The Purple One: Prince Concert in the Bay Area

Last night I finally got to see my favorite artist of all time live in concert -- PRINCE. I missed out on his last US tour because I was studying abroad so when I heard that he was coming to Oakland I was amped. The man puts on a great show. I thought about getting a long purple coat and a frilly top to wear to the concert but didn't have enough time to get an outfit together.

Typically when I go to concerts, I spring for the cheapest tickets, but I went all out and got the 2nd cheapest option this time (lol)! We were still in the nose bleeds but not in the very last row like usual. The opening act was a classic funk musician Larry Graham and he killed it on the bass. Now I know a little bit of how it feels to have been at a Parliament-Funkadelic concert back in the 70s.

In between acts, my boyfriend went to the restroom, and he comes back and says "I got tickets to the lower level." I'm thinking he's joking or someone is playing a joke on him, but as it turns out there were too many empty seats in the lower level so the box office staff started giving out lower level seats to folks in the nose bleed. I knew the seats were lower level but I thought they'd still be towards the back of the lower level. I got to the section and started trying to find my row. I kept walking and walking and walking until I was 5 rows from the stage! Freaking awesome! It was like my dream come true. The only thing that could have made it better was Prince asking me to come up on the stage and sing Little Red Corvette with him.

As I said before, the man puts on a good show. He is full of energy, still has a great voice, and knows how to work a crowd. His back up singers were awesome, too, and Sheila E was great. He sang lots of his old hits: Cream, Controversy, If I Was Your Girlfriend, Purple Rain, Scandalous, Uptown, Raspberry Beret.... He also sang Adore! I was surprised he didn't sing at least one other song from Purple Rain, but I was pleased with the song selection. I was reading some comments on reveiw articles and some were disappointed that he didn't sing Erotic City, 1999 etc... There were a few of my favorites that he didn't sing, but to be honest the man has so many hits that we could have been there all night jamming. He did a good job of integrating enough songs from the various areas of his discography so that everyone had their needs met so to speak. Hell we got a performance from Sheila E and a surprise appearance from Carlos Santana and the entire show was like 3 hours.




All said, I loved it! I'm thinking of going again if he does a show in LA.