Hi,
After listening to a majority of bootleg recordings of Princes more recent performances It appears that mistakes in his act are more Prevalent. Particularly the forgetting of lyrics and often melodic and rhytmic structure to his vocals and playing (during piano solo spots). Now I, like many others, Believe Prince to be in great musical form. However, these occurances appear to be more obvious as of late. It just seems strange hearing them come from a renown perfectionist when it comes to his bands performance. Any body else noticed/agree with this?

Prince u still the shit in my eyes though!

My tummy always goes funny when p makes a mistake on stage! I have a boot of the ONA tour and it sounded as if he had never heard the song 'One nite alone' b4. it was a very uncomfortable performance.

hmm...ive heard a lot of bootlegs but really v few mistakes...cant think of any.

biggest i can think is the guitar solo on icnttpoym off one night alone live.

There's a REALLY funny one on the Atlanta 97 bootleg.
Nicely covered up with a "Y'all feeling good tonight?" shout - out.

---

did he forget the words to "Money dont matter" on the Alladin DVD?

howcomeudontcallme said:

I can't comment on what exactly you're listening to, since I don't know what it is. But many vocalists purposely rearrange many things about the songs they perform in a live setting, including the vocal performance. And that being the case, there are even times when artists who have been at it for a long time forget their own lyrics once every blue moon if they have a large pool of songs to choose from. What makes you think he's forgetting the melody and rhythmic structure of the vocals?

It was so rediculous to have labeled Money Dont Matter 2night on the f*cking dvd and only play 30 seconds of it..

**ck**!

Supernova said:

I appreciate that in a live setting prince is at liberty to change/rearrange his compositions. However, recently it appears that he often forgets fundatmental principles of a strong structure. Furthermore, his vocal delivery and piano playing often sound uncomfortable (By this i mean it feels to the listener that prince is not in control of his music). Now, I am aware that Prince is not exempt from making mistakes. We all do. Nor am I questioning his musical competence. That would be foolish. Although, from the evidence heard, these slips in his music (particularly solo piano spots) are more prominent than in the past.

howcomeudontcallme said:

Hmmm. I haven't noticed, but then again, I haven't listened to anything by Prince lately with the exception of NEWS. Interesting.

A good example of the point raised is apparent if we compare recordings of solo piano performances taken from the lovesexy tour with recordings of solo piano performance from the ONA tour.

Lovesexy piano playing was fresh, articulate and appeared under control of the pianist (even in the more flambouyant instances of ad-libbed musical decoration i.e. runs and scalisitic colouring of his music). likewise, his voice was strong, confident and for the majority of the time 'on the money'. In all, a fine demonstration of princes solo piano ability.

Converesly, ONA solo piano spots have appeared to me to be quite messy affairs. Often his playing revealed lack of structure (almost as if he didnt know what he was playing). Much of his musical decoration was littered in my opinion with aimless Ad-libbed ramblings. as one of the previous posts to this thread mentioned earlier, Princes vocal performance has often been poor in these situations too.


I think the biggest demonstration of this was his acoustic performance at the celebration. Now i know that many of you will stone me for calling this performance. Besides the novelty of seeing prince perform an acoustic set (something many of us has wanted for a long time) this set was poor. He forgets words, loses his timing, forgets how to end songs. The performance is full of mistakes and bad ones at that.

I dont mean to criticise prince, his greatness as a musicain speaks for itself. However, i wonder how he would tolerate such a level of playing from one of his band members.


because of this I often think prince should structure his work more nowadays. However, thats not my place to say.

Listen to The Question Of U at the Nighttown aftershow. He flunks his first line and starts the song again.

Henk said:

Yeah, i've got this one too. Thats what i mean about his often loss of vocal rhytmic and melodic sense. It does sound bad doesnt it? However, he sure makes up for it when he asks the band to kick it up again.

At the ONA shows, with the exception of the aftershows, he has the words right in front of him in a large book. How could he forget the words?

howcomeudontcallme said:

Nah, it's just prince who wants to be in control I think... who else would start a song all over just because he lost some lyrics?? That's not really covering it up, if you ask me

Nikkie said:

I see it as a really experienced entertainer/ performer. He doesn't lose his nerve when he flunks.

You're right. That would be a HUGE mistake, to play that solo when he doesn't even play that song on ONA Live!

Phil said:

please list some more mistakes... I want hear them...

ufoclub said:

god there are far to many, of late anyhow. just listen closey to any boot of ONA. or get the acoustic celebration performance

Maybe his preoccupation with Jazz has made Prince more at ease with what some might call "mistakes". Jazz is, after all, more or less free-form experimentation. Good Jazz usually is just this side of un-structured.

Prince seems to be having fun with this loose attitude toward his newer music. It just may be taking it's toll on some of the songs that we know and love, as they're performed live.

Plus, the little keebler has about 50,000 lyrics and arrangements to try to file in his purple brain-wrinkles.

PRNelson said:

That probably has something to do with the fact that he was 15 years younger...

-SWANG'sjustassumingthings

I saw him screw up one of the verses to "Now" back in 95 at one of the Paisley Park shows. He was supposed to start the "40-45" verse but accidently started the "3-4-3-4" verse and was messed up for a good 10 seconds until he finally caught up with the music.

In another time I saw him at PP in 98 (I think), he started out with Sign O The Times but was reading the lyrics off of the computer right in front of him as he sang them. But yeah, he is only getting older. They always say that the mind is the first thing to go.

I remember one time he was all like

2the9s said:

and i was all like "wheee!"


...sorry 'bout that. but in all actuality ya'll, three words: prince is human. we all fuck up at what we do sometimes.

Cool! He made mistakes?!

Could these ONA mistakes be due to Prince playing a wider variety of songs on the tour? In the older WB does Prince tended to play fairly rigid set lists with little variation night after night, giving him the opportunity to rehearse until the set was perfect. But that's not the case any more, since his set lists change a lot from night to night. I could be wrong because I don't have any boots or tapes of his ONA tour, but am basing it on what I've read on the Org.

Supernova said:[quote]

howcomeudontcallme said:

True, there for example. Bruce Springsteen's opening show of his 1980-'81 The River Tour, he came on stage and the band was playing Born To Run, a song he played then for over 6 years and his mind was blank, he had no clue what so ever how to begin. So he turned to his band, till he heard the crowd pick up the lyrics, he joint them and he was saved!!

Spanjeganger

As he gets older and his mind goes bye bye it's only going to get a lot worse. You think he's eccentric now just wait till he starts conversing with himself in the middle of "Little Red Corvette". And you know how cranky old people are and how they think they're always right no matter what. Man is Prince going to be a pain in the ass to work for, even more so then now.

thebumpsquad said:

Yeah...when he did "sleep around". I was at the show, I turned to my mom & said "see he doesn't even listen to Emancipation...so don't give me hard time"


Nero

Maybe he's just concentrating too hard on trying not to cuss.

He's a natural-born potty-mouth!

BinaryJustin said: