Wheelistically @ Claire.NU

PRINCE — The Earth Tour — Tues­day 7^th August 2007, The O2 Arena, London.

Heeeey Funk-ay Luuun-duuun, Heeeey Funk-ay Luuun-duuun!!! Repeat ad infinitum.

Where have I been? Funky Lon­don, that’s where! See? I even have souvenirs!

Click image to see lar­ger ver­sion and notes over at Flickr

It’s not like nor­mal Lon­don, it’s a Prince-ified Lon­don where Grupo Fant­asma, a dap­per and jauntily attired “Latin funk, salsa and cumbia band from Aus­tin, Texas” kick off the night in style. I heart Gil­bert the trum­pet player, that big guy can dance!

I was never brought up with and have never really listened to Hispanic/Latin American-influenced music at all. It isn’t that I don’t like it or enjoy it, it’s just that expos­ure to it is some­what lim­ited when you’re Eng­lish, with a very Eng­lish her­it­age and you live in the Essex coun­tryside. Des­pite my inher­ent dis­ad­vant­age, I thought Grupo Fant­asma (who opened for Prince on Tues­day night) were fantastic.

Most, if not all of it was in Span­ish so I didn’t under­stand a single word, but I had such a great time listen­ing that I bought some of their songs on iTunes the next morn­ing. If you ever want great Sum­mer­time music that’s going to make you feel good, check out Grupo Fant­asma.

Prince Set List

{Prince Solo on Guitar}

Little Red Cor­vette (Edit)
Rasp­berry Beret (Edit)
I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man (Edit)
Alpha­bet Street (Edit)
Some­times It Snows In April (joined by Ren­ato on keys)

{Band Join Prince on Stage}

Cream
U Got The Look
Musi­co­logy (inc. Freaks On This Side and Hey Funky Lon­don crowd chant)
Pass The Peas
Give It To Me Baby intro
Play That Funky Music (audi­ence mem­ber on vox)
I Feel For U
Con­tro­versy
House­quake (Edit)

Won­der­ful World (sax solo)

{Prince Solo Piano/Keyboard Med­ley on the spiral of the symbol}

Some­where Here On Earth (Edit)
Dia­monds & Pearls (Edit)
Beau­ti­ful Ones
How Come U Don’t Call Me Any­more
Con­di­tion Of The Heart (Edit)
Do Me Baby (Edit)
I Wanna Be Ur Lover (all at the piano but with band)

{Band Join Prince on Stage}

If I Was Ur Girl­friend
Black Sweat
Kiss
Purple Rain

Encore 1

Let’s Go Crazy
Take Me With You
Guitar

Encore 2

Get On The Boat (With Grupo Fant­asma)

Kisses and kudos to HQ and The Org for help with the setlist

At around 9PM on Tues­day night, I was sat merely feet away from Prince. I mean it, lit­er­ally a few feet. The seats dir­ectly in front of me were the VIP seats that cost sev­eral hun­dred pounds. My seat cost just £31.21.

Don’t you just love pri­or­ity book­ing?

When Prince was crawl­ing seduct­ively and play­fully along the floor, not only was I on the verge of col­lapse but I could look him in the eyes. That’s how close I was.

The show was per­formed “in the round” with the stage in the shape of the sym­bol. I think the drum kit and keys were inside the hollowed-out cir­cu­lar part, whilst Marva King (back­ing vocals) and the Hornz sec­tion lined the circle edge. The Twinz strut­ted and gyr­ated across the breath of the sym­bol (excuse all this ‘z’ busi­ness, flam­ing Prince­bon­ics!) and Prince was all over that stage like a rash so that every­one got a good taste.

Play­ing “in the round” meant that Prince had his work cut out mak­ing sure to face every dif­fer­ent dir­ec­tion at some point dur­ing the show, often sprint­ing from one end of the stage to the other mid-song so that no-one was left star­ing at his back for too long. Not that I minded, I was treated to bril­liant views of him shak­ing his bum on many a happy occa­sion! He reg­u­larly graced the sec­tion of the stage closest to me with some wicked dance moves and even inter­ac­ted with the fans quite a bit with some high-fives, blown kisses, cheeky grins and know­ing nods to those he recog­nised from pre­vi­ous nights. (Which, included a suited-and-booted guy in VIP that danced like a drunk Dad at a wed­ding all night until the back of his suit jacket was sodden).

I was sat to the side with the spiral “limb”. I know this only going by the seat­ing plan as from where we were seated, we couldn’t get a sense on the stage size or the actual shape visu­ally as we were too close to get an over­all view. Not that I’m com­plain­ing, you under­stand, just explain­ing.

It was mes­mer­ising, truly out of this world. I have never been to a show like it. It wasn’t so much a gig, but more like a huge party. It was So. Much. Fun. Prince was so into it, smil­ing, dan­cing and boun­cing around the stage with so much energy, he put most per­formers half his age to shame. And can I just say: That Man Rocks On The Gui­tar, Amen.

Just see­ing the band itself was amaz­ing, to finally see all of these people that I’d heard so much about. And from what I could hear from where I was sit­ting, they were fault­less all night. Cora on drums, Josh on bass (?) [I couldn’t see for sure as he was on the other side of the stage and so too was Hayes on keys?], Greg Boyer on trom­bone, a lovely gen­tle­man on trum­pet whose name escapes me and Ren­ato Nato also on keys. Mr Mike Phil­lips was on sax and was look­ing so sharp in his white suit, he was in my eye line all night, play­ing up to the crowd. And, here’s where it gets really good: MACEO PARKER was there!

For those of you that don’t know who Maceo Parker is, shame on you. No, really I mean it. Shame. On. You.

The show began with Prince rising up through the middle of the stage sur­roun­ded by dry ice and then launch­ing into a five-song solo seg­ment with him stood on his own with noth­ing but his gui­tar. Fan-bloody-tastic. Prince was then joined by Ren­ato for a beau­ti­fully haunt­ing rendi­tion of Some­times It Snows in April.

In Alpha­bet Street, he gave us all a giggle and took us to Manchester instead of Tene­see. To be hon­est, he could have taken me to a grotty chalet in Bognor Regis and I’d have still been in my element!

The band then scaled the stairs from beneath the stage to take their pos­i­tions and set the roof alight with the bright­est and funki­est set ever. Prince and the band were On. Fire. People were dan­cing in the aisles, those in seat­ing rushed to their feet for the nearest avail­able floor space and no one sat down all night. Well, except maybe me. But if you think I was just sit­ting there politely doing the shoulder shuffle, you are very much mistaken!

A funk-drenched Musi­co­logy morphed into chants of Freaks On This Side and then Hey Funky Lon­don Heeeey Funk-ay Luuun-duuun!!!. At this point, things got just “too funky” as he segued into The J.B.‘s/James Brown cover Pass The Peas and toyed fleet­ingly with Rick James’ Give It To Me Baby.

Dur­ing the party, the band pulled some audi­ence mem­bers up on stage for a bit of a wiggle. Cyn­ics spec­u­late that a few may have been “planted” but to be hon­est, I don’t really care and it doesn’t really mat­ter. A few of the ladies thought very highly of them­selves, but served to do little more than make them­selves look a bit daft. A blonde got the raw end of Prince’s cheeky sense of humour as she stood shak­ing her stuff to rap­tur­ous applause, not real­ising that the reason that every­one was cheer­ing was because Prince was stand­ing dir­ectly behind her imit­at­ing her and tak­ing the piss. It was all in good humour though, more mis­chief than malice. There was a sol­it­ary white bloke (that couldn’t dance) that was pulled up from the audi­ence, who then took to doing all the vocals on Play That Funky Music when Prince passed him the mic! The party was in full swing until the house was brought down with the aptly named House­quake. There are no words to describe it, you just had to be there. Jump­ing up and down. (If you know the song, you know what I mean.)

Prince spent the night with his head wrapped in a black Do-Rag — I think the heat and sweat must play havoc with his hair as it appeared to expand fur­ther and fur­ther out of the top of the rag as the night wore on. He began the night in an “Old Skool Prince” white ruffled shirt, black cropped jacket, tight bum-hugging trousers and heels. But, at this point in the show, Prince exited to change his clob­ber into a low-necked, sleeve­less, black top and match­ing wrist­bands (the bum-huggers stayed through­out the night. Joy!).

The pace was taken down a few notches with a stun­ning — no, mind-blowing Sax solo of What a Won­der­ful World that earned Mike Philly (?) [it was very dark, but I think it was too tall to be Maceo] a stand­ing ova­tion. He held that note for what seemed like an AGE. I don’t know where that bloke got his lungs, but they don’t half serve him well!

A key­board was set up on the spiral “limb” for Prince as he returned for a solo med­ley on keys, he played some of my most beloved bal­lads, whilst bathed in a purple spot­light. The med­ley included: the achingly beau­ti­ful Some­where Here on Earth from the new album, the deli­cious How Come U Don’t Call Me Any­more and Do Me, Baby and a spine-tingling, full length, tear-your-heart-out rendi­tion of The Beau­ti­ful Ones.

The band rejoined Prince for the full-out, elong­ated, horn-filled, funk-fest that was I Wanna Be Ur Lover. Clas­sic! I then got my wish. I got to see Prince play my favour­ite song live, right in front of me. He played If I Was Ur Girl­friend, com­plete with “side-to-side” audi­ence par­ti­cip­a­tion. It was the one song that I really, really wanted to exper­i­ence and I got to hear/see it! I feel so incred­ible lucky.

Kiss name-checked Big Brother as opposed to Dyn­asty and Purple Rain was every bit like you ima­gine it to be live. Awe-inspiring. It also con­tained my favour­ite quote of the night when Prince inter­rup­ted mid-lyric to exclaim: “I love this song!”

Prince des­cen­ded back through the centre of the stage to get changed into a fit­ted black, open-necked shirt for the encore(s) and brought back The Twinz to ramp-up the party spirit. Let’s Go Crazy included a stonk­ing gui­tar solo sim­ilar to the one in his per­form­ance at The Brit Awards 2006 and the recent single Gui­tar worked phe­nom­en­ally bet­ter in a live set­ting than on record.

The night ended on a high with the evening’s final encore: Get On The Boat. Grupo Fant­asma returned to the stage, this time in crisp white suits to match Prince’s band, to add some killer horns and beef-up the per­cus­sion. It was great to see all of the artists and musi­cians of the night end­ing the show together, every­one gave such a fant­astic and ener­getic performance.

There really is noth­ing else like this show, if you haven’t got your tick­ets yet, I sug­gest you start beg­ging, bor­row­ing and steal­ing. Seriously.

K has teased and mocked me for years about my love of Prince’s music and read­ily admit­ted that she dreaded this show dur­ing the months lead­ing to it. In between scream­ing like a Fan Girl and drool­ing over Prince’s arse, I had sneaky-peeks over at K dur­ing the show and her little face was just awe-struck. Upon leav­ing, guess who’s idea it was to get more tick­ets for future dates? And, no. It wasn’t mine.

I think we have a little con­vert on our hands. Oh, and tick­ets on order for two more shows!

There are no more words. Only memor­ies of the music and if there was a way I could bottle them and share them with you, it would blow your mind.