To prove once again that Columbia, SC is the center of the Prince universe, one of the local R and B stations had a 20 minute interview this morning with NPG drummer John Blackwell this morning. John was apparently on one of his very infrequent day's off and later on today he is getting the key to the city of Columbia. Columbia isn't exactly know for its music product (it was us who unleashed Hootie and the Blowfish onto the world) so that makes it all the more cool that Prince's drummer is from here. The interview was pretty jackass, as it started out with the female morning DJ saying that playing drums with Prince was like playing drums with Jesus. There was some awkward silence as John tried to figure out how to respond to that. In my mind, I was thinking that if they thought Prince was Jesus, why couldn't he get some airplay. Eventually they asked him some questions about how he hooked up with Prince and John told them about how Prince discovered him at a Patti Labelle show and that these two big burly men walked toward him backstage and Prince walked between them and shook his hand and said "That was fabulous" He did what I thought was a pretty impressive Prince imitation when he said this, which meant that the P-Man was obviously not listening or else he might have kicked John's ass. John said that Prince told him to finish the tour with Patti and thern invited him to Paisley Park, where John had a jam session with Prince and of course Larry Graham. Prince invited John to join the band but John had a committment with the number one pop star in Japan and Prince let him finish that gig before joining the NPG. They ended the interview by asking him if he was following American Idol and I was just thinking when has he had time with four or five concerts every week. What does he have a little TV back on the drum kit?! I expected them to play a Prince song after the interview (maybe even debut "Call My Name") but of course they didn't.

Overall, John sounds like a really nice guy and Columbia is proud of him. He got a huge reception during the Columbia show and his acrobatic drumming was awesome. It just pisses me off because I could've learned the drums when I was younger and that could be me up there.

Thanx for the report

COOL