For me it has to be the Final Aftershow - Prince 21 Night O2 London, 21.09.2007.

Still blows my mind how long Prince played for that night. Main show 8.30 to 11.10 ... then the aftershow 1.30ish to 4.30ish. I use to dream of going to a classic Prince aftershow when I was a teen in my bedroom listening to live bootlegs on CD. To be there person, just a couple of metres from the band in to the wee small hours, dancing, singing, getting funky. One of the greatest nights of my life!

I thought I'd be the only one to say the acoustic sets from Musicology tour. It was the first thing I thought of.

From a legacy standpoint I'd have to go with the Super Bowl show just for the sheer scope, the professionalism and having a real musician just own the place like that for half the world to witness.

SoulAlive said:

My high point was seeing the Lovesexy tour in Oakland on November 11,1988.That is still the BEST concert that I have ever seen.I'll never forget that night.

Hugely jealous...I would have loved to have gone to the Lovesexy Tour...just a little bit too young to be trusted to go just a little bit too far away from home to travel to on my own. I had to "put up with" the live broadcast from Dortmund, instead!

I was at that Staples Center Show!! He broke down right after Little Red Corvette!

For me, I have so many high points. I saw him live ao many times.

But what I always come back to is twofold:

1. the first time I heard Adore

2. the next day I went to buy some Prince and heard Just My Imagination from Small Club at a mom and pop shop and I was blown away!!

It changed my life forever.

Great thread!!

Lovesexy show live in Hamburg (the first show) - especially AnnaStesia

For me it is Parade and the 1986 Stockholm Parade concert. The album is a masterpiece and that show in particular was so unbelievably well orchestrated, played, sung & performed it's as iconic for me as the album.

How about Prince's induction into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame?

Awww so much good stuff on this thread since I last checked. Alot of you pointed to the Lovesexy era. That's my second favorite high point. Hence the quote in the title of this thread. Comes from the Dortmund 88 show as he goes into the Cross I believe.

Now on the day that he left this earth I am sure we can find some high points. This is a "fan community site". Let's prove that.

SoulAlive said:

I consider MY Prince high point to be when I was into him the most--which was 1984-1985. I had just jumped on the bandwagon having seen the trailers for Purple Rain on TV, then bought the Purple Rain album, then saw the movie, then bought all his previous albums and related Jamie Starr productions, then saw him live on the Purple Rain tour. I could not get enough. My interest mellowed gradually since then although I always considered him my favorite recording artist.

RJOrion said:

SoulAlive said:

My high point was seeing the Lovesexy tour in Oakland on November 11,1988.That is still the BEST concert that I have ever seen.I'll never forget that night.

Prince, Cat Glover, Eric Leeds, and Sheila E were amazing on that tour...thats what makes it so crazy to see this Cat vs SheilaE lemoncake beef...they were great teammates onstage, and together helped make Prince's shows look and sound better...seeing Prince do "Adore" then go right into "I Wanna Be Your Lover" was the highlight of the Lovesexy show for me.

So many highlights on that show! "When You Were Mine" is another memorable moment.That whole Lovesexy era was so special to me.I didn't want that era to end!

SoulAlive said:

RJOrion said:

Prince, Cat Glover, Eric Leeds, and Sheila E were amazing on that tour...thats what makes it so crazy to see this Cat vs SheilaE lemoncake beef...they were great teammates onstage, and together helped make Prince's shows look and sound better...seeing Prince do "Adore" then go right into "I Wanna Be Your Lover" was the highlight of the Lovesexy show for me.

So many highlights on that show! "When You Were Mine" is another memorable moment.That whole Lovesexy era was so special to me.I didn't want that era to end!

I saw that tour while at university in Pittsburgh. It looked great and I loved that the setlist was much more diverse than the last time I had seen Prince live.

Later I found an unofficial converted NTSC video of the U.K. VHS release in a local record store and immediately took it to the campus library to watch while wearing headphones. (No VCR in my dorm room.)

Today I listened to the Can I Play With U? - The Flesh sessions & 85/86 studio outtakes and to answer the question a different way, this period is when I retrospectively like Prince the most. If I made a list of top ten favorite Prince songs, more would be from this late-Revolution era than any other.

Mountains

Power Fantastic

In A Large Room With No Light

Splash

Really?! I can't believe this "online fan community" gives such a tepid and weak response to someone like me asking YOUR Prince high point. The thread asking your LOW Prince point has gotton so many more responses. Yes that thread has been on here longer (by a month) but still. I am so suprised that an artist such as Prince who has given us so many musical highpoints gets such a lackluster response.

Now I know we can do better. I will share one more. One of my favorite Prince high points was in 1994 when he first changed his name to the symbol and I got see him in NYC at the Pallidium. Now this is the era when the most beautiful girl in the world single was on the radio. I had seen him the previous year in the Act 1 tour in NYC at Radio City Music Hall. He was trying to get the Gold album out and Exodus also had hit the market.

It was an exciting time. After seeing him in concert halls that were big like Madison Square Garden I was now seeing him at the Pallidium which was max around 1,500. I was on the floor about 10 ft from the stage. And there he walked out with a new look. Just surreal. And what it made it so great was that it was all new music. I didn't know a single song at the time. From Shhh to Days of Wild to Now to Papa it was just awesome. I think he played Peach with Lenny Kravitz who he just pulled out from backstage, another fav musician of mine.

The energy was high and on point! Cmon people there has got to be more positive juice on this forum than what we got. Share YOUR Prince high point!

You asked for more so here ya go: The very first time I was able to hear him play/sing How Come You Don't Call Me Anymore?. That song means so much to me. It was the song that blew my mind the very first time I heard it (and I can tell you exactly where I was at the time-Houston, very early in the morning, listening to my boombox, tuned in to a radio station when the DJ, after playing 1999, came on and said "now I want to play you something completely different from Prince.' and flipped the 1999 single over and played HCYDCMA.). That song made me realize that Prince was into some deep, deep stuff and wasn't just going to be known as a dance song musician. Sure, he might have played a snippet of it during the Purple Rain tour, but to hear him sing the entire thing live was a milestone for me.

[Edited 5/13/20 15:19pm]

vinaysfunk said:

Really?! I can't believe this "online fan community" gives such a tepid and weak response to someone like me asking YOUR Prince high point. The thread asking your LOW Prince point has gotton so many more responses. Yes that thread has been on here longer (by a month) but still. I am so suprised that an artist such as Prince who has given us so many musical highpoints gets such a lackluster response.

Now I know we can do better. I will share one more. One of my favorite Prince high points was in 1994 when he first changed his name to the symbol and I got see him in NYC at the Pallidium. Now this is the era when the most beautiful girl in the world single was on the radio. I had seen him the previous year in the Act 1 tour in NYC at Radio City Music Hall. He was trying to get the Gold album out and Exodus also had hit the market.

It was an exciting time. After seeing him in concert halls that were big like Madison Square Garden I was now seeing him at the Pallidium which was max around 1,500. I was on the floor about 10 ft from the stage. And there he walked out with a new look. Just surreal. And what it made it so great was that it was all new music. I didn't know a single song at the time. From Shhh to Days of Wild to Now to Papa it was just awesome. I think he played Peach with Lenny Kravitz who he just pulled out from backstage, another fav musician of mine.

The energy was high and on point! Cmon people there has got to be more positive juice on this forum than what we got. Share YOUR Prince high point!

I was at that 1994 Palladium show with Lenny Kravitz, but way in the back. I still thought it was on fire.

SimonCharles said:

datdude said:

SimonCharles said:
My friends rib me that the first time I heard 1999, I didn't like it...so I'll go for the moment the scales fell from my eyes: 1986 - Anotherloverholenyohead. Simply magnificent...and then Parade and, IMHO, arguably the finest 1:40 Prince and the Revolution ever put down on tape - I Wonder U. In a mountain range of highs, these two still take me higher.

my brain is not computing, what is IMHO?

I'm terrible at deciphering initialisms so I can relate, but I do know IMHO is "in my humble opinion".

ahhh, LOL. i'm familiar with IMO, but the H threw me off. esp on a site that uses letters all the time to abbreviate album and song names.

anywho, i guess i can attempt a high point or two. they're tied for 1st place.

I'm from Detroit, and we have a special place in the purple lore, so i think we got special treats like the Parade Bday show which somehow i missed and would probably be first. but i digress,

I WAS at the Lovesexy 88 Joe Louis Show "in the round" where he opened with Erotic City and came out in a convertible cadillac (he closed with Alphabet St, so maybe that one). that was so GANGSTA! the whole crowd went nuts!

Tied with that was the Love Symbol era who at the Fox Theater I think it might've been a Hit N Run show in support of that album (i don't remember if there was a name for that tour otherwise), but he was very loose and engaging with the crowd on that tour with Soul Train lines on stage and what not, but the extended/remixed version of The Max he did that night was just SURREAL. haven't heard it, or heard OF it since. not sure how unique that was and if that's out there floating somewhere, but it was such a dope moment, i was like....THIS GUY....

datdude said:

ahhh, LOL. i'm familiar with IMO, but the H threw me off. esp on a site that uses letters all the time to abbreviate album and song names.

Abbreviating album and song titles is when I often get lost. It just looks like all-caps gibberish to me. But that's the way people type in 2020.

Many high points for me:

1. Hearing Sign O'The Times for the first time on the radio in France. Falling love with the voice, the sound, the guitar, everything. I became a fan and bought all his albums to date and played them incessantly.

2. Listening to the Batman album the Summer it came out and playing The Future in a loop. I was obsessed with that song, but not just for the sound; I was sure I was going to meet Prince one day and the line: 'I've seen the future and it will be' almost seemed to reflect that vision...

3. Seeing him play live for the first time at a London aftershow in 2007. It was a hot August night and also the first of the 21 Nights. The first thing he played was Stratus (a Billy Cobham cover). He then sat down on a stool for the rest of the show and looked in my direction (or so I thought). I melted. He had a charismatic presence no matter what he did.

4. The 21 Nights in London: the stunning performances, tight band and incredible atmosphere. Prince's voice was always great, powerful, moving at times. A lot of people talk about how good a musician he was, but one of his best intrument was his voice. Not many people can sing like he did.

5. Prince asking me to come onstage at the end of the last aftershow I attended. It's almost like he knew... I danced there for at least 20 minutes while Prince played guitar, watching me and smiling. They played Musicology followed by Prince and The Band. I then got included in the band's lining up to salute the audience at the very end. Unforgettable.

Almost getting a High Five from in Concert at Dallas Convention Center during Hit n Run Tour but guy in front of me got it, haha. I would say I was close enough to feel his Magic Aura. lol

Finally being able to land a copy of the Gold Experience promo vinyl recently. I thought I'd never get to own that album on vinyl. In second place would be the 2019 Legacy releases. I only became a big fan gradually over the 2010s, so too late to be able to have concert/tour anecdotes, or to be able to get a lot of his mid-'90s vinyl at affordable prices.

Now hoping that Love Symbol and Come reissues definitely happen by 2021 at the latest, as I can't be arsed to blow another 100-quid-plus on the latter. Lol.

Astasheiks said:

Almost getting a High Five from in Concert at Dallas Convention Center during Hit n Run Tour but guy in front of me got it, haha. I would say I was close enough to feel his Magic Aura. lol

Lol I remember enviously thinking: 'Some people are just so lucky...' that night Prince gave a tambourine to a girl in front of me at the start of the show (the same show at the end of which he called me onstage). Little did I know...

Musicology aftershows at Paisley Park June (14, 15, 16?) 2004. Wednesday Thursday Friday night. Flew in didn't have any tickets to the arena gigs he played these nights so I got over to PP around 8pm each evening and there'be 4-8 people on line head of me. Get in line. wait about 2-3 hours to be ushered inside and each night I was 8" away from Prince's mic stand.

First night, Wednesday, after opening act, around 1:15 am, the band comes out on stage and starts playing "Miss You" then Prince walks out on stage, His wardrobe people hydraulic lift some kind of crazy looking spacesuit type of shirt/contraption onto him, they strap on his guitar, he walks RIGHT over to me and slaps me five, then goes all along the front of the stage slapping everyone five. There might have been only 500-600 people there it wasn't full on Wednesday- we are in the middle of goddman cornfield practically in the dead of a warm almost-summer night, and Prince is slapping US five.

You CANNOT beleive how fucking surreal this was.

He then played his ass off for nearly 3 hours.

This was IMMEDIATELY after a full-on arena gig in front of 20,000 people.

I am so close to Prince and there are so few people in the house that I can hear the notes/chords he is playing on his guitar from strings *BEFORE* the pickups get them and send them to the amp. I just could have fucking died right there, and maybe I should have, because then as now I have my doubts that life's future moments have any chance at all of possibly measuring up to this standard.

The craziest part of this whole shit is that after 2 more nights in a row of this aftershow madness your brain starts to adapt, it starts to normalize to your new reality. It's like "This is my new life. Each day I get up around noon and spend the afternoon watching bad television in in OK motel room, have a leasurely dinner, then go hang out in front of Paisley Park for a few hours while a DJ plays records, then I go hang out with a few hundred people one foot away from Prince who spends three hours playing all his best shit with the absolute highest possible level of skill and artistry. Oh, yeah, I only have to pay $40 for the privilege. My God, life has strangely taken an extremely sharp turn for the better."

[Edited 5/24/20 10:57am]

[Edited 5/24/20 10:59am]

[Edited 5/24/20 11:01am]

[Edited 5/24/20 11:01am]

London, July 1988, got to meet him and the band at HMV on Oxford Street, then went to see SOTT movie and in the evening saw him at Wembley Arena, needless to say, I slept well the next day

Mine is bittersweet. It was the last time I saw Prince perform. March 25th 2016, he played a small venue in Toronto. My husband and I were at the 10:00 show. We had terrific seats (probably the best we've ever had). I remember commenting to my husband about how thin he looked but he played piano beautifully and his voice was gorgeous. He was in a good mood and it was a wonderful evening. Of course, I had no idea it would be the last time I ever saw Prince perform. I always thought I'd be going to his concerts when we were both old and grey.

I got into Prince around the time of Symbol. The great thing about Prince is that there are so many high points. You a revisit an era that you may have previosly neglected and fall in love all over again.