Prince

poopot

TINMAN82 said:

Competent but hugely over rated. Most grade 5-6 players could easily emulate. Plenty on this forum who are technically superior players. Song writing skills also massively over rated. 

Ffs… one of the greatest song writers and performers of our lifetime, well over 2000 songs penned for himself and others, entertaining beyond all reasonable belief… a true showman…

I guess some people just don’t like music!…

KDS

TINMAN82 said:

Competent but hugely over rated. Most grade 5-6 players could easily emulate. Plenty on this forum who are technically superior players. Song writing skills also massively over rated. 

Entitled to your opinion..... but I couldn’t write ‘when doves cry’, I suspect there aren’t many on the forum either, unless Macca is an active member

EricTheWeary

poopot said:

TINMAN82 said:

Competent but hugely over rated. Most grade 5-6 players could easily emulate. Plenty on this forum who are technically superior players. Song writing skills also massively over rated. 

Ffs… one of the greatest song writers and performers of our lifetime, well over 2000 songs penned for himself and others, entertaining beyond all reasonable belief… a true showman…

I guess some people just don’t like music!…

KDS said:

TINMAN82 said:

Competent but hugely over rated. Most grade 5-6 players could easily emulate. Plenty on this forum who are technically superior players. Song writing skills also massively over rated. 

Entitled to your opinion..... but I couldn’t write ‘when doves cry’, I suspect there aren’t many on the forum either, unless Macca is an active member

Just to reiterate that a)Tinman was just being sarcastic/ trying to be funny after a similar criticism was made against his lord and saviour Joe Bonamassa  and b) has had a strop and left the forum anyway. 

Greatape

richardhomer said:

TINMAN82 said:

Competent but hugely over rated. Most grade 5-6 players could easily emulate. Plenty on this forum who are technically superior players. Song writing skills also massively over rated. 

See also The Beatles, Miles Davies, Jaco Pastorious, BB King, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell…

poopot

EricTheWeary said:

Just to reiterate that a)Tinman was just being sarcastic/ trying to be funny after a similar criticism was made against his lord and saviour Joe Bonamassa  and b) has had a strop and left the forum anyway. 

To be fair comparing bonamassa to prince is like comparing tepid water to a fine wine…

one is see through, bland and insipid the other is prince!!!!!

markv

On the subject of Prince's solo from "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" - I enjoy the solo but for me the absolute best part is at the end, when Prince takes off the guitar, throws it up in the air and walks casually off stage without looking back to see where it lands (it doesn't). Epic showmanship!

maw4neu

Genius . . . I bagged a Free Ticket back in the 90's to see him at " Bingley Hall - Stafford " ( I think ??? ) He was absolutely on it for the whole show, he played, he sang, he danced and he was a breath of fresh air . . . Awesome concert . . very, very talented guy, gone well before his time . . 

Philly_Q

markv said:

On the subject of Prince's solo from "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" - I enjoy the solo but for me the absolute best part is at the end, when Prince takes off the guitar, throws it up in the air and walks casually off stage without looking back to see where it lands (it doesn't). Epic showmanship!

There's another clip, from the Jimmy Fallon show, where he borrowed "Captain" Kirk Douglas's Epiphone Crestwood, chucked it up in the air... and damaged it quite badly.  I regard him as a bit of a dick for doing that, although Kirk Douglas was very diplomatic and said it was fine once it was repaired.

Bork

I had tickets to two of his London 02 shows in 2007 AND the after show parties.  The concerts were OK, the first gig had a latin american band as the warm but the second gig had the amazing Beverly Knight but they couldn't hold a candle against the after show parties.  

Way better than the concerts. Although he didn't appear until at least an hour in (because he wanted to suss the mood of the crowd) when he did, I was utterly blown away by the musicianship of everyone on stage.  There was one point when they were jamming on a tune, Prince switched from guitar onto drums without batting an eyelid.  Then started trying to tell the keyboardist something about a line but the keyboardist couldn't get it so Prince yelled 'on the one'...BAM, everyone dropped apart from the bassist and brass and the regular drummer took over while Prince went over to the keyboardist and played the particular phrase he wanted to hear before going back to the guitar and building the song up from there.   His band leadership was utterly astounding, he was basically live remixing the band on the fly and the musicians on stage were slick as anything.  It was life changing. 

During her after show party, Beverly Knight tried something similar with her band and barely hung onto the song by the skin of her teeth, the band missed or were late with her cues.  It was a bit of a mess.   I suppose just goes to show how much rehearsal goes into that level of performance.

When he died, I was in shock for over a week.

Bork

Philly_Q said:

There's another clip, from the Jimmy Fallon show, where he borrowed "Captain" Kirk Douglas's Epiphone Crestwood, chucked it up in the air... and damaged it quite badly.  I regard him as a bit of a dick for doing that, although Kirk Douglas was very diplomatic and said it was fine once it was repaired.

Lots of stories out there about Prince being a dick.  Jimmy Fallon has a great story about being challenged to a game of ping pong by Prince.   
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9iVXxFt1Wg

 But he looked after his musicians extremely well and his anonymous philanthropic work is well known.  I don't think Prince fits into pigeon holes very easily.

thebreeze

Cols said:

TINMAN82 said:

Competent but hugely over rated. Most grade 5-6 players could easily emulate. Plenty on this forum who are technically superior players. Song writing skills also massively over rated. 

Jesus, who pissed on your chips this week?

Anyway, I'm just going to leave this here, seeing everyone always does the While My Guitar Gently Weeps solo thing.  This is my favorite Prince performance.

https://youtu.be/igYpWqe3s6U 

That's great.  I think this is my favourite though; for the context, the polish, control and general brilliance.  I was lucky to see him at one of his after-show parties in the late 80's.  Awesome night.

RocknRollDave

Bork said:

I had tickets to two of his London 02 shows in 2007 AND the after show parties.  The concerts were OK, the first gig had a latin american band as the warm but the second gig had the amazing Beverly Knight but they couldn't hold a candle against the after show parties.  

Way better than the concerts. Although he didn't appear until at least an hour in (because he wanted to suss the mood of the crowd) when he did, I was utterly blown away by the musicianship of everyone on stage.  There was one point when they were jamming on a tune, Prince switched from guitar onto drums without batting an eyelid.  Then started trying to tell the keyboardist something about a line but the keyboardist couldn't get it so Prince yelled 'on the one'...BAM, everyone dropped apart from the bassist and brass and the regular drummer took over while Prince went over to the keyboardist and played the particular phrase he wanted to hear before going back to the guitar and building the song up from there.   His band leadership was utterly astounding, he was basically live remixing the band on the fly and the musicians on stage were slick as anything.  It was life changing. 

During her after show party, Beverly Knight tried something similar with her band and barely hung onto the song by the skin of her teeth, the band missed or were late with her cues.  It was a bit of a mess.   I suppose just goes to show how much rehearsal goes into that level of performance.

When he died, I was in shock for over a week.

Was lucky enough to see one of the concerts and one of the aftershows. 

Peerless. 

I don’t expect to see another performer of his calibre again in my lifetime.

There’s lots of superb live footage online these days, which very much wasn’t the case when he was alive as he vetoed everything, but I do find it frustrating that he must have been sitting on an absolute treasure trove of awesome live recordings that we never get to here. I’m not one for graverobbing artists by releasing sloppy demos and discarded songs but surely in Prince’s case there is some genuinely high quality material that is just begging for an official release.