Jehovas Witness Online

Prince

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4.0 stars

If Prince came knocking on your door, would you let him in? Ask any fan who was wowed at Tuesday’s self-indulgent concert in Rexall Place and you can guess the answer: Sure, where do we sign up?

The world’s funkiest Jehovah’s Witness brought the hits and a whole lot more to a nearly sold-out house at Rexall Place for his “Welcome 2 Canada” tour. Showing flashes of brilliance throughout, the Artist Formerly Known as the Artist Formerly Known as Prince delivered a solid if somewhat scatterbrained show replete with all the hits fans know and love. Or at least pieces of all the hits fans know and love. Minus some of the pre-Jehovah material that’s too nasty for church, of course. So, no Sexy Motherf---er.

But we heard just about every other steamy, sexy soul tune Prince is known for, some merely knocked out as snippets in medleys. As he shouted at one point, “I have too many hits!” He sure does. And the man sure knows how to blow his own horn. He knows how to ham it up. We heard guitar solo after guitar solo. People blown away by his radioactive funkiness or amazing voice might forget that Prince is also an excellent guitarist who can rock out with the best of them. The audience was encouraged to sing along to the well-known hits at every opportunity.

Going on an hour past his scheduled start time – typical – and after some apparent confusion with the lights, Prince finally appeared to open with Let’s Go Crazy. His trio of back-up singers, who went for the Earth Mother look, sprinted around the stage to pump up the crowd. With the tempo and energy bars set at their peak, the double-time tent revival feel continued with Delirious, which in turn segued into an almost continuous barrage of pure groove. A quick pause and a ballad – Take Me With U – and it was into a 10-minute funk workout where Prince’s secret weapon was unleashed: Saxophonist Maceo Parker.

The only problem with the show was a lack of focus, as if Prince was trying to stuff all the (clean) sides of his entire career into two hours and still get to jam and do crowd calisthenics on top of it. It was confusing, sometimes cluttered. And just because you’re in a hockey arena doesn’t mean you have to have the crowd sing along to EVERY song. The truncated versions of favourite tunes and Prince’s almost constant patter – he said “Edmonton!” about 100 times – also tended to distract from the musicality of the event. He had all these great players up there and they sometimes came off like it was the Prince Karaoke Night. And while he may have “too many hits,” there was still somehow room to cover KC and the Sunshine Band and several other excerpts from other ancient disco tunes. Who is this guy trying to be – everything to everybody?

But for every flaw came a spine-tingling moment. The showmanship was top notch. Memorable moments included a version of Play That Funky Music in honour of the mad dancing mojo of some white boy from the audience brought on stage, and Purple Rain – ending the main set with an explosion of silver confetti.

Two encores followed, the last after the lights had already gone up with the cheering crowd refusing to leave – for a soulful rendition of Nothing Compares 2U, and then the funk fired up again.

At that point, any grumbling was silenced and all was forgiven: Prince may keep his title of “soul superstar” after all.

4**** out of 5

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