Ice Cream Man

It’s still hard to believe I got to see Prince at the Forum last night for twenty-five bucks. Well.. with beer and parking it was a bit more but I’ll always remember the ticket was only twenty-five dollars, as was it for 80% of the people there last night. Since everyone should go see more live music in general, and… EVERYONE should see Prince at least once, I wanted to put together a quick list of reasons to go, how to do it on the cheap, and what sections to try to score tix in. He’s doing 21 shows over the next month, most of them at the Forum so you’ll have plenty of choices. Tix for next Saturday the 23rd go on sale in a few minutes here. Prince went on just after nine and played to around 12:30… with a lot of breaks at the end… and FIVE or SIX encores.

First…. Buy tix! Really… you don’t want to miss this, it could be the best $25 you’ll ever spend. bring the kids, grandkids, granparents, everyone. The tour is titled Welcome 2 America and I’m pretty sure it’s because, at a Prince show, you see the most diverse cross-section of people, kind of like what you wish you saw everyday… happy people all dressed up, and a lot of purple.

Second, The Forum is a surprisingly good venue to see shows, assuming the sound is decent. The show is ‘in the round’ meaning the stage is directly in the center of the floor and most seats in the auditorium provide decent views and sound. The stage is actually the shape of Prince’s famous Love Symbol, which works well because he, and the rest of the band, dancers and backup singers, equally cover all the areas. Avoid anything behind the band, which is positioned on the O side of ‘the symbol’ (I don’t think there were even selling tix right behind there though. 80% of the tix are $25 and there’s no need to spend more than that.
you can view the seating chart here or on the LiveNation ticket page

We had loge 34 row U and they were very good seats. Most anything in Loge is preferred (ideal sections being 1-11 and 26-36. I think most of the $25 tix will be in 33-36 and 1-4. I don’t think people are swooping up the more expensive seats so I imagine some of the other loge seats will drop to $25, it looked like some might have last night based on where the large sections of empty seats were. For collonade seats I’d recommend getting them as low down as possible in sections 26-32 or 5-12. I’d try to stay away from seats in loge and collonage that are in sections 14-23.

Sound…. The show was loud. It was a good loud, but I’d recommend bringing some cotton balls or other earplugs (cotton balls bring down the overall volume a bit without getting that bass-heavy sound from foam earplugs. I wish i would have brought my Earloves. The sound is ‘in the round’ as well with eight large stacks of speakers hanging in a circle above the stage so it should sound good no matter where you are, unless you’re at the top of the Colonnade and getting an echo off the back wall. I couldn’t figure out the bass. The bass guitar and bass drum sounded good but I could have gone for some more overall THUMP.

Setlist… This is down here a bit because I’m not well-versed in all of Prince’s songs and it was the first time I saw him, so it’s hard to compare to anything else. You can view the setlist here.  I really dug the setlist and as much as I did get down to hits like “Purple Rain” and “Little Red Corvette”, a lot of the songs I danced the most too weren’t his hits, which he has a ton of. Expect a bit of everything, new, old, couple covers, and some snippets like 20 seconds of “Raspberry Beret”. See below for full setlist. Also, don’t leave until you’re 100% sure it’s over. He played FIVE or SIX encore’s last night. I’d never seen that before from anyone and it was rad, because everyone moved their way down towards the stage and he played a good mix of songs, not just ‘encore hits.’ Shelie E even got a full song in! His band is great and they were joined by three backup singers and a couple dancers.

Parking and Beer. Parking cost $25 so if you’re looking to save some bucks, we saw some spots open a few blocks away, I belive the street is Kelso, see here. Google Map here. There were quite a few cops around in the parking lot so if you’re going to do some tail-gating, be careful.

Since he did so many encores there wasn’t a lot of traffic getting out which was nice. Beer is $10 for a big (20oz?) cheap domestic and $12 for the ‘import’ version, which was XX, Shock Top and a couple others. Other snacks were what you’d expect, bad nachos, pretzels, +++. Merch was little pricey but there was a good mix of stuff. I think programs were $15, posters $10, shirts $30-$40, love symbol necklaces were only $15!, and there were some tights and beanies too. Nothing I couldn’t live without.

Tickets … Try to buy them right when they go on sale but, if not, keep checking because there were $25 seats available up til showtime. If you want to do it on the super-cheap, you could offer someone $10 for a ticket there and probably find one. Scalpers weren’t making any money there last night. Also… the seats are pretty small. This might sound ridiculous but, if you’re rather large or want some space to dance, buying a extra ticket, like 3 seats for two people, isn’t that bad of an idea.

Everyone should see Prince so pick up some tix and take your lover, your family, friends, family, kids… EVERYONE. They’ll never forget it and it could very well be the best $25 you’ll ever spend.