As the years have progressed, I find myself enjoying the storytelling variety of comedian more than the joke teller. I prefer Daniel Kitson or Reginald D. Hunter to Jimmy Carr or Peter Kay for example. (Ok, bad example, as I really fucking hate Jimmy Carr and Peter Kay, but you get my drift). But I still have a fondness for the comedy of Emo Philips. He’s a little bit surreal, a little bit crazy, and while not always laugh out loud funny, there’s a joke in pretty much every line.
This was my first visit to the Edinburgh festival, and I wasn’t really sure what to expect. What Denis M and I encountered was a bit chaotic, but pretty entertaining as well. As is standard at the festival, Emo played for an hour, although we saw him outside the venue too, as he walked in past the queue of people waiting to see him.
The only gag I remember from this show was when he asked a young boy in the front row to join him on stage for a bit. The kid was a bit reluctant to go, but was persuaded when he was told, “Go on… it’s ok… I’m not Michael Jackson.” (That joke was current in 1993).
Here’s a clip of Emo from a couple of years earlier…
Was he still called Prince in 1993? Or was he The Artist Formerly Known as Prince by this point? Or was it Victor, or Steve or something else? I can’t actually remember, but the ticket says Prince & the New Power Generation, so I’m gonna assume he was still Prince at this point.
I was a mad Prince fan in the early 90s, and had missed his show at Celtic Park in 1992 cos I was on holiday, so I was desperate to go to this one when I found out about it. I managed to persuade Mark C that he wanted to go too (even though he apparently wanted his first outdoor show to be U2 the following month) and we duly travelled through to Edinburgh.
After queuing for ages to get in, the first support act, a terrible Scottish dance act called TTF (remember them?) came on around 5pm. They then went off again sometime around 5.03pm due to technical difficulties. I’m not saying that them being shite had anything to do with them going off after three minutes, but something was shining on the audience that day, and it wasn’t just the sun. The other support was the one-hit-wonder-tastic 4 Non Blondes, who performed a bunch of forgettable songs then finished with What’s Up? Linda Perry has written some fantastic songs since then, including a bunch for Christina Aguilera, so I reckon it’s a shame that her own band couldn’t have come up with a few more memorable ones.
Then came Prince.
Over the years, I’ve kinda built this gig up in my head as an amazing spectacle, full of amazing moments. The first one was his entrance, when Prince was lowered on to the stage on a swing, wearing a black robe, his face shrouded by gold chains, performing My Name is Prince. There was another at the end of that song, as he drops the robe to reveal that it’s not him at all, but it’s actually his 18 year old girlfriend/dancer, who is now wearing just a pink bikini. (I also remember Mark C’s tongue hanging out at that particular moment as well). There was the stunning version of Little Red Corvette on the piano, and the crowd singing along during the 10 minute Purple Rain.
I managed to find a bootleg recording of this show a couple of years ago, and gave it another listen recently. There were bits I’d completely forgotten about, like the bizarre Arabian section, and there were bits I remembered, like the funked up version of Kiss, and the amazing Purple Rain. But what struck me most of all was that it didn’t seem as incredible as my memory of it. It was still good, but not as blinding as I had thought it was that day, and I wondered why that was. I mean, obviously a bootleg isn’t going to be as good as actually being there, as there’s a disconnect… but there was something else. Am I less of a Prince fan now? Yes. Am I older now, and less easily impressed? Undoubtedly. Or was it purely that it just wasn’t as good as my mind had tricked me into believing over the years? Yeah, that’s probably the one. It was my first proper gig, though, so I suppose that’s understandable.
There are two things about the era of this gig that I really miss. The first is the souvenir ticket. Even where they weren’t printed with a picture of the artist, they would usually have the band logo on there so you immediately knew who the ticket was for. You don’t get that these days with Ticketmaster or similar doing all the ticket selling. The other thing is that we bought our tickets for this gig about a fortnight before it took place. We didn’t have to be on the phones at 9am on the day the tickets went on sale, and they weren’t all snapped up by touts. The internet has brought many great things, but for me these are two things that it’s taken away.
I’ve tried to find some clips of Prince in performance on YouTube, but he’s pretty litigious when it comes to stuff like that, so I had no luck. So instead, here’s a couple of tunes from this bootleg of this gig. Enjoy them while the lawyers don’t know they’re here…
