In the Twin Cities, Every Day Is Prince Day

On the day Bob Dylan became a Nobel laureate, the Twin Cities was out celebrating "Prince Day," as St. Paul mayor Chris Coleman ordained in a proclamation that morning, continuing with events throughout the day and capping off in the "official" Prince tribute concert at the Xcel Energy Center. Various buildings in downtown St. Paul glowed purple as Prince fans came from all over, wearing various shades of the resplendent royal color themselves.

What did it matter that Governor Mark Dayton had already named June 7 Prince Day throughout all of Minnesota? In this city, every day is Prince Day. Six months later after his death, the mourning continues, and last night's show was an extended, exhausting six-hour wake brimming with weirdness.

Tribute concerts are difficult beasts with all the talent to rush on and off stage, but there was something off about Thursday's show. Backstage, there were problems. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported a day earlier that John Mayer had bowed out due to a "change of schedule." That article also mentioned Christina Aguilera wanted out. Aguilera was a no-show yesterday even though her name was still on the bill.

The evening began well, with two representatives of the Minneapolis sound taking the stage. First up was St. Paul's Mint Condition, 80s contemporaries of Prince that continue to be popular on local radio. They began with, of all songs, "America" from Around the World in a Day. The song, exposing the hidden unsettling funk at the heart of the Star-Spangled Banner, was by far the funkiest song in history to interpolate Francis Scott Key. Mint Condition finished off with "DMSR" and "When Doves Cry" and had the crowd solidly on their feet. Their strong open established that this was not just a night of big hits, but deep cuts as well.

That was followed by Morris Day & the Time, who were charismatic and energetic as usual. Unfortunately, because of the abbreviated nature of tribute performances, about half their act was Day's long stage entrance. They had time for the Prince-written MD&TT jams "The Bird" and "Jungle Love" and had probably the best moves of the evening—the Time's backup dancer was another highlight.

After that, the rest of the night belonged to the house band, the New Power Generation. Bobby Z, drummer for the Revolution, came onstage to explain why his recently reunited band was not present this evening. Wendy and Lisa were hard at work making music for a new Jennifer Lopez TV series, which Z plugged.

Z talked for a long time about Prince's ability to play any instrument. He said, "Leonardo Da Vinci could paint with one hand while writing a letter with the other. That was Prince." Then he introduced a small clip of Prince "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" solo for some reason (it was one of several not-so-illuminating documentaries that appeared on screen throughout the show).

From then on, it was all the NPG's show. Prince's backing vocalists from this collective each got an opportunity to sing at least a few Prince gems. In rapid order, we got "Uptown" (sung by Prince's childhood chum Andre Cymone), "Erotic City," "Hot Thing," "Kiss," and finally "Anotherloverholenyourhead," another album track I was surprised to see live.

An early weird moment came as Prince's sister stepped onstage and sang about 30 seconds worth of a cappella and shouted out her other siblings. Then she introduced reality show judge and former Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger, who performed two more highlights: Vanity 6's "Nasty Girl" (basically the template for every Pussycat Dolls song ever) and "Baby I'm a Star."

It was here I started to notice the band was audibly not together at points. Without Prince leading them, the New Power Generation was sort of unmoored. They are an incredible stable of talented musicians, but sheer talent doesn't matter when you have a guest vocalist who is not on the same page as everyone else. For instance, during "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker," the band kept playing the intro while waiting for the vocalist to arrive on stage. They managed to kill time through a long flute solo.

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By the three-hour point, I was assuming they would start to wrap up. Little did I know it was less than halfway over. Morris Hayes, keyboardist and the show's musical director, kept the hits coming at an absurd clip. Luke James applied his falsetto to "Do Me Baby." Vocalist Judith Hill blew everyone away with her rendition of "The Cross." The same NPG vocalists we heard before came out again to do more random songs like "Cream" and "The Ladder."

By the time Portuguese fado singer Ana Moura was onstage, the audience was getting restless. Moura's simple acoustic guitar accompaniment could barely be heard over the audience talking to each other, looking at their cell phones, or leaving the stadium for refreshments.  It was a good thing that the NPG finally brought out legend Chaka Khan, which revived the audience's spirits, especially when Stevie Wonder came out to join her. Together, the two alternated the female and male vocals on "1999."

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At the four-hour mark, there were still no signs of stopping. Prince's first wife Mayte Garcia (aka "the most beautiful girl in the world") paid tribute to her ex-husband through an extended dance. Again, the audience's concentration lulled. Doug E. Fresh returned to the stage a second time, bringing some much needed hyping to the proceedings. He performed "Sexy MF" with the NPG's house rapper Tony Mosley. Tori Kelly came onstage with Stevie Wonder once again in tow. They performed "Take Me With U" and then "Raspberry Beret," where Wonder forgot the second verse and looked kind of agitated about it.

Hayes then introduced an unbilled "very special guest" Jessie J. The audience was polite but not thrilled when she was announced. Then someone walked over and mumbled something in Hayes' ear. "Never mind, I jumped the gun," he said, before inviting back Tori Kelly, who had just left the stage. When Jessie J finally appeared onstage, the audience was polite, but many were already starting to file out and exit the stadium.

By the time Stevie came back for the third time, first covering Donny Hathaway's "Someday We'll all be Free" and then for some reason "Superstition," I was all Prince'd out. Maybe it was a good thing that the last song of the evening other than the encore was "Superstition," which came out of nowhere and had nothing to do with Prince.

Any Prince fan could guess what the encore would be (hint: it is a color and a type of weather). The show wrapped up after almost six straight hours of music, with only two short breaks. I tallied up the set list—it was something like 58 different songs. So in-depth was the coverage that every song from Purple Rain was performed over the course of the night except for "Darling Nikki." If they ever do another tribute (which members of the NPG hinted they wanted to do) I'm not sure even Prince's vast discography has a lot left to pilfer.

I made my way home bleary-eyed at 1 AM, totally depleted. Does any artist, even Prince, deserve such extended tribute and hagiography? Is there something insulting and unnecessary about so valorizing the dead? Possibly, but looking at the various purple buildings around downtown St. Paul, I could see how Prince brought out the best of his fellow Minnesotans and worked hard to give his hometown recognition—he paid tribute to us as much as we paid tribute to him. For that reason, we should all wear purple, and every day should be Prince Day.

​All photos by ​Darin Kamnetz​.

​Nathan Sacks is a writer based in Minneapolis. Follow him on Twitter​.