prince

Thanks to Kate and bird for the nuances

https://polishedsolid.substack.com/p/my-2023-prince-year-in-review

The person who does this Substack just had a Prince conference this weekend in NY and am seeing lots of folks speaking highly of it online

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi9nlmMA12Y

A good bit of pre-1999 concert footage is out there, but it's usually in-house video feeds or video shot from a distance, so professional multi-camera videos like this are kind of startling for me to see for the massive jump in production quality. I really hope they do an early Prince box set soon, especially of the Dirty Mind era - for whatever reason I gravitated more towards that stuff when I was binging Prince the week after he died. Just amazing to see them as this hungry little band that was still trying to make a career of their music. (And tbf, at least one of them ended up with a regular day job despite their talents.)

According to IMDb, this was his first national TV appearance. I think he did American Bandstand shortly afterwards, and a little over a year later he was co-musical guest (with Todd Rundgren!) on the notorious episode of SNL where Charles Rocket said "Fuck" on-air (supposedly Rocket said he only did so because we thought it was okay since --he believed-- Prince had already just done so in his performance of "Partyup").

I have an incredible pro-shot single-cam video (torrent) of:

PRINCE LIVE DIRTY MIND TOUR
NEW YORK
THE RITZ
MARCH 21 1981

but have never seen any other early stuff out there

Wolfgang's Vault has a whole show from the end of the Controversy tour - they may have taken down the complete show and left up a selection of clips, but other channels have uploaded a copy of the complete show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdUPjdEciqA

Also, from the tail end of the Dirty Mind tour (basically the European leg), this show from Théâtre Le Palace, Paris, France (June 4, 1981)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6w2THFyyy24

assless chaps or GTFO ;)

Should mention, the first show is from January 30, 1982 at the Capitol Theatre.

Prince on American Bandstand

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krEXzOEsP9I

DICK CLARK MADE HIM WEAR PANTS

The further we get from it the more 80s Prince feels like a miracle, an impossible thing

Here's the "Partyup" from SNL, which is actually live, unlike the Midnight Special and Bandstand performances.

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/TdDTtEYLRZd42znK/?mibextid=oFDknk

ah here's the Ritz show, assless chaps start at 17:44

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x1P84W5fa8

Technically, all chaps are assless

pedantry

That guitar solo at 42:30 is worth a few minutes of your time.

wow at that Ritz video!

holy shit i don't think wow quite covers it but yes wow at that ritz video!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGm-2UTjacY