EvilWhiteMale said:

i think that changing the entire nature of your persona as a pop star because you want your career to conform to your new-found religious beliefs is "keeping it real". (keeping it SURreal, even.)

i understand all your complaints about larry, and it's really easy to project everything we don't like about where prince is now on larry, and color him as the big bad brainwashing boogieman. not to mention his wife scares the crap out of me.

but i don't think prince is exempt from his own transformation. if you're gonna figure in larry, you're gonna have to figure in a lot of things that prompted huge changes in his life and how he performs and makes music: the deaths of his parents, the death of his child, the end of his marriage, the toll that the battle with WB must have taken. i'm sure coming out on the other side of all of that is going to make you a changed person.

not to mention the fact that dude's getting older.

i think prince absolutely "keeps it real" - it's just not always a reality we might choose if we were him.

and as for losing his attitude, what the hell was it i kept seeing on tour last year? what was "on the couch"? what's "glass cutter"? prince is still doing crazy shit and sneaking in raunchy stuff and doing all the stuff we've always known him to do - it's just in a different configuration.

personally, i'm bored with artists who stage comebacks by trying to look or sound exactly the way they did in their glory days. i think billy looks great and i'm sure he sounds great on stage and has lots of energy - but from everything i've seen, he looks like he's his own elvis impersonator.

maybe comparing billy's comeback with prince's is like comparing apples and oranges.

Anxiety said:

I saw the Prince tour last year, and it was pretty dull compared to shows I've seen in the past. He aged himself by about 20 years. He ruined lots of songs with the horns and censorship, and he looked real corny with those lights flashing in his clear heals. Had he not played Bambi, I would have been very disappointed.

Billy has gotten older, but he still performs the songs well, and the way the fans like them. He doesn't preach to anyone and he keeps up the energy throughout the show, even though the acoustic break was a bit slow.

Music fans don't like it when their favorite artists change TOO much, especially if the change is lame. Prince is free to do what he wants, but he can be much better than he is now.

yeah yeah yeah--we're gettin back on the same track that was the reason that i locked your initial thread in the m & m forum for, ewm. i woulda let this one pass, but you've gone off your initial topic.