The One
3rd September 2007, 05:56 PM
Prince at the O2: Concert 14- A tiny love god
Rock journalist Mick Brown enjoys a compendium of black music
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/graphics/2007/09/03/mick350.jpg
'Foreplay" announced Prince, wagging a finger, "starts in the mind" - the first sermon in a "rules of love" routine that was one of the highlights of this performance.
Rule number two was, "I may be small, but so is dynamite." That this tiny, effete and highly manicured presence should have convinced so many women that he is a love god is one the abiding mysteries, and triumphs, of his career. But he has always known that pop music is, first and foremost, about sex.
Prince may have written some of the greatest pop songs of the past 30 years, but in performance he is a singing, dancing, seducing compendium of black music; the emotional hysteria of Jackie Wilson and Little Richard; the guitar pyrotechnics of Jimi Hendrix; the spine-jarring funk of James Brown (reinforced by the presence of Brown's old sax-player, Maceo Parker); the store-front gospel preaching and knee drops - all suggest the timeless struggle between the bedroom and the church, with the bedroom winning.
Above all, he is the consummate showman.
This performance unfolded with metronomic precision and barely a pause for breath, although one could have wished for fewer anonymous funk grooves and more hits.
The two mini-skirted go-go dancers who whipped up a lather doing the Pony, the Mashed Potato and the Cool Jerk were fantastic.
My wife thought they were a little old-hat. But Prince knows what the men, as well as the ladies like.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/09/03/bmprinceb103.xml
Rock journalist Mick Brown enjoys a compendium of black music
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/graphics/2007/09/03/mick350.jpg
'Foreplay" announced Prince, wagging a finger, "starts in the mind" - the first sermon in a "rules of love" routine that was one of the highlights of this performance.
Rule number two was, "I may be small, but so is dynamite." That this tiny, effete and highly manicured presence should have convinced so many women that he is a love god is one the abiding mysteries, and triumphs, of his career. But he has always known that pop music is, first and foremost, about sex.
Prince may have written some of the greatest pop songs of the past 30 years, but in performance he is a singing, dancing, seducing compendium of black music; the emotional hysteria of Jackie Wilson and Little Richard; the guitar pyrotechnics of Jimi Hendrix; the spine-jarring funk of James Brown (reinforced by the presence of Brown's old sax-player, Maceo Parker); the store-front gospel preaching and knee drops - all suggest the timeless struggle between the bedroom and the church, with the bedroom winning.
Above all, he is the consummate showman.
This performance unfolded with metronomic precision and barely a pause for breath, although one could have wished for fewer anonymous funk grooves and more hits.
The two mini-skirted go-go dancers who whipped up a lather doing the Pony, the Mashed Potato and the Cool Jerk were fantastic.
My wife thought they were a little old-hat. But Prince knows what the men, as well as the ladies like.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/09/03/bmprinceb103.xml