There are very few artists throughout history that I respect quite like Prince. Prince’s apparent insanity turns off a lot of people, but the thing is, Prince is kind of a genius and hasn’t had to live by the same rules that the rest of us have. That means that the dude has lived a very strange, somewhat sad and isolated life. Of course, Prince will always have his ability to not only make music, but to make whatever kind of music he wants and people like me will always listen to it and enjoy it.
In fact, one of my favorite recent Prince albums is probably N.E.W.S., which was a 60-minute improv jazz album. So Prince appeared on SNL last night and as opposed to having the usual two-song set broken up over the span of the show, Prince just went out and did was Prince does best; which is to go out and jam his ass off.
I’ve gotten some actual acclaim for my guitar player (I’m not joking) and I’ve always found my heroes to be more in the vein of guys like Slash, Jimmy Page and Prince than the uber-technical virtuosos, although I think its unfair to not call Prince a virtuoso. The guy is just amazing and somehow he found this amazing backing band for his latest reincarnation, 3rd Eye Girl. It’s a three-woman backing band that does an incredible funk-meets-hard-rock and they are absolutely amazing.
I saw Prince live a few years ago and I’d trade that in a heartbeat to see Prince with 3rd Eye Girl because the dude seems genuinely pumped up to be playing with them and like he has a new lease on his career. So here is 8 minutes of Prince and 3rd Eye Girl being incredible.
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