me, Baby 1981
Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough* Cover
Dreamer 2009
Elixer 2009
Endorphinmachine 1995
Everyday People* Cover
Extraordinary 1996 (released 1999)
Future Soul Song 2010

Gingerbread Man 2011

The Glamorous Life 1984
Guitar 2006
How Come U Don't Call Me Anymore? 1982
I Feel For You 1979
I Love U, But I Don't Trust U Anymore 1999
I Wanna Be Your Lover 1979
I Want To Be Free* Cover
I Want To Take You Higher* Cover
If I Was Your Girlfriend 1987
I'll Never B Another Fool 1998
Inglewood Swinging* Cover
Insatiable 1991

The Jam* Cover
Joy In Repetition 1990
Jungle Love 1984
Kiss 1986
Laydown 2010
Let's Go Crazy 1984
Let's Work 1981
Little Red Corvette 1982
Love Rollercoaster* Cover

The Love We Make 1996

More Than This* Cover
Mountains 1986
Musicology 2004
Nothing Compares 2 U 1985
Partyman 1989
Peach 1993
Play The Funky Music* Cover
Pop Life 1985
Prince & The Band ????
Purple Rain 1984

The Question Of U - The One 1990 - 1998
Raspberry Beret 1985
Rude Boy* Cover

Sample Set ????

Santana Medley* Cover
Say You'll Go* Cover
Scandalous 1989
Sexy Dancer - Le Freak 1979 - Cover
She's Always In My Hair 1985
Shhh 1993
So Far, So Pleased 1999
Something In The Water (Does Not Compute) 1982
Sometimes It Snows In April 1986
Somewhere Here On Earth 2007
Strange Relationship 1987
Stratus* Cover
Superstition* Cover
Sweet Thing* Cover
Take Me With U 1984
Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)* Cover
U Go The Look 1987
Under The Cherry Moon 1986
Uptown 1980
Welcome 2 America 2010
What Have You Done For Me Lately?* Cover
When Doves Cry 1984
When Eye Lay My Hands On U 2001
Which Way Is Up?* Cover
Whole Lotta Love* Cover
You're The One For Me* Cover

* = cover song

[Edited 5/27/11 19:56pm]

24 covers

43 1970's/1980's songs

14 1990's songs

12 2000's songs

Give me 43 1990's and 2000's songs and only 26 80's songs, and convert the 24 covers into 20 Prince songs and 4 covers, and I'll be a happy man

The problem isn't that he always plays the same songs within one tour, it's that he's been playing most of them repeatingly for 25 years. I'm sick of hearing 1999 live, SO sick! Same with almost everything from the 80's. I wanna hear post The Hits/The B-Sides material, period.

But playing in huge avenues means playing in front of a lot of non-fans, so I understand the logic of the "greatest hits" package. Just ain't my thing.

Vict0r said:

It's a long list, but some songs (e.g. 17 Days, Beginning Endlessly, etc.) have only been performed once. Every now and then he might throw in a few random tracks, but for the most part the setlists are pretty similar.

Exactly.

Do grids like Uptown used to do for tours, and I bet that plenty of songs get played IN THE EXACT SAME ORDER over and over again.

SquirrelMeat said:

Look what happens to the list when you take out any song that has not been played 3 times or more, the not Prince orginals, snippets and tracks like "sampler set".

Exactly. Vast amounts of his setlist are utterly predictable, full of songs he's been playing for years (and don't give me that BS about "new arrangements). Granted, recent shows have shown a small bit of change and diversity, but we're still a far cray away from the guy who used to radically change things around each tour

I think the D&P album was balls, but at least he had the guts to play and promote the songs on the subsequent tour (which also sucked).

In 1993 he did a Greatest Hits tour in Europe, yet also played unreleased music.

And the 1994/1995 shows are the stuff of legend: he frikking played "I Love U In Me", a song I never expected to hear live.

databank said:

24 covers

43 1970's/1980's songs

14 1990's songs

12 2000's songs

Give me 43 1990's and 2000's songs and only 26 80's songs, and convert the 24 covers into 20 Prince songs and 4 covers, and I'll be a happy man

And some of these covers have been on his list since the mid-1990s. "The Jam" was awesome back in 1994/95, but it got a bit stale by 1998. And now he's still playing it?

Back in 1994/95 he was playing odd Sly Stone covers (I recall a particularly amazing version of "In Time" on one of the shows at Paisley Park), yet these days he's playing the same frikking S&TFS hits he's been playing since 1998.

The problem isn't that he always plays the same songs within one tour, it's that he's been playing most of them repeatingly for 25 years. I'm sick of hearing 1999 live, SO sick! Same with almost everything from the 80's. I wanna hear post The Hits/The B-Sides material, period.

But playing in huge avenues means playing in front of a lot of non-fans, so I understand the logic of the "greatest hits" package. Just ain't my thing.

He played in huge arenas back in the 1980s and he played new music back then.

But apparently Prince fans aren't as sophisticated as Madonna fans, because those guys can cope with radically rearranged hits and a large dosis of new music. And last I checked Madonna was playing for far bigger crowds than Prince. Oh, and she also puts out videos of her shows and allows them to be broadcast on TV, yet somehow she manages to keep selling tickets.

Have I now debunked enough of the pathetic excuses Prince fans come up with to explain the lame ass setlists Prince has been playing for years?

TEN PERCENT of the not even hundred songs compiled from recent setlists were recorded in the past 10 years. TEN PERCENT.

25% are from the last 20 years. Which is about the same number as the COVERS he's been playing.

Yet every gig he's been babbling about "too many hits", relegating some of them to a pathetic "sampler set" which includes a frikking BEYONCE song. (And I won't even go into the utter hipocrisy of him pimping that song, or playing a snippet of "Darling Nikki".)

Madonna still has Top-10 hits with every album and manages to convert young audiences to her music as much as she did back in the 80's and 90's, while Prince doesn't (and doesn't try to).

Still, as my post demonstrates, i agree with u. It's just that Prince seems to consider that he's an "artist of past glories" who needs to satisfy nostalgia and mainstream audiences with easy-to-identify songs. "I value my new material as much as my classics, but the audience don't and a party sucks if the DJ plays no known songs and therefore I'm not going to be obstinate", that's more or less what he said last year in an interview.

I think he's wrong, I think he could mesmerise an audience with 80% of post WB stuff and 20% of classics, and I think this is VERY weird from someone who claimed repetedly that he "doesn't live in the past" and that demonstrated in 2002 that he could obtain mass and critical acclaim with a tour of (mostly) new material.

In the end one could say Prince IS obstinate because he'll only do what he feels right at the time and doesn't care about what we fans think (remember www.lotusflow3r.com?), but on the other hand I think that while he doesn't seem to give a damn about what his fanbase thinks, he's very concerned with what general audience thinks of him (i.e. he wants to be perceived as a living legend), and therefore he gives them what they 'want' him to play.

"How do the people ever know what the want if u never give them what they need?" (Jukebox In A Heartbeat, 2001). I don't know Prince, YOU tell me

SquirrelMeat said:

Look what happens to the list when you take out any song that has not been played 3 times or more, the not Prince orginals, snippets and tracks like "sampler set"...

I just want to reiterate that the list does not include songs done in the sample set. I've included the sample set as one song... (personally, I can't stand the sample set either )

The list clearly doesn't show anything until it shows how many times each have been played and whether the whole song was played. That will tell the story.

Again, to the best of my ability, I haven't included songs done as snippets - only songs that (according to princevault.com) were performed as proper full 'songs'. Check the site - they make a distinction between full songs and snippets/interpolations/chants etc.

But I can see your point. There are a handful of songs that he is basically guaranteed to play, and a lot of the rarer songs do only make an appearance now and then. But I feel my point still stands - the fact that he has 3 shows worth of material, the order of the songs changes (even if there are a few songs that he does in a particular order), and given the improv/jam sections, I think he's doing a very good job at having a varied setlist. You can't expect him to play a completely different show every night!

[Edited 5/28/11 16:00pm]

I can understand both sides of the argument. When Prince professes in interviews, "come often - no two nights are the same" you have a certain expectation that the will be wild variation between the shows. At the same time though the casual fans want to hear certain classic songs.

I was lucky enough to catch 2 shows back to back earlier in April and whilst the shows had some cross over tracks, there were wild variations also. Hearing Laydown and Endorphine machine one night and Mountains, 1999, Little Red Corvette the next was great.

It seems in this particular run of 21 nights, there are a few set lists he rotates.

For illustration, here are the two setlists of the shows I saw (bolded are songs not played in either).

22nd April:

Beginning Endlessly

Laydown
Endorphinmachine
She's Always in My Hair
Future Soul Song
Take Me With U
Raspberry Beret
Cream
Cool / Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough

U Got The Look

If I Was Your Girlfriend
D.M.S.R.
Encore:

Purple Rain

23rd April

D.M.S.R.

Pop Life

Encore:

Encore 2:

Kiss

Encore 3:

Sometimes It Snows In April

Encore 4:

As noted, I have seen similar set lists are following shows, but I have to say seeing the two shows back to back there were only a few moments where I felt things were being repeated, and for the most part both shows had a different vibe to them.

And with that I leave my 2cents behind.

[Edited 5/28/11 17:00pm]

toejam said:

SquirrelMeat said:

Look what happens to the list when you take out any song that has not been played 3 times or more, the not Prince orginals, snippets and tracks like "sampler set"...

I just want to reiterate that the list does not include songs done in the sample set. I've included the sample set as one song... (personally, I can't stand the sample set either )

The list clearly doesn't show anything until it shows how many times each have been played and whether the whole song was played. That will tell the story.

Again, to the best of my ability, I haven't included songs done as snippets - only songs that (according to princevault.com) were performed as proper full 'songs'. Check the site - they make a distinction between full songs and snippets/interpolations/chants etc.

But I can see your point. There are a handful of songs that he is basically guaranteed to play, and a lot of the rarer songs do only make an appearance now and then. But I feel my point still stands - the fact that he has 3 shows worth of material, the order of the songs changes (even if there are a few songs that he does in a particular order), and given the improv/jam sections, I think he's doing a very good job at having a varied setlist. You can't expect him to play a completely different show every night!

[Edited 5/28/11 16:00pm]

Maybe not on a tour that plays bigger venues but why couldn't he do a smaller tour that did give fans a different setlist each night? If you look at the post WB era there are at least fifteen albums worth of material that he has barely played live. That's a pretty solid foundation to base a two-three hour concert around. Throw in some obscure WB era material and he could easily do a different show each night for 4-5 consecutive shows.

I do see your point and I admit that he is drawing on a much bigger pool of songs than I thought he was but I still see a ton of room for improvement. Shoot, give me a show where he just played the Lotusflow3r album all the way through and I would be happier than getting yet another show that is 75% hits with a few covers and new songs sprinkled in. Most fans will agree that he is still one of the best live performers in the world and it's very frustrating to see him neglecting the vast majority of his post WB catalog. Maybe I am wrong but I believe in a live setting he could turn a lot of his newer songs into classics if he would just give them a chance.

If you seriously think that Prince plays the same stuff all the time, then perhaps you should look at most other bands setlists. In fact, Prince has been changing his setlist more than ever these days. Just look at the Sign "O" The Times and Nude Tours sets for example.

[Edited 5/28/11 22:56pm]

802 said:

If you seriously think that Prince plays the same stuff all the time, then perhaps you should you look at most other bands setlists. In fact, Prince has been changing his setlist more than ever these days. Just look at the Sign "O" The Times and Nude Tours sets for example.

Great point. That's also another 'myth' that seems to pop up every now and then. Basically every tour since 1987 (other than the Gold tour and the One Nite Alone tour) has been a 'hits based' tour, often disguised as an album/themed tour. The mere fact he does have 3 shows worth of material at the age of 53 should only be seen as a good thing.

I think another point worth noting is that back then, we didn't have instant access to setlists, reviews, and youtube clips etc., and that kind of propelled the myth that he was just playing all this amazing new stuff all the time. Now I'm not saying his current shows are better or equal to those shows, but I think they do need to be put into perspective. Prince is doing a good job.

toejam said:

Great point. That's also another 'myth' that seems to pop up every now and then. Basically every tour since 1987 (other than the Gold tour and the One Nite Alone tour) has been a 'hits based' tour, often disguised as an album/themed tour. The mere fact he does have 3 shows worth of material at the age of 53 should only be seen as a good thing.

.

It can't be a real hits tour unless When Doves Cry, The Most Beautiful Girl In The World, Purple Rain, Kiss and Batdance are all played in full imo. I don't think a tour where he plays several unreleased songs is a hits tour.

toejam said:

I think another point worth noting is that back then, we didn't have instant access to setlists, reviews, and youtube clips etc., and that kind of propelled the myth that he was just playing all this amazing new stuff all the time. Now I'm not saying his current shows are better or equal to those shows, but I think they do need to be put into perspective. Prince is doing a good job

This is obviously why the setlist changes every night.

802 said:

If you seriously think that Prince plays the same stuff all the time, then perhaps you should look at most other bands setlists. In fact, Prince has been changing his setlist more than ever these days. Just look at the Sign "O" The Times and Nude Tours sets for example.

[Edited 5/28/11 22:56pm]

I don't think most people have an issue with a tour containing the same set (especially if it contains the new material). The problem when Prince keeps repeating the same arrangements of the same songs tour after tour after tour.

On the SOTT tour Prince was bold enough to relegate the Purple Rain hits to a medley.

Now days, Raspberry Beret and Take me with you feature on every tour, with the same cabaret arrangement, when songs like SOTT don't get a look in.

Prince has become lazy in his arragement, and worst of all is the volume of covers. Near 25% on some nights.

databank said:

Madonna still has Top-10 hits with every album and manages to convert young audiences to her music as much as she did back in the 80's and 90's, while Prince doesn't (and doesn't try to).

That's BS. Prince DESPERATELY tries to have hits, but doesn't have a clue that his pathetic third-rate imitations of lame-ass pop shit isn't what people care about.

He hasn't got a clue in general. He promoted Bria's horrible crap as a frikking Sade-like album, that's how clueless he is. Has he even watched that insane live-DVD Sade put out a couple of years ago? I'm not a huge fan of her, but that blew me away.

802 said:

If you seriously think that Prince plays the same stuff all the time, then perhaps you should look at most other bands setlists.

We're comparing Prince to HIMSELF. To what he promises. To what he claims. Why do you bring up something that nobody claims?

If the best defense you can come up with "his shit doesn't stink as hard as other people's shit", then you're not doing much to debunk the fact that his shit is still shit.

toejam said:

802 said:

If you seriously think that Prince plays the same stuff all the time, then perhaps you should you look at most other bands setlists. In fact, Prince has been changing his setlist more than ever these days. Just look at the Sign "O" The Times and Nude Tours sets for example.

Great point. That's also another 'myth' that seems to pop up every now and then. Basically every tour since 1987 (other than the Gold tour and the One Nite Alone tour) has been a 'hits based' tour, often disguised as an album/themed tour.

SOTT is a hits tour? Are you serious?

Lovesexy is a hits tour? Are you serious?

Etcetera. Sure, his post-1980s tours contained a lot more hits, but they also contained a significant amount of NEW MUSIC. Outside of ONA, nothing like that in the past 15 years. And even with ONA, the hits to new music ratio quickly went into the "more hits, less new music" direction.

BartVanHemelen said:

databank said:

Madonna still has Top-10 hits with every album and manages to convert young audiences to her music as much as she did back in the 80's and 90's, while Prince doesn't (and doesn't try to).

That's BS. Prince DESPERATELY tries to have hits, but doesn't have a clue that his pathetic third-rate imitations of lame-ass pop shit isn't what people care about.

He hasn't got a clue in general. He promoted Bria's horrible crap as a frikking Sade-like album, that's how clueless he is. Has he even watched that insane live-DVD Sade put out a couple of years ago? I'm not a huge fan of her, but that blew me away.

How do u try to have Top-10 single when u don't even release singles at all?

There were a few singles 4 Musicology, 3121 and Planet Earth, I'll give u that. But I don't think Prince believed one minute that he could go Top-10 with them, it was more a "I'm back in the business and being a business means releasing singles 2 promote the album" strategy IMO. I might b wrong, though.

As 4 Bria's album, I'm in love with it so what can I say?

BartVanHemelen said:

SOTT is a hits tour? Are you serious?

Lovesexy is a hits tour? Are you serious?

A typical SOTT/Lovesexy show would regularly include:

When Doves Cry... check
Let's Go Crazy... check
Kiss... check
Little Red Corvette... check
Controversy... check
Purple Rain... check

1999... check

Let's Go Crazy... check

Obviously he's going to play slightly less hits as he didn't have as many then, and he's going to play slightly more new material because he didn't have as much total material then, but make no mistake - he knew full well that for those tours to be successful he had to put those songs in there somewhere.

This thread is absolutely ridiculous! You don't have to use any statistics to recognise that Prince uses most of the time well known songs for his shows. In his stead I'd do the same, because the new material mostly sucks anyway.

The Lovesexy and SOTT Tours contained brandnew material plus the hits. But at this time the so called hits were just a few years old. That's a very important difference!

toejam said:

BartVanHemelen said:

SOTT is a hits tour? Are you serious?

Lovesexy is a hits tour? Are you serious?

A typical SOTT/Lovesexy show would regularly include:

When Doves Cry... check
Let's Go Crazy... check
Kiss... check
Little Red Corvette... check
Controversy... check
Purple Rain... check

1999... check

Let's Go Crazy... check

Yes, most of them in a hits medley. But the VAST majority of the concert was NEW MUSIC.

Hell, just look at this playlist from his 3 March 1985 gig:

17 days
lets go crazy
delerious
1999
little red corvette
take me with you
do me baby
irrisistable bitch
how come you don't call me anymore
lets pretend we're married
god
computer blue
darling niki
the beautiful ones
when doves cry
i would die for you
baby i'm a star
purple rain
america

That's Prince at the height of being a pop star. He opens the show with a frikking B-Side! He then play three more B-Sides in the show (two of them in a row!), and ends with an unreleased song. Note how little of his pre-Purple Rain material is in that playlist. Yet the way you lot talk, he must have been committing commercial suicide by largely ignoring his past and playing mostly his latest music, and a bunch of obscure B-Sides on top of that, and ending with an unreleased song.

Obviously he's going to play slightly less hits as he didn't have as many then, and he's going to play slightly more new material because he didn't have as much total material then, but make no mistake - he knew full well that for those tours to be successful he had to put those songs in there somewhere.

And yet the VAST MAJORITY of those shows was focused on new material. You're rewriting history just to avoid admitting a simple truth: that Prince has been compiling his playlists from a very small pool of songs, whereas in the past he happily took risks -- risks which established his reputation.

Look at Lovesexy Live: yes, the first half was an hour long medley of his previous work, and about 1/3 of the second part of the set was dedicated to the hits medley he ported over from the SOTT shows. But it's clear the focus was on his new album, and the concert fitted the story he was trying to get out. Just look at the songs he played in that first hour, and notice that many of them were drastically reworked. Plus: he also played at least two tracks from The Black Album, one of which ("Bob George") was used as the end point to the "bad" Prince music, followed by the catharsis of "Anna Stesia". To label that as a hit show is simply ignoring the fact that those shows were about his latest record.

What are the Forum shows about? Nothing. Nostalgia. Isn't that sad?

Now compare that to the setlist of the gig he played there 26 years ago:

http://www.setlist.fm/set...22889.html

Note that he played B-Sides, plus the track he gave to USA 4 Africa, plus two unreleased songs:

4 The Tears In Your Eyes
Irresistible Bitch
Temptation
God
America

And I repeat: that was Prince at his pop star height.

Maybe the reason he's choosing to play the classics in full length now could be a number of things:

• He's now 52 (53 on June 7).
• He's not that hungry anymore despite reports to the contrary by some ORGers.
• He fears no one wants to hear anything from the recent material since the "casual fans" didn't respond too well to it when he did do it.
• He probably chooses to do them because like many American-based acts, he's more nostalgic now than he was when he was "hot stuff".

Just my opinion. I'm probably inaccurate as hell. Who knows?

BartVanHemelen said:

Hell, just look at this playlist from his 3 March 1985 gig:

17 days
lets go crazy
delerious
1999
little red corvette
take me with you
do me baby
irrisistable bitch
how come you don't call me anymore
lets pretend we're married
god
computer blue
darling niki
the beautiful ones
when doves cry
i would die for you
baby i'm a star
purple rain
america

http://www.princevault.com/index.php/03_March,_1985

??

[Edited 5/29/11 13:07pm]

BartVanHemelen said:

Hell, just look at this playlist from his 3 March 1985 gig:

You can't just throw a Purple Rain tour setlist into the argument - that's cheating . I never said anything about the Purple Rain tour, and besides that was the album/tour that established most of those 'hits'.

And to conclude on the SOTT/Lovesexy tours, yes, of course he did play more 'new' material then, but it was still an expectation of the casual fans that he played the 'hits' - which is exactly what he did. It was as true back then as it is today.

But hey, we're just arguing from different perspectives. My argument is not that Prince's shows are on-par with any of those classic 1980s tours, nor I am I arguing he couldn't be doing things better. To a point, I agree that he plays too many covers, one or two too many 'hits', and not enough 'new' tracks, but my overall goal here is just to show that his setlists are more varied than a lot of people claim. I guess I'm just saying that, for the most part, we should be thankful for what he is playing. If you don't agree, that's cool.

[Edited 5/30/11 1:48am]

If you're on the org, then obviously you're more than a casual fan. But if you went to a show with a friend who doesn't really dig Prince and only owns a burned copy of the greatest hits cd, which songs would you want to hear? Or maybe you take a date who only knows "Kiss" and "Little Red Corvette." What songs would make that date successful? We're snobs who listen to bootlegs and know where to find setlists from 1985 on the internet; of course we want to hear something new. But who makes up the majority at these shows? Orgers or casual fans? I'm wth Toejam. The sets do show a surprising amount of variety considering.

this is a setlist i would like from prince

just as long as were 2gether

papa

compassion

i wish u heaven

lovesexy

saviour

loves no fun(elisa)

sunday in the park(tamar)

love like jazz

walls or berlin

a million days

a million miles(apollonia 6)

some kind of lover(apollonia6)

baby

come home(mavis staples)

train(mavis staples)

international lover

everybody loves me

i like funky music

life can be so nice

i dont wanna leave u(the time)

AhPook said:

That is an impressive list, but it would be interesting to addall the songs from the last five years and see how little or how much this list grows. The core songs remain the same.

core songs remain the same. Don't get it twisted, we all know it's good, but. Besides, Prince is only going to play whatever he wants and with who(m) ever he wants. The crowd is still going to come. Carry on.

some people on here are being incredibly picky. Certainly there re going to be some core songs that stick around. People will leave disappointed if it's their only prince concert and they don't hear Purple Rain and some of the other songs. I'm pretty impressed by how much he does change. He held those concerts last week, 3 in the same night, and I believe 3 different set lists (I only ever saw 2 of the set lists). The opening night concert he played 3 1/2 hours with many encores without repeating songs. How much more do you really expect?

To play a song the band has to rehearse it and master it. Prince isn't going to come out and just wing it with an unrehearsed song. At the Cleveland sound check a few years ago a couple of people in the audience asked him to play some random different songs. His response? "I'm not a juke box".

if there are some songs in the long list that started this thread that only got played once. Perhaps the reason is they rehearsed it, played it and the response wasn't the best, so they moved on to something else.

I have a friend who lives in LA who had never been to a Prince concert before. I talked him into going to one of these - he went saturday. I haven't had a chance to talk to him about it yet, but did get a 1 word text after the concert - "Incredible!" His main job each night he performs is to reach people like that. It's like Michael Jordan said when he played basketball - that every game he'd look into the stands and know that somewhere there was a dad bringing his son to their first basketball game and they deserved to see Michael Jordan play his best. That was what he used as motivation for routine regular season games night in and night out.

For Prince, every night he performs there are people in the stands who have never been to a Prince concert. He can't just go through the motions, he can't dump the core songs that they came to see, he does a great job of giving them what they want and mixing it up a bit for the regulars given the constraints that the band has to rehearse and learn whatever they're going to play. At times doing covers is easier as there are some songs that the band is going to already know pretty well vs pulling out some obscure B-Side or vault track members of the current band has never heard before.

The list of different songs is pretty impressive. I went to two of the love symbol concerts, they were nearly identical. I went to the one nite alone tour, have the official release from another stop and have heard recordings of a couple of other stops, the shows are nearly identical.

This tour, 92 different songs so far. I suspect the list will top 100. Who else do you think does that? When I was a kid, my dad took me to see Elvis. Two concerts the same day, the set lists were identical except for one spot he had 2 choices and let the audience pick.

I've also had other times where I've gone to concerts by other artists and then later bought an official live release from a different show and the set lists were identical.

[Edited 5/30/11 8:52am]

I don't see why he can't 50% hits and 50% recent material:

1. Controversy
2. Let's Go Crazy/Delirious
3. 1999
4. Little Red Corvette
5. When You Were Mine
6. Kiss
7. Piano Medley: Venus De Milo/When 2 R In Love/Diamonds And Pearls/How Come U Don't Call Me Anymore?/Do Me, Baby/Nothing Compares 2 U/I Wanna Be Your Lover
8. Uptown
9. Raspberry Beret
10. Pop Life
11. I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man
12. Adore
13. From The Lotus...
14. 3121
15. Laydown
16. Fury
17. Dreamer
18. Colonized Mind
19. Musicology
20. Black Sweat
21. Future Soul Song
22. Dance 4 Me
23. Act Of God
24. Somewhere Here On Earth
25. Last December

[Edited 5/30/11 8:58am]