Paisley Park 24 October 2009

 What a curious year 2009 was. No concert tour, but a variety of one-off concerts including an Oscars aftershow party, the Nokia gigs, Montreux, and shows in Monaco and Paris, before rounding out with this particular show- a performance back at Paisley Park. It is a long, sprawling show, but unfortunately the recording we have off it is mostly incomplete. The recorder has done a good job with what they have recorded, we could wish for more, but it is what it is – the opening song, and then thirty-five minutes of the encore. On the positive side, this is where the real funk lies and Prince buries us in his funk grooves throughout the recording, as we used to say “All killer, no filler.” So, short and sweet – let us dive on in. 

24th October 2009, Paisley Park 

There is some grime and a sense of danger in the opening “No More Candy 4 U,” Prince howls along with his guitar line in the opening seconds before the song comes fast on the heels of this shotgun blast of a beginning. The recording sounds a little shallow to my ears, it is clean enough, but with some distance with takes us half a step out of the performance. I don’t have time to get a firm grasp on the song itself, it runs for barely a minute and a half before we are abruptly cut and find ourselves surprisingly dumped into the encore. 

The crowd wasn’t present on the recording for the first song, but they are here now and the first thing I hear is the sound of someone near at hand with a tambourine – the bane of my existence on many a recording. It’s only brief though and soon enough the audience is content with hand-clapping, much to my relief. The song itself could have been plucked straight from the 1980s, it still has every element we expect, but with one key addition – the vocals of Shelby J. The bass is still the king of the house, but Shelby brings the slightest hint of modern sheen, enough to polish the song without bringing it right into the present era. 

 

With the appearance of “Cool”, I expect to hear more from Shelby, but the first minutes belong to Prince and the groove of Morris on the keyboards, ably assisted by the deeper groove of Josh and Cora. The scratch of the guitar satisfies my itch for further funk, the bass remaining just close enough to the surface of the recording to give it some contrast and depth. It’s funky, but not quite with a capital F. 

I am very hard to please when it comes to live renditions of “Kiss,” but the arrangement on this recording hits my sweet spot and is one of my favorites of recent times. It’s well balanced, with a firm nod to its 1980s roots, while updated without losing the skeletal sound that left so much room for the magic to seep in. I’m not fussed by the audience participation (when am I ever?) but it’s a well-rounded version that sees Prince dipping it deep into the funk trough in the final minutes, the guitar scratch reaching new heights while he takes it down low and lets the recording marinade in its stench. 

 

From the other end of the spectrum, Prince draws the sweetest of “Sometimes It Snows In April” from the ether, the song suddenly shimmering and appearing amidst the chaos and the funk. It’s stronger than I first give it credit for, and it stands starkly bold, resting up hard against the other songs of the evening, blowing gently with the breeze but never breaking as it remains true to itself. The contrast to the other material sees it appearing more beautiful than it might otherwise be, and it sits proudly as a cool oasis in an otherwise hot desert of funk. 

Prince digs deeper into his catalog for his by now familiar run-through of “The Bird,” Jungle Love,” and “The Glamorous Life.” “The Bird” opens the door on this trio, introduced as a ballad, Prince immediately tears off his own version that takes Morris’s cool and rips it to shreds with a burning intensity that carries through “Jungle Love.” The verses and chorus matter little in this song, it is all about the guitar fury that Prince injects with a furious venom later in the song. It’s shorter than what I have heard elsewhere but still worth the price of admission. 

The final of this trio is “The Glamorous Life.” It gets a fuller performance than the other two songs, and with the female voices being heard it lifts the song beyond the raw-boned funk sound of the previous two songs. I like it for what it is, a modern update of a song that Prince was reclaiming from his back catalog, and the four minutes it plays it sparkles and shines in a way that it hadn’t for years, glistening as it is at the rear of the concert. 

Prince gently croons a vocal melody across the opening of “Purple Rain.” It sounds a lot like what I would expect him to noodle through the introduction on his guitar, and to hear him vocalizing instead adds a nice touch and a point of interest in this otherwise all too familiar song. The song retains this uniqueness throughout, Prince sometimes toying with lines, or rolling them in ways unheard before, that I find myself completely engrossed. They aren’t huge changes by any means, but after listening to thousands of versions of “Purple Rain,” I do appreciate anything new or different, and this rendition feels looser and more personal than anything else I have heard for a while. This carries through to the guitar solo, and Prince riffing before the final reprise of the singing is joyous indeed. 

What I have heard here makes me all the more disappointed that the recording isn’t complete. The shows of 2008 and 2009 all have a certain sameness and sound about them, and yet I find myself enjoying them immensely, far more than I should perhaps, and this one sounds just as good as any other I have heard. The audience recording is not as good as some of the other shows circulating, but it is of the modern era and far beyond the scratchy audience recordings we had in the 1980s and 1990s. All in all, another good addition to the collection, it won’t ever make one of my greatest lists, but it is far from skippable. I usually rate these recordings by how long would I listen to them in the car, and this one would certainly last three or four days in the car before I changed it. Is that a recommendation? – you decide.