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Musicology - Salt Lake CitySep 09 '04 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line IF it's the last time he tours, you can't miss this opportunity. He's proven that all the insipid guitar-rock and pre-fabricated bands are just bland lip-synched wastes-of-time.
Having just been to the Musicology live tour, I've got to get this out of my system so this is a review of the live stage concert - all 3 hours of it. "Dearly beloved.....We are gathered here today to get through this thing called life......" And so started Prince's Musicology concert at the open-air Usana Amphitheater. And lo, for it was totally awesome. I didn't care much for the warm-up act (I was so underwhelmed I can't even remember her name), but when she'd finished they started prepping the stage for Prince. A huge projection TV screen above the stage showed some adverts for the NPGmusic website - Prince and the New Power Generation. Then the stage went dark and they started by projecting on to the big screen Alicia Key's speech at the inauguration of Prince to the rock and roll Hall of Fame. Everyone was on their feet by now and when she said "let me introduce........Prince!" The stage lights came on purple and yellow and there he was, standing front and center. Guitar riff....."Dearly beloved....." and the crowd went bonkers. From that point on it just got better and better. High speed lighting effects, classic 80's and 90's Prince. A radical medley of Kiss, When Doves Cry and U Got The Look. Candy Dulfer played some classic sax and he did a brilliant bass drum set. His new keyboard player (Renato Neto) is a total wiz and at the half-time break he finished with a huge R&B number and the stage went black. A single blue spotlight picked out the keyboard player doing his thing for a bit. It gave everyone a chance to sit down again. During this "break", a guy came out (who's name I can't remember) and did a great Ray Charles tribute. He looked more like Ray Charles than Ray Charles! When Prince came back out, he did 4 or 5 purely acoustic numbers sitting on a chair mid-stage with his guitar. One of which was a totally transparent dig at Sony Music and Warner Brothers. About half the audience got it. The second half was more new stuff and R&B. Up-tempo stuff came along and he then had 10 or 15 girls come up on stage and strut their thang. When he came to do "Kiss" he gave the mic to one of the girls and she belted out a chorus really well - obviously to Prince's surprise. At the climax, he had all the fans, smoke, spotlights, audience lights, and everything going followed by a blast of white light and the stage went dark. The video screen faded in a spinning Prince symbol like his own personal Batman logo, and blue spotlights slowly scanned the stage with a darth-vader-esque breathing/heartbeat noise. The house lights didn't come on so everyone started cheering, chanting, screaming and banging the seats to make some noise. After 10 minutes of this, he came back on with the warm-up act and did an uninspiring piece, then she left (yay!) and they went around the band, member by member doing solos. The show culminated when the purple lights faded on and the stage filled with smoke. For the last number, Prince walked up front and center wearing the old purple suit, high heels, and carrying the Symbol guitar. He performed a pitch-perfect, 10 minute rendition of Purple Rain and that was it. End of show. Amazing. Well worth the $160 it cost me in tickets. Three days later, I still have the echos of the 12,000-strong crowd singing the "oooo-oooo-hooooo-oooooooo" chorus in Purple Rain, and it brings chills to my spine typing the review. The unbelievable thing about the whole experience is that Prince is now 46, and has been virtually non-existant over the last -what? - 10 years? I was a fan when he was Prince. Before Symbol, before "The Artist formerly known as..". Just plain Prince. And in Musicology he is at the top of his game, once again as Prince. The band members are 100% committed and totally strong, and in that three hours, he proved for once and for all that current music is just useless, bland, insipid guitar-rock with no soul. Do you think that if Clay Aiken, Nelly, or Christina Milian disappeared for 10 years and came back, that they could play to sold-out venues across the country? They can't do that now and they're supposedly in their prime. The only disappointment? He didn't do Sign 'O the Times. Not that it was a real disappointment - just I would have liked to hear it live one last time.  |
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