Much excitement at the news that Prince will be coming to London in less than two weeks. Cue this reaction from the NME office:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVj9uVtM4Kw
(That’s a clip from the Prince episode of New Girl FYI.)
The press release reads: “To celebrate the release of PLECTRUMELECTRUM, the highly anticipated debut album from 3RDEYEGIRL, his all-female rock trio, Prince is planning to play iconic venues in and around London starting Feb 3rd.” Iconic venues? The Roundhouse? The Lyceum, where made his debut live performance in 1981? Brixton? The Barfly?
All we know so far is this: The first stop is… the living room of Lianne La Havas. “This 24-year-old singer-songwriter met Prince last year during La Havas’ tour of America. They jammed together at Prince’s Paisley Park Studio in Minneapolis and have kept in touch ever since. When Prince told Lianne he was coming to London to launch his new project, La Havas jokingly offered her flat as the location for the press conference,” reads the release. Prince has recently shown a penchant for intimate shows; last year he held a ‘pajama dance party‘ at Paisley Park where he apparently wore a silk robe over My Little Pony PJs and pancakes were served.
While we wait for more details, what would be your dream Prince setlist? Would you kick things off with something upbeat such as ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ or ‘Fury’? Would you want to go straight in on a 10-minute version of ‘Purple Rain’? Would you want to hear the all-out sexy nasties he rarely plays these days? Would you want a run-through of tracks from your favourite Prince album (personally I’d be happy for the middle section to be ‘Purple Rain’ from start to finish and ‘Do It All Night’, ‘The Beautiful Ones’, ‘Cream’ would be a perfect start). It’s likely his most-played tracks ‘Kiss’, ‘Purple Rain’ and ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ will be heard as well as a bunch of covers. In the last six months he’s covered ‘Love Rollercoaster’ by The Ohio Players and tracks by bands he assembled – Vanity 6, The Family, the New Power Generation, and close associates The Time.
At SXSW last year, classics such as ‘1999’, ‘Purple Rain’, ‘U Got The Look’, ‘Musicology’ and ‘Housequake’ were mixed with covers of Michael Jackson’s ‘Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough’, Janet Jackson’s ‘What Have You Done For Me Lately?’, ‘Dancing Machine’ by the Jackson 5, and snippets of Aretha Franklin’s ‘I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)’ and Curtis Mayfield’s ‘We’re A Winner’. The three-hour show was punctuated with quite a few instrumental break-downs with Prince leaving the stage around six times for various costume changes. Personally my dream Prince gig would include loads of originals, Prince playing plenty of guitar himself, for six hours, with 10 encores.
What’s your dream Prince setlist?
(Gifs taken from Funny Or Die)