THE SECOND SHOW OF PRINCE’S HISTORIc 21 night run at LOndon’s O2 Arena began with a deliriously swaggering New Orleanian version of Down By The Riverside.
Maceo Parker - veteran of James Brown and Funkaparlidelic tours and records - was sent out along the flanks of the in the round symbol shaped stage, raising the crowd to pandemonium before the arrival of the little feller himself.
Introduced several times with awe and reverence by Prince on the first night Maceo looks years younger and stones lighter than when I interviewed in 199something, on the ocassion of his revived UK hit Cross The Tracks.
But then its not hard to see how playing with Prince, in a situation that harkens back to the jazz jamming natural music world of yore, in a place where his abundant talents are given the RESPECT they deserve, would revitalise Maceo, or any musician, or anyone that comes to see and hear Prince and his band.
Prince, the great original and rule breaker, is a beautiful paradox a whooly original force of nature who is naturally, and effortlessly, a compendium of anteceding band leaders (think Basie and Ellington, think JB) and incandescent icons (Hendrix, Presley, Dylan).
The show itself, in its staging, was , my pal ventured, akin to both Tennesse Williams phantasmagorical Camino Del Rey, a Desolation Row of funk theatre, a definite raising of spirits, in a Holy Shamanic manner, evident when Prince was down on bended knees with Maceo blowing up a storm, his soul shredding screams (Little Richard by way of JB in wracked fervour) turning the 20,000 crowd to pandemonium barely 3 songs in.
This was striking - increasingly rock shows centred on spectacle and digitised contrivance have become a place where audiences come to witness rather than participate.
The ongoing* coup of Prince’s 21 night sttint has been to completely flip the script. The artful starts long before you reach the stage - albums turned to mere drinks coasters, just flimsy objects, plentiful in their supply, meaningless in the replication.
Ha! You think you can own music? By the gifts of commodifying culture?
Prince’s O2 stint is a re-education in the holy essentials of the live performance as a sacred sacrament. I had a quibble with the notices around the venue asking people not to record and photograph the performance on the first night.
An impossible dictat to enforce in todays technocentric world, why not go the Grateful Dead route and allow folk to record in the best quality possible?
Then a note appearred on the digital read out the second night before the show underling the artist request with the explanation that this show was, said Prince, for the audience’s memories.
I could dig the logic, music as a naturally created power, a life force beyond the corporate cack.
Prince’s show gives all that speil meaning. The good folk that work in O2, bright friendly, warm and welcoming to a man and woman, boy and girl deserve his and his band’s soul lifting presence( though the middle management organization needs sorting out, the ludicrous computer dependent concession queing system, the coffee counter that only serves coffee white - Are sponsor partners Nescafe happy with frankly racist or, at least, Dairyiest state of affairs).
Still..
Prince is a great - the greatest - pop culture icon of my lifetime but his real victory is to paint the vital founding schools of American music and culture - jazz ,gospel,soul - in such vivid colours at the centre of his art.
Prince’s POplife had to be different to attain his present delirious freedom. No one else could do this, would dare try this. The Rolling Stones are doing 3 nights with all their history and branding but Prince, Prince supposedly so long in the wilderness, beyond the business pale just comes in - in anyone of his 257 costume changes - like a miraculous appartition through the wreaths of dry ice and - simply destroys the place.
A prophet of eco doom - have you listened to Purple Rain recently, felt, thought what it means?
And after a show like tonights you could still make a list of the great stuff he aint done, the great material he aint performed, making a repeat visit a
“20 more nights of this - too much fun!” he declared the first night.
”Every day I thank the Lord Jehovah that this is my life ,” he added on the second night. And you beleive him, Prince is such a comic creation, getting a crossection of the audience up , on the second night a game big girl was invited to the mic to take the vocal but attempted (and, to be fair, accomplished) a full length split.
“The bar is now closed,” winked the Little Prince. In such moments Prince has that easy grace and control, the priceless intimacy of Elvis, but elsewhere he has a control of his physique and mental powers the King so evidently lacked - long before he got to Prince’s current age (52 going on 17, I’d say).
This is thing the sheer spirituality of the live music experience, a raising of the sights, the possibility, inherent in life and the universe.
Who else can do this, who? Dylan? Sometimes - but can he wear a yellow suit, dance on high heels and scream like he’s going to raise God and all his angels into a holy choir?
Can he still play guitar like Jimi Hendrix, make like Marvin in the throes of agonised ecstasy?
Can he take a real hero of American music like Maceo and put him in a band where he thrives and gambols and does things with Morris Albert’s MOR smoocher Feelings that recalls Coltrane on Favourite Things?
No, Bob’s great, a living monument also to the glories of live performance, but its only Prince that does what Prince does.
I sat close to him afterwards in the VIP bar, contained myself, realising that as he was talking to a beautiful brazilian lady he prolly wasnt up for the fulminations of an overaged overweight boy fan.
JUst to be in his presence, so close, magical, only being near Dylan could have had the same frisson.
I thanked that great girl singer for her Crazy (brilliantly, masterfully, humbly mashed together with Prince’s One Nation vamp in the encore) and everything else and she said - we couldnt do it without the audience.
20,000 people - not being asked to sit and soak it up but to get up and realise how life affirming, life changing how real and deep and electrifying and world changing this stuff can be.
Dylan said there should be statues built to the Beatles in America, for helping the country rediscover itself. The same applies to Prince and London, surely, why have we been so honoured so blessed by this visitation, the implications of it border on the cosmic?
Mandelson’s Millenium Dome, once a symbol of New Labour hubris, now become like a revival centre, an awakening of what Prince and his crew call Funky London.
Anyone with anymore tickets…get in touch. I’m in the market, for sure.
*(Ongoing? Lordy! - what is it going to be like by the last date? Already the first two shows so different, so brilliant, so fluid, so heady a culmination of Prince’s brilliance, shining now with a voltage even in excess of those 80s Wembleys shows, themselves as good as any I ever seen. Beleive me if these shows continue like this that o2 will rise in the air, float free and high over the ocean, like the Mothership of Yore, landing in America where a new world of possibility and openess and love and everybody is an equal star shining bright will pertain. Thats how it can feel at its greatest far flung reaches anyway.)
