alphastreet said:

"worst Prince show"

there's no such thing! even tho I personally physically only been to one, all his shows were AMAZING, i can confirm!! got good sources..

alphastreet said:

You’re lucky you saw him at all. I also saw him only once and so grateful that I did, years before he died. I wanted to go to piano and a mic 2 weeks before his death but couldn’t get time off work for it so didn’t go and wish I had

damn. i wanted to go too but was still in my last year of high school and my dad said i shouldn't go

"he'll come around this area again some time.. maybe even closer..."

Best show - Piano and Microphone Show 2, Auckland 24 Feb 2016 - he played all my favourite songs and the audience loved it. He played Adore - nuff said.

.

Worst - There isn't one, the other two shows I saw were just amazing. Then again 3 shows and all 2010's is hardly comprehensive. Still from some of the stuff I have read here over the years, I count myself really lucky I had Prince on his best nights.

.

It will be interesting to see what all you big time concert attendees come up with.

Attending his live shows is amazing. To be in his presence in the same building is also amazing

AvocadosMax said:

I had the pleasure of seeing Prince live many times over the years. Maybe not 100 times like some people have, but a dozen times easily and I can honestly say there was no "worst" show. I loved every one of them and had a blast at every one of them. Sure, some were a bit more exciting than others and for a few I had very close seats, but every concert was an amazing experience. The last time I saw Prince was on March 25, 2016. This one will always have a special place in my heart as it was a month before he died and the last time I would ever see him perform. Having said this, the concert I saw in the early 90's with Tony M, Mayte, Kirk etc, was an absolute "nasty" blast!!

Best: First aftershow at 3121 after the Super Bowl. (Only time he ever played Wasted Kisses.)

Worst: First night of Welcome to America in Chicago, September 2012. Yes, it was that bad. (Even the Chicago Trib said so.) Try to imagine Purple Rain without a guitar solo.

Best: Lovesexy, One Night Alone, and his show with Larry Graham and Chaka Kahn at the Aragon in Chicago in 98. That one was especially amazing...I was literally feet from the stage.

I don't have a worst...although it sounds like I dodged a bullet not being able to make it to the Welcome 2 America at the UC in Chicago. I was supposed to go but had to give the ticket to a friend. As said on here and from all accounts it was a train-wreck.

Best: Hollywood Palladium one-off appearance, LA CA 3/8/2014. Late era Prince. One of his longest ever shows (over 3 1/2 hrs). It had everthing (full band; guitar band; solo piano). Unforgettable.

Worst: Bageley's Wherehouse Aftershow, UK 8/9/93. Associate-act heavy show with Prince mostly hovering in the background. Overcrowded basement cut it short; Prince steadily lost interest.

SantanaMaitreya said:

I've seen all his European tours from 1990 to 2011. The opening night of the Nude Tour in Rotterdam on 2 June 1990 was ruined by the wheather.

Yeah, I was there too and it certainly was my worst Prince concert experience.

I also attended a Rotterdam Ahoy gig in 2011 or 2012 which was not up to scratch IMO. It started great with him playing Gold as an opener, but his guitar was malfunctioning so we didn't get the solo that would have elevated the song from good to fantastic. Which was a bummer! Furthermore the setlist that night was not right IMO and the band and Prince constantly went backstage, and then we'd have to yell and shout for 10 minutes each time before he came back and played another 2 songs. The pacing was off, and it was annoying having to wait for so long in between performances.

The other concerts I have seen by Prince were all great to fantastic though! Probably LoveSexy or SOTT tour were my favorites, ONA as well.

worst experience was the last one in Vienna 2014 - good concert, but it was way too loud.

best ones were frankfurt 2002 (days of wild!!) and the aftershow 1993 at Technisches Museum in Vienna.

[Edited 2/1/21 12:02pm]

Poplife88 said:

Best: Lovesexy, One Night Alone, and his show with Larry Graham and Chaka Kahn at the Aragon in Chicago in 98. That one was especially amazing...I was literally feet from the stage.

I don't have a worst...although it sounds like I dodged a bullet not being able to make it to the Welcome 2 America at the UC in Chicago. I was supposed to go but had to give the ticket to a friend. As said on here and from all accounts it was a train-wreck.

Hey, that first Chicago show (is that what we're talking about?) did have its moments, and when he came out after an hour or whatever it was, (even though most everyone had left and the house lights had all gone on for a long while), and did an encore, it was something.

Best - Electric Ballroom 5th Feb 2014 (2nd show). Jut a magic day all round. It was the run of shows in London where there were no tickets in advance. I left work as early as I could and rushed to the venue to get in the queue. After four hours they started letting people in, I got about 30 people from the front and security announced, "the venue is now full...." My heart sank to the pit of my stomach and then "....but Prince will play a second show". Total euphoria! Two hours later got in for the second show close to the front and it was fantastic!

Worst - O2 Arena 3rd Aug 2007. This is actually the first time I ever saw him so I don't like admitting it was the worst and, as others have said, he didn't really do outright bad shows. That being said it was just a bit disjointed. It was the second show of the 21 nights run and he'd made a big thing about changing the set list each night. The first night he'd gone heavy on hits so this time round he kind of went the other way. It meant we got some interesting stuff (Joy In Repetition, Peach) but the atmosphere was a bit flat because most of the audience didnt know a lot of the songs. He also seemed to be in a bit of bad mood with not all that much audience interaction and showmanship.

Best Show was Lovesexy at The Big Egg in Tokyo in Jan of '89!!!

Worst Show was Hit & Run at Hofeinz Pavillion in Houston in 2000 or so (WHICH STILL WAS AWESOME!!!)

I also saw a couple of Muscicology shows and a couple of Jam Of The Year Shows...

KILLS ME I never saw a Piano and Microphone show...

[Edited 2/1/21 12:00pm]

[Edited 2/1/21 12:03pm]

Poplife88 said:

Best: Lovesexy, One Night Alone, and his show with Larry Graham and Chaka Kahn at the Aragon in Chicago in 98. That one was especially amazing...I was literally feet from the stage.

I don't have a worst...although it sounds like I dodged a bullet not being able to make it to the Welcome 2 America at the UC in Chicago. I was supposed to go but had to give the ticket to a friend. As said on here and from all accounts it was a train-wreck.

Apparently, the next two nights of W2A in Chicago were fine - it was just the first night that was a mess. It even extended to the after at HOB.

Fortunately, while we bought Night 1 for the main show, we bought Night 2 for the after - which ended up being epic. So he made it up to us - in a way.

Nuernberg72 said:

I've seen Prince live six times. unfortunately the last concert in 2011 in Cologne was a disaster. sound problems without end and prince was gone after an hour. the best concert was ONA tour 💖

i may be the only one but i really enjoyed the concert in Cologne 2011. the waiting after the opener laydown was a bit annoying, the show was very short (85 minutes), but i liked it.

ForbiddenFruit said:

It´s hard to say which one was THE best but one of my personal favorite was the show I saw at Paisley Park during the 2002 celebration, right after Bernard Allison´s set.

The other shows during that special week were great, too, especially the acoustic set but the Rock night was on a whole different level. Great song choices, great renditions, full versions, great looking flowing red outfit, and Prince in an extremely good mood. I still have vivid memories of that particular show. It was simply unforgettable and in my opinion right up there with his concerts from his heyday, minus the acrobatic dancing, which never really meant that much to me in the first place.

.

Another highlight were two Gold Experience era aftershows that I witnessed.....the one he did after the 1994 MTV Music Awards and at the Paradiso in 1995. The regular concerts were great, too, but the aftershows had a very special energy.

.

Worst show? Without a doubt the Cologne 2011 show. Terrible sound, terribly late, and Prince in a bad mood, add to that a horrible audience that started booing quite early. In hindsight, I think he easily could´ve saved that night if he had played an acoustic guitar or piano set inbetween that mess , or if he had just played a bit longer but then again, compared to other artists, that one "bad" show was still a good concert and he played longer than most other acts would play in their prime. I felt sad for him, and he never played in Germany again. Any other artist of his status probably would have left the stage even earlier than he did.

SantanaMaitreya said:

A few weeks later he did two shows in the Melkweg in Amsterdam. I missed the first one, but managed to go to the next one, which was the best ever! Prince in a small club playing whatever he wants to, there's nothing like it. From the moment he opened with What's My Name, you knew you were in for a great night. [Edited 2/1/21 1:17am]

Everytime I read or hear about these shows in the Melkweg, my heart hurts. I could have gone to the second one, but had to work and thought I would never be on time in amsterdam and the line would be too long for me to enter. I was checking the internet and read the line still was small at about 17:00, and still it didn't trigger me to jump in my car and take that one hour drive out there, because I still was going to be "too late to enter". And that happened every hour when I checked the net for news about the show, up untill the start of the show and the last messages said there still were a few tickets left, according to the latest attendends.............................. I have the bootleg......... What a great show....... The show I could have witnessed......... Should have witnessed.......... Man oh man.

Luckily I have seen him quite a lot since '92 in a few different countries, so I am not complaining at all. Every show of Prince is part of the best things I witnessed in my life. The only show that didn't move me as much as all the others, was the show at Werchter Boutique in 2010. Don't even know what the reason was.

worst, if that is the correct word to choose, as they are all great to me.

Would be 24 march 1995 in Den Bosch.

I took a group of my friends with me, to witness the wonder of Prince in Concert.

But somehow, it was not the best experience.

Half the stage was missing.

And he barely touched his guitar, he seemed annoyed the whole show.

I remember, just moving to the back, to hang out at the bar.

Maybe it was me who was annoyed, can't remember.

Best for me was the show in Tivoli in 98

Standing just inches away from the keyboard, where he was playing.

Lenny, Larry, and both Dulfers in what seemd to me a show of force in Sax performance.

Just great.

my memory is quite bad but the D&P show was fun as it was one of my first live experiences. and it was exciting to see something like that.

95 tour was memorable for the unusual-ness of a pop star doing a tour of unreleased songs but i had no idea what they were playing so it marred it a bit.

98/99 was pretty boring at wembley arena. i liked GCS' performance better.

2001 was excellent, even if the lighting effects looked cheap (not sure why i remember this lol).

the 02 run - i had bad seats. it was fun, though again i remember very little of what he played.

oh i did see him with 3rd eye girl. i thought it was cool, some good renditions like something in the water IIRC, but the best bit was just him jamming on bass with a drum machine. the rest was just endless solo-ing which i found tiring.

tbh i never enjoyed the aftershows.

youd have to wait ages for him to turn up.

then another age until he did something fun or interesting.

youd just be waiting for ages as he trod his way through boring sly stone covers (and i like sly stone) or boring, aimless jamming.

i saw him do an aftershow in 98/99 and another when he did the shows at the o2 in london.

sure the second one was cool as he brought out special guests, but i wasnt really into his sound that much at this point. his musicians were not that exciting really.

my issue was (jay crawford will love this) that i grew up watching videos of his 80s tours on vhs (PR, SOTT, LS) sooooo many times, every time i finally got to see him in concert, it never matched up to the brilliance of those shows. also, i was seeing a lot of gigs at this point in my life, so (and some prince fans will hate this) seeing guys like dangelo, bilal, or even lenny kravitz, then erykah badu, etc, they all seemed to deliver better shows at this point in their careers. or i was just more excited about them, idk.

but overall, id say the 2001 tour was the best.

[Edited 2/2/21 4:51am]

Diamonds and Pearls in London in '92 was an exciting musical and visual spectacle.

1998 at Wembley Arena was boring and as mentioned above the 1993 Bagleys Aftershow was a boring letdown with Mavis Staples, The Steeles and Tony M taking centre stage. He smashed it in the last 20 minutes with Come/Endorphinemachine/Peach to show what could have been.

peer1973 said:

worst, if that is the correct word to choose, as they are all great to me.

Would be 24 march 1995 in Den Bosch.

I took a group of my friends with me, to witness the wonder of Prince in Concert.

But somehow, it was not the best experience.

Half the stage was missing.

And he barely touched his guitar, he seemed annoyed the whole show.

I remember, just moving to the back, to hang out at the bar.

Maybe it was me who was annoyed, can't remember.

Best for me was the show in Tivoli in 98

Standing just inches away from the keyboard, where he was playing.

Lenny, Larry, and both Dulfers in what seemd to me a show of force in Sax performance.

Just great.

Wow, I´m surprised that you didn´t like that show. I went to both Den Bosch concerts and absolutely loved both of them but I could tell that many in the audience weren´t too happy that night, many left early and seemed disappointed because he wouldn´t play his hits but that was to be expected.

That half of the stage was missing was indeed a letdown but only if you knew that half of it was missing.

It's hard to pick a favourite.

I saw the majority of shows in Europe between 1986 and 2015 and there are a least 20 I'd put in a best list. Generally, I seperate aftershows too, as they are too special.

If had to pick one that I enjoyed the most, it was the first night at the Dublin Point in 1995. It was off the chain.

Least favourite was probably NPS 1998 show in Collinsville, USA.

In aftershow terms, my favourite was probably Camden, London in 1988, and least favourite was also London, but the Bagleys Warehouse 'Dawn' gig.