Wheelistically @ Claire.NU

This is my first “back post” of many.… So, onto my second Purple Night in London…

PRINCE — The Earth Tour — Sunday 16^th Septem­ber 2007, The O2 Arena, London.

Unlike the gig on the 7^th August (where my Mum and Step-Dad came along with us), K and I were brave and went alone, embark­ing on our first ever bit of Scary Lon­don Driv­ing. We decided to go early and make a day of it, but “The Dome” isn’t quite yet fin­ished so there wasn’t as much to do as we’d ori­gin­ally envis­aged other than eat, drink and eat some more.

On the upside, being there early meant we were for­tu­nate enough to sit just on the other side of the arena wall and listen to some of the sound check *Squee!* We got to hear Some­where Here on Earth on keys and Money Don’t Mat­ter 2nite (full band).

Oh. My. Life. That man’s fal­setto is just dev­ast­at­ing, I just stopped in my tracks mid-sentence — he was fault­less — and that was just the sound check. At first, K just thought they were play­ing his songs in the pavil­ion, it was only when you could hear Prince stop and re-check the mic etc. that she real­ised it wasn’t a record.

I did the Fan Girl thing and raided the mer­chand­ise stall once again… Two more T-Shirts, another stash of Cin­na­mon Girl incense and a Mr. Good­night pil­low­case. Yes, you read that right — I’ve got Prince’s beau­ti­ful face on my PILLOW — “awake” on one side and “asleep” on the other! Now, is this, or is this not, a new level in Fan Girlness?!

Then, after about 20 bath­room trips (I was determ­ined to wring my blad­der out to dry so that I didn’t have to miss even a nano­second of the show) and a wait that seemed like forever, we headed to our seats.

Well, Prince kept to his prom­ise. He said that no two shows would be the same and he wasn’t wrong. Sunday night had a com­pletely dif­fer­ent atmo­sphere and set list. Gone was the bright, funky party of the 7^th August and here in its place was a soft purple Blues and Gos­pel jam on gui­tar and keys and an “Old, old skool” sampler set on synth.

There has been sev­eral times when I’ve seen a band for more than one show dur­ing a par­tic­u­lar tour and save for a slight change in crowd/band energy and a spot of ad-lib, it’s always been pretty much same thing, dif­fer­ent hat. I loved the way that I got to see him again a second time, but the exper­i­ence felt just as new as the first. If it wasn’t for the stage setup, you just would not believe it was the same tour.

Set List
{Band Only ‘We’re warm­ing it up y’all’ with Shelby J. on vox}

Chelsea Rodgers
Misty Blue
Baby Love

{Prince on stage with gui­tar in a white/silver suit}

1999
I Feel For U
Con­tro­versy (House­quake chant)
Some­where Here On Earth
If I Was Ur Girl­friend
Musi­co­logy
The ? Of U / The One

What A Won­der­ful World / Your Song [Ren­ato & Mike Philly]
Little Red Cor­vette — 2 lines spoken

{Prince Piano set — wear­ing Koko shirt}

Adore
Insa­ti­able
Money Don’t Mat­ter 2 Night
Dear Mr Man (almost gos­pel style)
I Would Die 4 U
Little Red Cor­vette
Under The Cherry Moon (instru­mental)
Love Is A Los­ing Game

{Prince back on guitar}

Cream
U Got The Look
Take Me With U
Gui­tar
Whole Lotta Love
Kiss
Purple Rain

Encore

Instru­mental Intro
Noth­ing Com­pares 2 U

{Prince on Synth}

D.M.S.R. (fills only)
Sign ‘O’ The Times (Two Verses)
D.M.S.R. (fills only)
When Doves Cry (Two Verses)
Alpha­bet St (’til Yeah, Yeah, Yeah)
Irres­ist­ible Bitch (no lyr­ics)
Darling Nikki (no lyr­ics)
Pop Life (First Verse)
I Wanna Be Ur Lover (Edit)
The Most Beau­ti­ful Girl In The World (First Verse)
Rasp­berry Beret (Two Verses)

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

The night kicked off with Shelby J and the NPG warm­ing up the crowd in lieu of a sep­ar­ate sup­port band. The new tune Chelsea Rodgers is fant­astic live and des­pite the lack of Prince vocals, Shelby really did it justice. She’s got an amaz­ingly power­ful voice and def­in­itely deserves credit as an artist in her own right — Shelby J’s no back­ing singer!

Prince rose up centre stage through dry ice amid the open­ing of 1999 — a treat given that in prior years, he’d claimed to have per­man­ently “retired” it. Wear­ing a metal­lic white/silver suit (no bum-huggers tonight — he was keep­ing it “loose”), he blazed through the first sec­tion on gui­tar, slow­ing down only for Some­where Here On Earth where he called a leggy bru­nette up onto the stage and ser­en­aded her as she perched on a stool fan­ning her­self in a mock fluster.

Prince: “Are you hav­ing fun tonight, Lon­don?“
Crowd: Cheers/Applause
Prince eye­ing leggy bru­nette: “Not as much fun as I’m about to have!”

I was in rap­tures as I got treated to a repeat per­form­ance of If I Was Ur Girl­friend. I can never hear that song enough and the crowd and atmo­sphere really picked up at this point.

One of the night’s high­lights for me was The ? Of U/The One. I was so sur­prised to hear The One — it seems that since Prince became Prince again, clas­sic tracks have been largely and sadly absent. So, to hear a song that was an old NPG track from the early 1990’s (and the high­light of the largely dubi­ous New Power Soul album) was a very wel­come sur­prise. This par­tic­u­lar rendi­tion was an exten­ded funk-face-ridden “bluesy jam” on gui­tar that Prince seemed to really get into. The two tracks envel­oped and segued in and out of one another until the funk just got too much to handle and he had to get someone to take the gui­tar away from him as it was mak­ing him “get all ugly in the face” as he put it. I still main­tain that no amount of funk could ever make a face that pretty “get all ugly”, but I digress!

Ren­ato and Mike Phil­lips’ What A Won­der­ful World / Your Song med­ley was beau­ti­ful, with the crowd even tak­ing on the lyr­ics to Elton John’s Your Song dur­ing Renato’s part on keys. Philly con­tin­ued as ever to com­pletely blow me away on sax, if he ever does a solo UK tour, I’m going to be first in line for tick­ets. Hon­estly, check this bloke out on iTunes or some­thing — I mean it.

Prince reappeared on stage for the piano seg­ment, in a black and white “Koko” shirt, dark trousers and black, jaunty Fedora and began with Adore, which sounds just as beau­ti­fully mov­ing in his legendary seduct­ive fal­setto live as I had ima­gined it would be. It was a nice touch given that it seemed to be in acknow­ledge­ment (by way of a point and nod) of those up in Block 110 wav­ing an over-sized col­our­ful ban­ner read­ing: “Please Sing ADORE”.

Insa­ti­able had an altern­at­ive melody and saw him aptly “erase the naughty bits“¹ , whilst Money Don’t Mat­ter 2nite made its crowd-pleasing debut appear­ance on this tour and got every­one singing along.

Prince seemed happy to meddle and noodle around on piano, impro­vising new verses to Dear Mr. Man appar­ently on the spot, which was delivered to almost gos­pel keys in a spoken style that gradu­ally got funkier as it went along. I Would Die 4 U was emotive and exhil­ar­at­ing as I par­ti­cip­ated, com­plete with all the actions from the Purple Rain movie, with gay aban­don and didn’t care who was watch­ing! (If you have no idea what I’m talk­ing about, go rent the film; the act­ing is a bit cack, but I prom­ise the music makes up for everything!)

The second big high­light for me was Prince mak­ing his gui­tar sing on a blis­ter­ing cover of Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love. You have to hear this to believe it, fuck­ing stun­ning! I am so, so pleased I got to wit­ness this cover live, it rocked so hard it hurt. I was seated next to a really friendly, chatty Brummie old skool rocker who had made the trek down from Birm­ing­ham with his wife, son and father (in-law?), his face was a pic­ture when Whole Lotta Love struck up!

We were treated to a bit of a sing-along with Kiss, the epic Purple Rain and the clas­sic Noth­ing Com­pares 2 U (which I will always main­tain sweeps the floor with Sinead O’Connor’s ver­sion — he never should have given that song to her, in my opinion.)

The third and final high­light was the med­ley on synth and the sur­prises held within.

Prince returned to the spiral after the encore, his hair youth­fully pushed from his face in a wide black head band, evid­ently refreshed and infin­itely more play­ful. Toy­ing with the more die-hard crowd, he’d would tease us with a few beats of a clas­sic sample before taunt­ing “Y’all ain’t ready for Sign O’ The Times” or “Y’all don’t know my old, old skool!”

Shock­ingly, given that Prince is now a devout Jehovah’s Wit­ness and has pro­claimed to never again to per­form his more expli­cit or con­tro­ver­sially adult mater­ial, both Irres­ist­ible Bitch and the infam­ous Darling Nikki made an appear­ance. Opt­ing against singing lyr­ics about mas­turb­at­ing in a hotel lobby with a magazine, Prince instead cocked a raised eye­brow and wagged his fin­ger jok­ingly at an almost dis­be­liev­ing and very amused audi­ence. Classic!

Sev­eral times it looked as though Prince was draw­ing the med­ley to a close, but every time he went to shift his wait from his stool, the crowd went abso­lutely bal­listic. This guy was not get­ting away that eas­ily! Twice he relen­ted and would pla­cate us with another tune and even warned at one point “But, y’all gone miss yo’ train. Ya gonna have to all sleep here tonight with me!… Gonna stay up all night?… I’ll sit here all night!” (as if we’d protest!)

The Most Beau­ti­ful Girl In The World was the icing on the cake for me. The release of this song sig­ni­fied the point in my life that I really got into Prince’s music in a big way. This in many ways seemed such a per­sonal song, that spoke so spe­cific­ally about a cer­tain point in his life (i.e. his mar­riage to first wife, Mayte), that I never even ima­gined I’d get to hear it live over 10 years later, des­pite it serving as his first and only UK #1 chart hit. It might have only been the first verse, but to me it was the world.

Thank you to K for allow­ing me to exper­i­ence once again a night filled with beau­ti­ful music and beau­ti­ful people.

And, thank you ulti­mately, to Prince and the NPG for shar­ing with us all and for giv­ing a per­form­ance that at times would render me awe-struck and motion­less at what I was see­ing and hear­ing. Dur­ing Take Me With U, my new Brummie friend turned to me in all the genu­ine excite­ment of a kid at Christ­mas and exclaimed “Now I know why you keep com­ing back — he’s amaz­ing!”

I couldn’t have put it bet­ter myself.

1. see lyr­ics for in-joke [back]