February 5, 2007
THE LEVELLING EFFECT:
Prince's 'Purple Rain' an apt anthem: Music icon Prince rocked a soggy Dolphin Stadium, and his varied halftime show remained suitable for family viewing. (EVELYN MCDONNELL, 2/05/07, MiamiHerald.com
[F]or Prince, his greatest anthem turned a soggy 10-minute show into a summation of purpose. The icon and iconoclast channeled Jimi Hendrix, Cab Calloway, James Brown and Little Richard as he sang, ''I only want to see you standing in the Purple Rain,'' with water dripping off his face and notes reeling off his guitar.It was a momentous salute to a dramatic career (even if at points, Prince inexplicably saluted careers besides his own).
The ex-glyph took the stage to a tune by other rock royalty: Queen's We Will Rock You. He played some of his hits, like Let's Go Crazy, but he also covered Bob Dylan, Tina Turner, and, um, the Foo Fighters. It's as if the tiny man with the famously colossal ego has started doubting his own worth.
His high-stepping dancers had to take it easy and his band was in the shadows. But Prince's voice was rich and confident, his guitar playing electrifying. The FAMU Marching 100 helped blow up the rock concert to stadium size and make the show in part a celebration of black American music.
In an age of rapidly changing cultural ecosystems, the Super Bowl as a mass event is the biggest dinosaur of all. Popular culture is breaking up into increasingly diverse taste groups, but the NFL still gathers Americans around the cathode-ray (or LED) hearth. It gives an estimated 140 million viewers a shared water-cooler topic, for one day at least. Then they disperse like so many satellite radio stations.
The Super Bowl hopes to retain its dominant position in sports and TV culture by speaking to a middle.
You could hardly ask for a better illustration of the conformity of American culture than that Prince is the middle and essentially a lounge act, though a great one.
MORE:
Purple rain turned super (DAVE HOEKSTRA, 2/05/07, Chicago Sun-Times)
While everyone else was dropping the ball during Super Bowl XLI, Prince picked up the spirits of a soggy crowd and turned in what was arguably the best halftime show in Super Bowl history. [...]Much of Prince's profound beat was delivered by the 100-member Florida A&M University Marching Band. The kinetic corps also backed Kanye West and Jamie Foxx at the 2006 Grammys. It was a cool idea, and it worked magnificently.
Prince rehearsed with the drumline all week, and the rhythms were tight and inspiring. His terse guitar solos were firmly entrenched in the military beat. (James Brown would be spinning in his grave -- if only he had one.)
Prince, his band and the marching band also dealt bluesy snippets of "All Along the Watchtower," removing any trace of the Jimi Hendrix cover of Bob Dylan's classic.
Another surprise was a classic funk-rock workout of the Foo Fighters' "The Best of You." It sounds as if Prince has been woodshedding since his recent residency in Las Vegas.
I absolutely hate Super Bowl halftime shows because the performers generally are terible live acts and they way overdone. When Prince took the stage, my wife and I said to each other that the song he opened with was 25 years old and many of the players in the game weren't even alive when the songs were hits. However, as the show went on I really kinda enjoyed it and thought the marching band was a nice touch. I like marching bands in rock songs, remember Tusk by Fleetwood Mac?
I don't think Prince was lip-synching but I do think that he wasn't playing many of those guitar solos.
Posted by: pchuck at February 5, 2007 10:17 AMThe man could always play guitar. If he wasn't playing the solos live they were his own pre-recorded work. IMHO.
Posted by: Bartman at February 5, 2007 10:36 AMPrince can play guitar -- and I mean really play. All that flashy guitar work on his records is him. As for the half-time show, he was definately playing live. If he wasn't, it was the best guitar-playing synch job ever. I play guitar, & in the close ups, everything he was doing on the fretboard was what was coming out of the amps. There were evern a few incident scruffs and other accidental string-noise between songs / as he swapped out guitars. The vocals were also live.
Posted by: Twn at February 5, 2007 11:05 AMWho would have thought 25 years ago that history's verdict would be that Prince is not only far, far more talented musically than Michael Jackson, but much, much more normal as well?
Posted by: b at February 5, 2007 1:35 PMThe best halftime show ever. The Cique du Soleil pregame was ridiculous.
Posted by: Patrick H at February 5, 2007 4:07 PM