Prince invades ACC with extraterrestrial touch
November 26, 2011 00:11:00
Pop Music Critic
It's been ventured so many times now that there's gotta be something to it and, frankly, the same notion seems to strike nearly everyone walking away from a Prince show: maybe this cat's not human.
The same thought — "Prince is an alien" — crossed my mind a couple of times at the Air Canada Centre on Friday night whilst being continuously wowed for three hours by the undiminished vitality of the man's stage presence, and indeed of the whole, mesmerizing Prince thing, 30-odd years into his singular and uncompromising career. I'm sure it did the last time he led the New Power Generation through one of his precision funk 'n' roll marathons in Toronto on the Musicology tour in 2004, too. And in any case, I knew it wasn't an original sentiment, as confirmed by the 28,500 results that turned up when I got home and googled "Prince is an alien."
Granted, those results are roughly split between Prince Rogers Nelson and the titular protagonist of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Le Petit Prince, another diminutive visionary of possibly extraterrestrial origins. But the fact remains: something's going on with Prince that drives people to hyperbolize about an otherworldly nature, about a sort of superhumanity.
Look at him, for starters. At 53, he's aged so little from the dapper, purple-jacketed gent on the cover of Controversy 30 years ago that you figure there's gotta be a hideously weathered Prince portrait mouldering away somewhere in the Paisley Park Studios attic. He can still move like a mutha, too. Every stride, every gesture, every swivel to the microphone or stroke at the guitar or sweep of the hair is governed by an impeccably suave internal choreography. And, oh, is he a pro at hitting his marks. If a showboating slink across his curvy stage — a magnificently lit in-the-round affair shaped like the "Love" glyph he infamously used as a name for several years during the '90s — has to end atop a trap door, Prince is there the moment it descends into the catacombs, clenching his guitar pick in his hand for the big-screen cameras on cue for added effect.
Then, of course, there are the tunes, which came bounding spryly one atop the other on Friday in a taut, hyperprofessional, yet totally loose-limbed streak of cocksure awesomeness. In an email interview with the Star logged a couple of weeks back, Prince had declared the current edition of the New Power Generation — a nimble ensemble featuring three powerhouse female backing singers and Maceo Parker on saxophone — "a perfect mix of musicians 2 wreck house in all of Canada," and the demolition began early.
The first number with Prince onstage wound a twitchy, James Brown-esque funk jam out to nearly the 30-minute mark, and most of the songs that followed during the concert's first hour or so were reworked in the same, kinetic spirit. "Pop Life" had an entirely unfamiliar bounce, losing the recorded version's melancholy entirely, for instance, while a sort of "extendamix" medley of the Cars' "Let's Go," "Take Me With U," a devastatingly groovy "Cream" and the crowd-thrilling "Raspberry Beret" offered such fresh, fascinating takes on old material that it sometimes took a second or two to figure out what hit you were hearing. The languid read of "Little Red Corvette" the band delivered on Friday might as well have been a new song.
That's why Prince and the New Power Generation is still such a hot show, though, isn't it? He consistently keeps it fresh and challenging for himself and his players, and it shows. Even though the set list for this opening date on the "Welcome 2 Canada" tour was chockablock with popular titles — "1999," "U Got the Look," "Let's Go Crazy," a 15-minute "Purple Rain" sprayed with purple confetti and some heroically moody guitar soloing, a limber "Kiss" during which Prince spent the breakdown dancing in the spotlight — the performance didn't feel remotely like a tired nostalgia kick. The first encore had Prince reworking the electronic beats and basslines to synth-pop favourites such as "When Doves Cry," "I Would Die 4 U" and "Sign o' the Times" on the fly from a luminescent, grand piano-shaped keyboard. Five more encores would follow. Tired nostalgia kicks don't do that. Hell, Prince didn't betray any tiredness at all. Only humans get tired.
Peace, Love & Light [& Stay Funky] ...
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/TheFloridaNPG/
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http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/Live_4_Love_Minneapolis/
NPG Member 4 Life ... [Live 4 Love]
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