Edna's love affair with Prince continues unabated!

Here the link and text of her Staples Center review:

http://www.usatoday.com/l...cert_x.htm

Nothing compares to a Prince concert

By Edna Gunderson, USA TODAY

LOS ANGELES — Pop royalty is looking pretty shabby these days. Michael Jackson crowned himself King of Pop, but he's a pretender to the throne. The taped vocals and robotic choreography of Britney Spears indicate the empress has no clothes (metaphorically and very nearly literally). An American Idol coronation seems premature, especially since the show's latest hitmaker is jester William Hung.

Finding a pre-eminent performer would be a royal pain if not for music's enduring Purple reign.

Prince rules. That became apparent during an explosive concert (* * * * out of four) Monday at the Staples Center, second stop on Prince's funk-freighted Musicology Tour.

At 45, Prince is foreshadowing what looks to be the reigning trend for touring '80s rock royalty, Madonna and Van Halen among them: a comprehensive re-examination of the past. With interest rekindled via powerful Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Grammy performances, and with new album Musicology (dispensed free to concertgoers and in stores April 20) to promote, the time is right for Prince to highlight his strengths.

The tour, his first in six years with the vibrant New Power Generation, opens with the new album's title track, a fiendishly catchy funk jam that poses the rhetorical question, "Don't you miss the feeling music gave you back in the day?"

Those happening days are here again. Prince is endlessly original, yet with a bloodline traceable to James Brown, Jackie Wilson, Jimi Hendrix, Little Richard, George Clinton and Miles Davis.

"We don't believe in lip-syncing," Prince announced to the hip-shaking full house. "This is real music by real musicians." True enough. Brawny drums, a rubbery bass and the squawking saxophones of Maceo Parker and Candy Dulfer bolstered Prince's fluid, searing guitar solos and limber vocals through a stylish and sweaty 2½-hour romp.

Though he avoided such bawdy favorites as Darling Nikki, Gett Off and Sexy M.F., Prince plucked a dazzling range of tunes, transforming the arena into a roadhouse, a garage, a jazz den, a burlesque theater and a revival tent. (At one point he commanded the congregation to "open up your Bibles!")

He moved with frenetic booty-rocking abandon in Kiss, I Would Die 4 U and Take Me With U, then parked on a swiveling stool for an acoustic Little Red Corvette and fragile ballad Sometimes It Snows in April. He glided from lusty growl to agile croon to angelic falsetto, often within the same song.

His most stinging guitar licks sprang from Sign 'o' the Times, Let's Go Crazy and extended finale Purple Rain. That last signature from Prince's 1984 commercial peak was a dramatic crowd-pleaser but nowhere near as powerful as some of the night's less frantic displays.

The emotional highlight came in a pair of ballads: After a languid interlude of sax and piano, Prince sang the aching Beautiful Ones before segueing into the gorgeous, anguished Nothing Compares 2 U.

Though hits drew the loudest roars, new tunes Life 'o' the Party and On the Couch, a sly and bawdy blues ramble, measured up to the set list's crown jewels. Born with a name that defines his place in the pop hierarchy, Prince has the charisma and astonishing versatility to weather his synthetic challengers.

Nice review, except Maceo was not there.

Edna loves her some Princey.