I'm watching the Texas show (Houston ?) on youtube it seems so underwhelming, the venue, everything. Did anyone go ? How was it for you ?

[Edited 2/22/26 15:26pm]

paisleyparkgirl said:

I'm watching the Texas show (Houston ?) on youtube it seems so underwhelming, the venue, everyone. Did anyone go ? How was it for you ?

I was at that specific show. I don't recall a lot about it; that whole tour was pretty lackluster for me. That was the tour where for me Prince stopped trying to put on an innovative show and started just playing his greatest hits.

There were a couple of standout moments like the extended jams on Face Down, but the best thing about that show was the aftershow at the Roxy later that night.

I liked it. He hadn't played in Portland for a long time, so the crowd was enthusiastic. I've had a soft spot for "Freaks On This Side" ever since, as it was fun when he split up the arena for the chant. (That's not listed on the Princevault set list, but I have a distinct memory of it.) It was the last time I saw Prince do the splits, I think he stopped right around that time.

That year (1997) I caught the Love 4 One Another Charities Tour in Louisville, KY May 18, and the Jam Of The Year Tour in Nashville, TN Aug 22 and Lexington, KY Nov 5.

After years of no shows close enough for me to see it was great to catch so many. The best of the 3 was the Nashville show.

dustoff said:

I liked it. He hadn't played in Portland for a long time, so the crowd was enthusiastic. I've had a soft spot for "Freaks On This Side" ever since, as it was fun when he split up the arena for the chant. (That's not listed on the Princevault set list, but I have a distinct memory of it.) It was the last time I saw Prince do the splits, I think he stopped right around that time.

There's footage from a Rave era show where he does the splits.

I went to one of the Love 4 One Another Charities tour (Moline, IL 06.21.97) and two of the Jam of the Year tour (Minneapolis, MN 12.10.97 and 12.11.97). I guess Emancipation was the album he was born to make, but wasn't born to play a lot of songs live from. They felt like greatest hits shows, as did most of his tours to follow. I always loved going to shows and hearing the new songs live, it made me appreciate them more. At any rate, they were still good shows. You can't go wrong with Prince playing live.

I also went to the after shows at Paisley Park. Larry Graham overload! A sign of what was to come.

paisleyparkgirl said:

dustoff said:

I liked it. He hadn't played in Portland for a long time, so the crowd was enthusiastic. I've had a soft spot for "Freaks On This Side" ever since, as it was fun when he split up the arena for the chant. (That's not listed on the Princevault set list, but I have a distinct memory of it.) It was the last time I saw Prince do the splits, I think he stopped right around that time.

There's footage from a Rave era show where he does the splits.

He did the splits at the HitNRun show in Vegas in December 2000 (my first show). He wasn't doing them by the Celebration the following summer.

We talked about 'not so good live experiences' here.

motherfunka said:

I went to one of the Love 4 One Another Charities tour (Moline, IL 06.21.97) and two of the Jam of the Year tour (Minneapolis, MN 12.10.97 and 12.11.97). I guess Emancipation was the album he was born to make, but wasn't born to play a lot of songs live from. They felt like greatest hits shows, as did most of his tours to follow. I always loved going to shows and hearing the new songs live, it made me appreciate them more. At any rate, they were still good shows. You can't go wrong with Prince playing live.

I also went to the after shows at Paisley Park. Larry Graham overload! A sign of what was to come.

Anyone know why he didn't play the Emancipation songs besides the obvious ones about having a baby/being a dad ?

I did at United Center in Chicago. It was great! I know he played a few tunes from Emancipation...one being Face Down and it was killer. Great show with a great crowd.

I also saw him the next year at the Aragon with Chaka Kahn and LG...I've mentioned that show a few times on here. He didn't play a lot of hits, but its the best show I've ever seen. We had an amazing spot right in front of the stage and to be able to witness his brilliance so close is a cherished memory.

paisleyparkgirl said:

motherfunka said:

I went to one of the Love 4 One Another Charities tour (Moline, IL 06.21.97) and two of the Jam of the Year tour (Minneapolis, MN 12.10.97 and 12.11.97). I guess Emancipation was the album he was born to make, but wasn't born to play a lot of songs live from. They felt like greatest hits shows, as did most of his tours to follow. I always loved going to shows and hearing the new songs live, it made me appreciate them more. At any rate, they were still good shows. You can't go wrong with Prince playing live.

I also went to the after shows at Paisley Park. Larry Graham overload! A sign of what was to come.

Anyone know why he didn't play the Emancipation songs besides the obvious ones about having a baby/being a dad ?

.
I guess most of the Emancipation songs are too intimate/lonely sounding to be suitable for big concerts. Can you imagine "White Mansion", "Emale", "My Computer", "Joint To Joint" etc to work well on stage? I like most of the album but for me it was always very lonely sounding, which is strange, considering his then recent marriage.

Kares said:

paisleyparkgirl said:

Anyone know why he didn't play the Emancipation songs besides the obvious ones about having a baby/being a dad ?

.
I guess most of the Emancipation songs are too intimate/lonely sounding to be suitable for big concerts. Can you imagine "White Mansion", "Emale", "My Computer", "Joint To Joint" etc to work well on stage? I like most of the album but for me it was always very lonely sounding, which is strange, considering his then recent marriage.

paisleyparkgirl said:

Kares said:

.
I guess most of the Emancipation songs are too intimate/lonely sounding to be suitable for big concerts. Can you imagine "White Mansion", "Emale", "My Computer", "Joint To Joint" etc to work well on stage? I like most of the album but for me it was always very lonely sounding, which is strange, considering his then recent marriage.

Some of the songs could work : Sex in the Summer, Right Back here in my arms, Get your Groove on, Sleep Around (I think he performed that one on Oprah). He performed The Love We Make in 2013 at Montreux (very beautiful btw)

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Sure, he did play some. The Love We Make is one of my all-time favourites. And 'New World' could've been great on stage too, imo – in fact it's one of the songs I can still imagine becoming posthumus hits (with the right marketing push – and perhaps with a Trent Reznor remix).

.

[Edited 2/23/26 18:41pm]

Being in Europe, I obviously wasn't gonna attend, but I remember buying a bootleg one of the shows in 1997 or early 1998, and being sorely disappointed that it was mostly best of and not much of an "Emancipation Tour".

.

Little did I know it was a taste of things to come for the rest of P's career.

.

According to the Vault book regarding the Ultimate Live Experience shows in 1995, "many people weren't familiar with the new material Prince played and the crowd response wasn't as emhusiastic as in earlier years. In fact. many felt cheated by the absence of familiarity and several concerts saw audience members leaving early; some even requested their money back. While many critics applauded Prince's brave decision to stick to new and untested material, most seemed to think that the show lacked really strong songs and suffered from too much jamming. Indeed, the show received a great deal of criticism and was probably his least favourably received tour ever in Europe."

.

Prince clearly learned a lesson from that experience. So thanks a lot to those idiots who couldn't enjoy a show without familiar songs: because of their stupidity, we had to eat endless variations of Kiss, 1999, Purple Rain and so on for most of the next two decades...

Kares said:

paisleyparkgirl said:

Anyone know why he didn't play the Emancipation songs besides the obvious ones about having a baby/being a dad ?

.
I guess most of the Emancipation songs are too intimate/lonely sounding to be suitable for big concerts. Can you imagine "White Mansion", "Emale", "My Computer", "Joint To Joint" etc to work well on stage? I like most of the album but for me it was always very lonely sounding, which is strange, considering his then recent marriage.

While it's possible that his family tragedy made Prince uneasy with playing some of the material, I don't think the decision had much to do with the material itself. Anything could always have been rearranged accordingly: that's what musicians do.

.

I think the greatest hits setlist is very much the consequence of what I just wrote above, which seems confirmed by the fact that, except for the occasional smaller venue show (such as Montreux) and the ONA and LOL tours (which, I guess, happened because Prince was getting absolutely fed-up with playing the hits over and over, something he most likely didn't like to do), each and every tour from that point onwards had a greatest hits setlist with very few songs from whichever the latest album was. It's a tragedy because as a result, most of his post-1995 catalogue was never performed live: hundreds of songs, literally

.

Sadly, Prince became a legacy artist and the natural trend of most musicians' careers (lower sales past their peak commercial point) coincided with the Internet ruining records sales, making it nearly impossible for him to maintain his expensive lifestyle with any other source of income than live shows. And sadly, in order to fill arenas, he felt he had to play the hits (and if the 1995 experience showed anything, he was probably right).

.

Under different circumstances (a more humble lifestyle or the Internet not killing record sales), he probably could have mostly toured smaller venues (which he did in 2002 and 2013) and played whatever the fuck he wanted, keeping the greatest hits setlists for a few occasional arena dates or tours. Similarly, he may have been inclined to release more "experimental" (I hate this term) records in the vein of The War or NEWS.

.

I said it often, but past a certain point in his career, Prince's huge financial needs and his desire to maintain his superstar status sometimes went in the way of his creative freedom.

[Edited 2/23/26 20:00pm]

databank said:

Being in Europe, I obviously wasn't gonna attend, but I remember buying a bootleg one of the shows in 1997 or early 1998, and being sorely disappointed that it was mostly best of and not much of an "Emancipation Tour".

.

Little did I know it was a taste of things to come for the rest of P's career.

.

According to the Vault book regarding the Ultimate Live Experience shows in 1995, "many people weren't familiar with the new material Prince played and the crowd response wasn't as emhusiastic as in earlier years. In fact. many felt cheated by the absence of familiarity and several concerts saw audience members leaving early; some even requested their money back. While many critics applauded Prince's brave decision to stick to new and untested material, most seemed to think that the show lacked really strong songs and suffered from too much jamming. Indeed, the show received a great deal of criticism and was probably his least favourably received tour ever in Europe."

.

Prince clearly learned a lesson from that experience. So thanks a lot to those idiots who couldn't enjoy a show without familiar songs: because of their stupidity, we had to eat endless variations of Kiss, 1999, Purple Rain and so on for most of the next two decades...

.
I'm always outraged by people who go to concerts only to expect to hear the couple of hits they're familiar with (preferably in the same arrangement than the record) and the last thing they'd want to hear is something new. Unbelievable.

.
Anyway, Prince found a healthy ratio of new stuff and hits by the One Nite Alone tour, didn't he? And I guess that most aging artists learn to accept the fact that their audiance is there for the hits, primarily...

But as much as I love and respect Nile Rodgers, he's been playing practically the same show for decades now, hasn't he?

Kares said:

databank said:

Being in Europe, I obviously wasn't gonna attend, but I remember buying a bootleg one of the shows in 1997 or early 1998, and being sorely disappointed that it was mostly best of and not much of an "Emancipation Tour".

.

Little did I know it was a taste of things to come for the rest of P's career.

.

According to the Vault book regarding the Ultimate Live Experience shows in 1995, "many people weren't familiar with the new material Prince played and the crowd response wasn't as emhusiastic as in earlier years. In fact. many felt cheated by the absence of familiarity and several concerts saw audience members leaving early; some even requested their money back. While many critics applauded Prince's brave decision to stick to new and untested material, most seemed to think that the show lacked really strong songs and suffered from too much jamming. Indeed, the show received a great deal of criticism and was probably his least favourably received tour ever in Europe."

.

Prince clearly learned a lesson from that experience. So thanks a lot to those idiots who couldn't enjoy a show without familiar songs: because of their stupidity, we had to eat endless variations of Kiss, 1999, Purple Rain and so on for most of the next two decades...

.
I'm always outraged by people who go to concerts only to expect to hear the couple of hits they're familiar with (preferably in the same arrangement than the record) and the last thing they'd want to hear is something new. Unbelievable.

Me too. I've been to shows where I didn't know most, if any of the music, yet enjoyed them a lot because the music was just... great. But look at most people's listening habits: for one thing, they listen only to well known stuff, then, at some point between 30 and 40, they stop listening to anything new altogether and keep rehashing the things they liked when they were young for the rest of their life (and Spotify actually revealed that their stats show exactly that).

.
Anyway, Prince found a healthy ratio of new stuff and hits by the One Nite Alone tour, didn't he? And I guess that most aging artists learn to accept the fact that their audiance is there for the hits, primarily...

But as much as I love and respect Nile Rodgers, he's been playing practically the same show for decades now, hasn't he?

Let's be fair, most "legacy" artists do that. And often, the more famous (or more mainstream) they are, the more they have to do it. But I think Prince aspired to more than that and probably hated to do it, but sadly found himself in a corner.

I saw the tour in San Antonio, and don't remember much about it. I wasn't underwhelmed, and i remember he sounded great, but it's not like when i was on the floor for the Musicology show or when i saw that amazing Lovesexy show in Dallas. I remember being unerwhelmed about Emancipation, and sad that we got 3 full cds of plastic drums and jokey songs. it needed an edit.

.

.

HOWEVER:

after the show it was an open secret (i mean, i think it was advertised actually) that he would be making an appearance at a club in downtown San Antonio and so we went and sure enough there he was, sitting in a roped off area up in the balcony. you could walk right up to the area too, so i did. i was 10 feet from him, but i was just going to say hi and thanks if he looked over at us. but sudenly a giant man stood up from inside the ropes and said "GET THE FUCK AWAY MOTHER FUCKER!" and that's exactly what i did, muttering a sorry and moving on. ha ha!

[Edited 2/23/26 20:22pm]

A stop on the Jam of the Year tour was the first time I got to see Prince. We were front row in the balcony at the Oakdale Theater in Connecticut - it gave us a great view of the stage, while still feeling fairly close. I was overjoyed, awestruck, and quite happy with the show. Having never seen him before, I was glad he mixed in a bunch of older songs. When You Were Mine has never been my favorite track, but his unaccompanied rendition on the guitar was my favorite part of the show.

Of the Emancipation tracks, Jam of the Year sounded far better live than on CD. I think Face Down was the best of the bunch. I was disappointed that Prince didn't play The Love We Make. But he inexplicably opened his show with that at the LA Forum in 2011, the last time I got to see him.

I was eager to get some kind of concert merch after the show, but good gravy did Prince's mid 1990's visual aesthetic not align with my tastes in any kind of way. So I had to content myself saving my ticket stub, along with an article and photo about the show in the next morning's paper.

In the intervening years, I've seen enough clips from his 1980's heyday to recognize that this show lacked the feral energy he brought to the stage in his 20's. While this tour would hardly be considered among his finest, I have wonderful memories from that night.

I went to the San Antonio & Austin shows. They were great. A lot of energy.

They were my 2nd & 3rd shows. My 1st was the lovesexy tour in Houston.

I don't remember a whole lot from them, beyond the gold lions on stage.

It was 30 years ago!

Unfortunately, this was my last Prince concert. Oct.12, 1997, Irvine CA. The only time that a Prince concert was actually close to where I was living at the time. I loved it. I guess one thing that makes this tour special is that it's the last time he was cussin' live. Face Down was definitely a stand-out. Also it was bootlegged as "Partymix" by Optimum, which is cool; a document of a concert I attended. Really good sound, too.

shakalakaboom said:

databank said:

Being in Europe, I obviously wasn't gonna attend, but I remember buying a bootleg one of the shows in 1997 or early 1998, and being sorely disappointed that it was mostly best of and not much of an "Emancipation Tour".

.

Little did I know it was a taste of things to come for the rest of P's career.

.

According to the Vault book regarding the Ultimate Live Experience shows in 1995, "many people weren't familiar with the new material Prince played and the crowd response wasn't as emhusiastic as in earlier years. In fact. many felt cheated by the absence of familiarity and several concerts saw audience members leaving early; some even requested their money back. While many critics applauded Prince's brave decision to stick to new and untested material, most seemed to think that the show lacked really strong songs and suffered from too much jamming. Indeed, the show received a great deal of criticism and was probably his least favourably received tour ever in Europe."

.

Prince clearly learned a lesson from that experience. So thanks a lot to those idiots who couldn't enjoy a show without familiar songs: because of their stupidity, we had to eat endless variations of Kiss, 1999, Purple Rain and so on for most of the next two decades...

The main issue was that the tour was not up to the hype of `s long awaited freedom. I certainly expected something else.

.

The set lists were a step back indeed, and while some of the hits certainly felt corny (I didn't need Purple Rain, Take Me With U or Raspberry Beret), some of the oldies were very well perceived by the fan base at the time. I mean, it was actually a pleasant surprise to hear How Come U Don't Call Me Anymore or even The Cross at that point.

.

I was more concerned with that plastic sound from the band at the time. Particularly after a killer line-up of the NPG from 94-95.

[Edited 2/25/26 7:42am]

psyche2 said:

databank said:

Being in Europe, I obviously wasn't gonna attend, but I remember buying a bootleg one of the shows in 1997 or early 1998, and being sorely disappointed that it was mostly best of and not much of an "Emancipation Tour".

.

Little did I know it was a taste of things to come for the rest of P's career.

.

According to the Vault book regarding the Ultimate Live Experience shows in 1995, "many people weren't familiar with the new material Prince played and the crowd response wasn't as emhusiastic as in earlier years. In fact. many felt cheated by the absence of familiarity and several concerts saw audience members leaving early; some even requested their money back. While many critics applauded Prince's brave decision to stick to new and untested material, most seemed to think that the show lacked really strong songs and suffered from too much jamming. Indeed, the show received a great deal of criticism and was probably his least favourably received tour ever in Europe."

.

Prince clearly learned a lesson from that experience. So thanks a lot to those idiots who couldn't enjoy a show without familiar songs: because of their stupidity, we had to eat endless variations of Kiss, 1999, Purple Rain and so on for most of the next two decades...

The main issue was that the tour was not up to the hype of `s long awaited freedom. I certainly expected something else.

.

The set lists were a step back indeed, and while some of the hits certainly felt corny (I didn't need Purple Rain, Take Me With U or Raspberry Beret), some of the oldies were very well perceived by the fan base at the time. I mean, it was actually a pleasant surprise to hear How Come U Don't Call Me Anymore or even The Cross at that point.

.

I was more concerned with that plastic sound from the band at the time. Particularly after a killer line-up of the NPG from 94-95.

[Edited 2/25/26 7:42am]

AFAIK there's no SBD of those 1997 tours, is there? I haven't heard any AUD of them in ages, so I don't remember much about the band's sound, except that IIRC it was pretty much similar to the 1996 MTV performance and the 1998 club shows we have in SBD?

.

Based on those shows, I don't mind the band's sound. It was indeed less idiosyncratic than the 1994-1996 line-up (but what was going to beat that, anyway?), but the less agressive sound would have made perfect sense if Prince had focused on the new material, which itself was much more gentle (or "plastic", if you will) than the Come/TGE/Exodus era material. The MTV and Beautiful Strange shows demonstrate that IMHO: the material is well served by the performances.

.

It just didn't make much sense with a greatest hits tracklist. I attended the 1998 Paris show and it was a little odd to hear all those 80s hits, which for the most part sounded "weird" in their original form, with a "cleaned-up" act that made them sound like, well, a more generic band covering Prince.

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Indeed, that was a huge step-back from the 1994 "dirty" sound and "new material only" tracklists, which were pretty much the equivalent of Bowie's 1995-1997 band and tours: designed to make a mature artist sound like a wild newcomer again, while hyping-up contemporary esthetics. Then again, had Prince come-up with a proper Emancipation/The Truth Tour, followed by a proper Newpower Soul Tour, followed by a proper Rave Tour, followed by a proper High/Peace Tour, it would probably have worked perfectly.

.

That said, many fans were harsh towards the 1997-2001 lineups, but make no mistake, they were killer musicians just as much as anyone else who ever played with Prince. Given how demanding Prince was, how hard it was to keep up with him (something we probably know more about now than we did then—thanks to the many books, bandmembers interviews and podcasts that were released since then), you wouldn't stand a chance playing in his band if you weren't gonna be on top of your game. Prince just chose to tame his sound and the musicians took the blame.

As I recall, it came around twice to Dallas. First time was a small outdoor stadium that was called Coca Cola Starplex at the time during the summer of 1997. The second time was January 1998 at Reunion Arena.

The first show sold out in minutes. We could only get ticked to the gneral admission area on the grass. Such a disappointment.

We had floor seats for the second show. I would guess only about half of the tickets sold.

This is the timeframe Larry Grahm was pushing him hard toward the Jehova Witnesses. Kinds overshadowed everything.

shakalakaboom said:

I saw the tour in San Antonio, and don't remember much about it. I wasn't underwhelmed, and i remember he sounded great, but it's not like when i was on the floor for the Musicology show or when i saw that amazing Lovesexy show in Dallas. I remember being unerwhelmed about Emancipation, and sad that we got 3 full cds of plastic drums and jokey songs. it needed an edit.

.

.

HOWEVER:

after the show it was an open secret (i mean, i think it was advertised actually) that he would be making an appearance at a club in downtown San Antonio and so we went and sure enough there he was, sitting in a roped off area up in the balcony. you could walk right up to the area too, so i did. i was 10 feet from him, but i was just going to say hi and thanks if he looked over at us. but sudenly a giant man stood up from inside the ropes and said "GET THE FUCK AWAY MOTHER FUCKER!" and that's exactly what i did, muttering a sorry and moving on. ha ha!

[Edited 2/23/26 20:22pm]

I was at that show and aftershow in San Antonio as well. Despite being 22 at the time, it was my very first Prince live show.

What really hurt that tour stop was the venue. The Alamodome is just an American football cave made of metal and concrete. Despite getting on the phone when tickets first went on sale, my wife and I ended up on the far side of the stadium. Prince was about an inch tall from our seats.

Maybe it was just the excitment of seeing him for the first time, but I enjoyed it despite the crummy venue and cavernous sound. But the place was pretty full - 30K+ people in there? I remember getting really excited when he played Six in the middle of Getcha Groove On. That was enough nostalgia for me and a cool thing that only longtime fans into deep cuts would even have noticed.

I do remember them announcing the aftershow when the concert was over. The venue was called Piranha's or Piranha's Night Club at the time, and still has a big plaster shark hanging above the building to this day. It's now Sugar's, a strip club. I too was near Prince's "backstage" area, which I remember being stage right of the performance area. Doug E Fresh at an aftershow was more fun than I thought he would be.