For Christmas, Bob gave me tickets to the Prince concert at Madison Square Garden (MSG). I really wanted to see Prince live--I missed him when he played in Seattle a few years ago. MSG is probably one of the most well known venues in the country to perform. It's about a 15 minute walk from our apartment making it really easy to attend events there. MSG holds between 18,000 and 20,000 people depending on the event, less for sporting events, more for entertainment engagements. Ticket prices run fairly steep, less so the more in the nose bleed section you are willing to sit. We were sitting at a clear altitude change where the air was definitely thinner but this picture was taken from our seats way up high. You can see the stage is enormous and they have a bank of speakers that really blasts volume. So quantity not a problem, quality is definitely diminished the higher up you are (at least that is what we suspect). The really great thing about MSG is that they have ginormous (giant and enormous) screens that allow you full view of the performer. We took binoculars but mainly enjoyed the screen viewing. So what do you get if you pay over a $1000 for a ticket to sit right at the stage level? Well last night, you got to be showered with confetti shot from cannons, sit next to or near Jimmy Fallon who happened to be sitting in that section last night, dance on stage with him, others from your seating section, Prince, all of Prince's dancers, back up singers, and musicians for the next to the last number, a chance to catch a guitar that Prince throws into your section, and the possibility of being singled out to come up on stage and be serenaded by Prince and receive a sweaty scarf from him. If I could be GUARANTEED all those things, I MIGHT think about paying that much for a ticket, but I still doubt it. The place was pretty much filled to capacity. I really enjoyed the concert but thank goodness we were able to situate ourselves in such a way to not have our view blocked by some fans who stood for pretty much the entire performance. I was familiar with probably two thirds of the numbers he performed, Bob recognized one song but could really appreciate the genius and talent of Prince. Bob was a really good sport to go on a work night. His work is very consuming but he does like to partake in the NYC entertainment scene. He's got me hot on the trail of Elton John tickets and made a list of other performers he wants to see when they are in NYC. That really is the beauty of NYC, EVERYONE comes here to perform. We are psyched as to how many performers we will be able to see over the time we are hear.
Prince gave a really generous performance for over 2 hours. Despite the size of MSG, he connected really well with the crowd and everyone just loves him. He had people clapping in rhythm, arms swaying in the air, belting out lyrics/refrains to his really popular songs. It was really fun........loved the whole anthem of "You know what? You're HOT! You know why? Because you're COOL!" The crowd just ate it up. It was a really mixed crowd too which was very cool. At one point, Prince asked everyone to turn on their cell phones and wave them back and forth--of course it created a cool starlike light show..........quite an interesting variation on the whole cigarette lighter thing of the past.
Whoever is the light show technician for this show is a genius in their own right. The lighting was fantastic for the stage itself (changed all the time) and for lighting the performers and crowd. They used a fair amount of strobe lightening which I was somewhat concerned might send someone into an epileptic seizure it was so intense sometimes.
I had never really understood how skilled a musician Prince is. I mainly thought of him as a lyricist, singer, dancer and performer, not so much a musician. As it turns out, Bob read a recent article that stated Prince's guitar playing has really been his focus more of late, leaving his more acrobatic dancing behind. His guitar playing was pretty amazing and still his moves on stage are so fluid and beautiful, he is such a great dancer and remains in terrific shape at age 52. I wish I could move like he does. I was also surprised by how "male" his sexual energy is on stage. He always seemed to me to have some androgynous or bisexual vibe going on, especially with the falsetto voice he sings in sometimes but there was no mistaking his male sensuality last night.
The one thing about last night is that he had these female twins as his back up dancers who were really kind of annoying. Perhaps he is invested in promoting their careers but we thought they needed a lot more practice. So overall, it was a great show, definitely so glad to have finally seen him perform live and very fun to have seen him at MSG in NYC!
Sidenote: Our new refrigerator is now in our apartment and functioning. In Seattle we always had a ton of souviner magnates and photos of family and friends on the fridge door. I brought a lot of them with us but hadn't put them up because we knew we were going to replace the fridge. Now that we have this as our permanent fridge, I finally put those up and it really makes the kitchen feel so much more like our home. It's really a nice feeling.
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