Prince

Madison Square Garden – NYC
December 18th 2010

by Dani Aronson

Prince at MSG is by far one of the best concert experiences I’ve ever had. For a practicing Jehovah’s Witness, the little purple one can still sing and shimmy his way into your heart and loins. A religious, musical and fashion experience. At 52 years of age, Prince still makes people swoon the way a young pimp wishes he could.

Sinbad was the opening act. When I first heard the introduction, my first thought was, ‘shit- Sinbad is ALIVE?’ Sinbad is indeed living, and pretty funny. He kept insisting that it was going to get funky. Could we handle the funk? He also said we might get knocked up from the funk… Oh really? Well, there were a few people behind us that brought their own tambourines, and they were bringing the funk levels way down. Luckily, the sounds of their shitty tambourines were drowned out by the true funk happening on stage.

Grand Central Station was the first musical act. A band that opened for Sly and the Family Stone back in the day, GCS has been around, and their lead singer donned a white pimp suit. They had heavy bass lines, and it was indeed… funky. For the last song of their set, Prince suddenly appeared on stage hopping around and dancing in a fabulous black cape and a hat from the Boy George collection. With the energy and swagger of a sexy pimp gnome, all 5’2” of Prince entertained

After a short break, the PRINCE show was about to begin! The Middle aged suburban couple in front of us was definitely excited about this, because they smoked about five joints and did a few lines of coke during the course of the show. Ahhhhemmm— you don’t need drugs; get high on PRINCE yo. I definitely got a funk high from the Prince concert. He wore a hot suit with a silver sequin vest; so fierce. For Beautiful Ones he was joined on stage by Misty Copeland, one of most amazing ballerinas in the country. It was beautiful, graceful, soulful and sexy; it was pure Prince. He sang so many great songs: Cream, 1999, U got the Look, Raspberry Beret, Let’s Go Crazy. Then when you thought what was going down on stage could not get more amazing Miss Sheila E, looking like a sexy Latina Barbie doll, took to the stage with a floor length gown and drum sticks. It gave Prince just enough time to change into some RED. SEQUIN. PYJAMAS. He sang Nothing Compares 2 U, Kiss and Purple Rain. Singing Purple Rain was like being at a sexy church service— people sang the ‘ooo ooo ooo’s’ about 30 times at Prince’s request. Whatever you say, master purple!

Then for the finale, Prince invited all the celebrities (I guess he forgot me) on stage for the last song. The Prince fans that joined for the swan song were: Whoopi Goldberg, QuestLove, Sherri Shepherd (see clip to see why this is amazing), Naomi Campbell (no phones in hand), Jamie Foxx, Spike Lee (playing the tambourine- you can’t make this shit up), John Leguizamo, Alicia Keys (home wrecker) and Tavis Smiley.

As we left MSG, full of funk and in post coital Prince bliss, fans sang Purple Rain all the way down the stairs. If the little purple one comes knocking on my door preaching about Jehovah, this lady might have to convert! After the show my friends and I made our way to the nearest 24-hour diner. My friend Margarett let us know she is pregnant with funk babies- I guess what Sinbad said is true.