WetDream said:

River, Prince is not known for dancing as much as Michael is, so of course it would be much easier for Prince to accomplish this.

This footage, listening to his voice has brought a tear to my eye. R.I.P. Mike.

You get up there and dance like him and we'll judge your live singing voice.[/quote]
Exactly.

He could sing live. But Michaels shows were all about HIM. Not the instruments he could or couldn't play - the focus was on him. His vocals and his moves. Pressure is high. And he didn't lip sync FULL shows. I am not a fan of lip syncing but I am a fan of Michael and to say from 1969 - 2009 most of his shows were prerecorded lip synced concerts is false. He in my opinion was the best most entertaining live performer of all time. His shows were a performance constantly and the focus was always on HIM.

The "largest part of his career" miming is a totally false claim. He lip synced for some performances on tv, some of the history tour and dangerous tour. He had to put on full shows with song and dance, and to save himself he had to lip sync sometimes...

[/quote]

StillDirrty said:

Which part actually ? With his brothers was live. "Billie Jean" was lipsynched.

Its possible Michael started Miming later on stage because he got tired quickly. Maybe he does better with his voice when he's not under immense pressure of dancing on stage.

Or its possible that his painkiller use was beginning to affect his stamina in singing songs on stage, because by the time the History Tour came- he was miming 90% of the whole show. As his painkiller addiction increased, so did the miming.
[Edited 7/19/09 13:39pm]

shorttrini said:

Prince is very underrated for his dancing. I'm not saying he is the best but he is darn good. I have a boot from the the lovesexy tour and its great. I've played that dvd 4 times in the last two days I would love to get my hands on a Parade dvd boot. I heard that this was a great tour.

candy2277 said:

It's his own fault. Wish that dumbass Prince would release some live footage from then.
[Edited 7/19/09 14:28pm]

coolcat said:

I've been trying to figure out why he doesn't release more concert dvds. I can't come up with an explanation. I think Prince is stupid and weird when it comes to marketing his music and I think this is something everyone on this site agrees with. It really hurts his image and ultimately his legacy.

candy2277 said:

I don't think that he gives a hoots about this hurting his legacy...I think it just add to the "Prince mystic", which he does care about.

shorttrini said:

Well I don't know about the "Prince mystic", but if I were in his shoes, I would be releasing more concert dvds. He has a lot to gain ad nothing to loose. It makes sense from a financial and career standpoint, but he is Prince and he is going to do what he wants. If that is what makes him happy, I guess its okay. The fans will have to live with being satisfied with bootlegs.

candy2277 said:

They may not be all on DVD but he has released alot of live footage

Purple Rain Live
Birthday Parade was broadcast
Sign O The Times Live
Lovesexy Live
Tokyo Nude Tour was broadcast
The Undertaker Live at Paisley
The Sacrifice of Victor Aftershow
Beautiful Strange w/ Cafe de Paris aftershow
Rave Un2 The Year 2000
Live at The Aladdin
Musicology in LA was Live to theatres

Yes, it's slightly annoying you can't go to his website or they aren't stocked at retailers but with relatively minor effort and a few online auctions it would be possible to pick up most of those shows. No, they aren't perfect, yes I'd love to have more but that's quite a few tours you can find official broadcast quality footage of.

mynameisnotsusan said:

I don't think he does it for the money or for his career. I really think he as well as Michael performed for the love of it. I remember seeing Prince, on the musicology tour. He played for almost 3 hours with no intermission, that's love for what you do and for whom you do it for. I feel allot of fans get caught up in the "doing it for the money", part of it. You think with Ray and with James, money was their only motivation?

mynameisnotsusan said:

I have all of these.

shorttrini said:

I never said it was his motivation. I just stated the benefits of what releasing some more of his concert dvds would bring not that he has to or required to. Money was not James's motivation but he was adament about getting paid. I remember watching a documentary of Brown giving a concert in Boston in 1968 after Dr King was killed. I remember them saying that James wanted to know up front about how much he would be paid before he agreed to perform. All artists care about how much money they make and I think they all would want to make the most money they can after all this is a business. In terms of career, MJ was very competitive and wanted to be number one. This is what inspired him to want to create great albums. There is nothing wrong with this.

Hopefully more live footage of Michael will be released, especially the Motown years and the Triumph Tour

bboy87 said:

we can only hope

bboy87 said:

They better...

So Michael shouldn't be considered a great performer because he started to lip synch during the mid 90's? I'm sorry but that's nonsense. I really find it hillarious how people always look for anything to put Michael down and downplay his talent and accomplishments. Unbelievable. Anyhow, everything from the Jackson 5 up until the Bad Tour and most of Dangerous was live almost all of the time. Even if it wasn't, Motown 25 for example, it was still damn good and one of the most memorable performances ever.









So all of these great performances should be disregarded just because he lip synched for a few years? And it was a few years, not most of his career. I do agree that he began to get to comfortable and his tours started to look more or less the same, but Michael absolutely deserves all the credit and praise he gets as a live performer. At his peak, no one was better.
[Edited 7/19/09 17:57pm]

candy2277 said:

Yeah, I mean I wasn't thinking of money when I wanted Prince to release DVDs. On the contrary, I think maybe Prince isn't releasing them, because he won't get paid if they are released... who knows. Makes no sense to me.

Y'know, it's not just the miming and recycled routines/video re-enactments for certain songs from tour to tour that were disappointing, it's the fact that the show was the same every night minus subtle differences. Now, this is only from what I know about his last three tours. Maybe the Victory tour and all the tours preceding it were different?

All of this definitely doesn't take away from his on-stage presence and sheer talent, make no mistake. If I'd been alive and old enough to see a concert of his I probably would have had a blast (especially a concert from '69 to '88).

squiddyren said:

Whilst for the most part the setlists etc were locked in, he did break out every now and then and throw in different songs. In one of the Sydney HiStory tours I saw he threw in Come Together and D.S. much to the shock and excitement of the audience.

Swa

PurpleMedley122 said:

The first one is doing it, the rest are miming.

it's funny it's always MJ fans that bitch about she who shall not be named for lypsyncing on tours when he did more than she ever did.

InsatiableCream said:

Yeah but unlike MJ, Janet and some of those others, when Prince isn't posing, he is singing LIVE, playing guitar, piano or bass like nobody's business and leading his band. So, I don't mind it with him. Like someone else said earlier in this thread, Prince is on a different level when in comes to LIVE musical performance. MJ, Madonna, Janet, Britney and others give you the flash, pyro and huge choreographed dance numbers, but for a great LIVE music show, I don't know anyone who can even compare to Prince.

bellanoche said:

Shit, Prince will give you bed and start humping an invisible person, and still be more interesting than MJ tours.

WetDream said:

That's a good point. When Prince was younger, he was dancing, jumping off speakers and pianos, spinning, splitting, running all over the stage playing any instrument he could grab and still played/sang LIVE. I've never seen anyone do what he did then, especially in high heels. Even in the 1990s when he was doing the choreographed dancing with the three guys, everything was still live. So you're right, dancing really isn't an excuse.

Prince was also smart enough to know that he could not continue to do that so he's made a better transition into the latter part of his career by focusing on the music not all the flash and dance. His shows are more stripped down now, but the showmanship is still there. He's proven himself and is confident enough in his LIVE performance skills that he doesn't feel the need to compete with Prince circa 1980s-1990s. Unfortunately, MJ was still trying to do that. I don't know if MJ thought his audience would be cool with him just singing like Prince's audience is cool with him just singing and playing.

candy2277 said:

You should also check out the Live Show from Tokyo in 1990. He was dancing a lot in that one too. I think Prince is not as known as a dancer because he never really had those elaborate choreographed numbers with a gang of dancers behind him like MJ, Janet or Madonna. Also, Prince is known more for his musicianship. Another thing is that early in his career, Prince didn't do a lot of dancing in his shows because he was so busy proving himself as a musician. However, when you watch the Purple Rain, Parade, Sign O' the Times, LoveSexy, Nude, and Diamonds & Pearls/Symbol tours/performances, you see that he did a lot of dancing during those shows.

I have way too many posts on this thread now. I better stop before this starts looking like a PM&M thread.

NastradumasKid said:

....

bellanoche said:

Yeah, Prince has proven to be smarter or more intuitive than I ever would have guessed. He's allowed himself to age gracefully. But then again, being multi-talented gives him more options than most.

Growing up I was ride or die for MJ (I grew less enchanted with him after the "Bad" era). I saw all three "Bad" concerts MJ did here. It felt sort of like watching a music video or something, overly rehearsed and somewhat canned, for lack of a better word. Then I won a ticket to see Prince's Lovesexy concert a few months later and begrudgingly had to admit that Prince put on the better show. Prince was organic, showed more personality and seemed to have more creative vision in how to stage a concert....it just flowed together so well. He danced, played guitar, played piano, sang.. crawled on the ground. lol He devoured the stage. And he's been mine ever since! lol What kills me is, having seen Prince 6 other times since then, I can honestly say that he's better now than he was then. I enjoyed this last show I saw more than any other.

I think MJ's genius was best utilized on videos and award show type appearances. Prince, for me, is the best in concert, hands down. Stevie would be second and MJ was third. Having said that, I recorded the last "Bad" concert and listened to the tape the other day for old times sake. I got a little sad hearing "Human Nature."

Michael did not lip-sync during the majority of his career. That is a false statement. Watch any early live footage, and concerts from the Bad Tour especially, and you will see 100% live vocals accompanying rigorous spontaneous/choreographed dancing. In addition to that, in his genre of stage performance, he set the level of uniqueness and precision so high, anytime he could not sing live vocals was either understood or ignored by most people watching, since his advanced styles of dance were always difficult and mesmerizing. Unlike others, his shows were never degraded by him lip-syncing. Therefore, he will always be one of the greatest live performers of all time.

Also, Michael Jackson should not be compared with Prince. I have always felt this way, and still do not understand why Prince is even mentioned during MJ discussions regarding his artistry.

StillDirrty said:

Plus, several of the songs Michael chose to perform during the Dangerous and HIStory Tours are not easy to sing in concert. Some of his vocal techniques used in the studio were difficult for him to replicate live onstage while dancing.

I'd like to see anyone criticizing MJ in this thread to try and sing "Jam" live while performing his exact dance routine (at the same speed). You'll most likely start hyperventilating before the first verse is over.