Sobby

The story of how I came to touch Prince’s pants (while he was wearing them)…

Calling me a Prince fan is an understatement. I have all his albums lined chronologically above my desk, I have spent a few grand collecting his vinyl, I have hundreds of his studio and concert bootlegs on my computer, I own all his shitty “movies” and I pretty much know what he is doing at this very moment. But he certainly isn’t an easy man to love as I find myself spending more time defending him than I do listening to his music. A lot of people just don’t “get him”, which makes being a fan half the fun. To me he is a freaky genius, who at his best turned pop music on its head and at his worst was pretty damn embarrassing but still had people talking. So when the decision came to see him in concert for the first time ever… in London, I went for it. (This, you see, is how I got to touch his pants).

Prince was creating buzz in the lead-up to the 21 London shows, most notably distributing his album, Planet Earth, free with London’s Daily Mail. This was certainly not the first time Prince pushed boundaries of music distribution - as much as the press want to accredit Radiohead or Trent Reznor or whoever, Prince was the first musician to distribute a full-length album over the internet back in 1997, winning a Webby Lifetime Achievement Award for his efforts. Ever since his in infamous name-change in 1993, music retailers and radio stations became less welcoming, and the Daily Mail-scheme was further proof that middle-men in music were becoming a thing of the past. Paul Ellis wrote in last year’s July-issue of TIME magazine why he thought Prince’s idea worked brilliantly. Too bad the album he chose to distribute wasn’t worthy of this level of attention.

So I was swept up in the buzz thousands of miles away as the fan-girl that I am. When tickets finally went on sale on a cold July-morning, I bought as many as I could get my hands on: Seven main show tickets and seven after show tickets, to be exact, somewhere in the range of 500 pounds. Now I found myself in a predicament that hadn’t really crossed my mind during my spending spree.

Other problems I faced:

• I had no savings and the shows were three months away.
• I had just started a new job and they wouldn’t look favourably at me leaving for a European holiday.
• I had one semester to go before I finished my BA and it was starting in one week.
• I had never gone overseas alone and I was freaking out at the prospect.

I solved these wee-little problems by:

• Deferring from University for what turned out to be one year (This is my first semester back).
• Working two jobs for three months with many sixteen-hour days. I quit both before I left.
• Managing to convince not one, not two, but three really stupid friends to come with me. They were as equally broke.

And last but certainly not least…

(It’s still maxed out).

What amounted was an unforgettable European adventure with my closest friends that included stops in many other countries. I went to most of the Prince shows on my own and made friends with crazy fan-girls from yesteryear who would’ve been pushing 50. See, the great thing about Prince is that he really rewards his loyalists by performing after-shows, the majority of which are far more memorable than his main-shows. And it was at one of those after-shows, where he performed for a marathon three hours (following a two-hour main-set), that I happened to be right up front and latched on to his pants with my claw-like hand and held on till he gave me the stink-eye. It feels like I never let go.

I’d post photos but Prince has this strict no-photo policy at concerts. He also sues his fans if they post his image on the internet. But what the heck. I figure if Prince’s lawyers threaten to sue me then I know my blog is going places.

Image taken from housequake.com