Prince Rocks, Colts Win [edit]

Everything went according to plan.  I went to an awesome Super Bowl party, I watched all of Prince's Super performance, and the Colts won.  Why did I want the Colts to win?  So that finally, we could end all that talk about how Peyton Manning and Tony Dungy can't win the big game, and move on to something else to talk about.  Thank god that era is behind us.  Also, don't think I didn't notice that we had two black head coaches in the Super Bowl - it was the first time there had even been one.  Progress is slow, but it is being made. 



I also watched every minute of Prince's performance, and loved it.  I thought it was the best Super Bowl halftime performance ever.  You know why?  Because unlike Mick Jagger, Prince can still sing.  Unilke Aerosmith/Britney Spears, he is one of the most influential pop singers of all time.  Oh, and he still has chops.  The only thing I didn't like about his performance was the dancers.  Otherwise, he had stage presence, he danced, he mugged, he played blistering guitartsolos (at times with only one hand, using the fretboard), and he threw out some curveball remakes in his medley.  What more can you ask for?



Apparently, a lot more.  My party all thought his performance rocked.  The party that some of my roommates went to all thought Prince sucked.  I can only see you thinking that if you didn't like Prince to begin with -- in which case you probably aren't the best judge as to whether he was good or not.  Plus, here's an interesting tidbit: the party that my roommates went to was mostly attended by people in their early 20s, while my party was filled with people mostly in their late 20s.  Their party's attendees  probably have no reason to feel any connection to Prince whatsoever.  Whereas my party had most of the audience knowing almost every word to every song he played, and every guitar spot.  It makes a difference.



[EDIT: Apparently, the folks over at SI.com agree with me.  They said pretty much what I did about Prince's work at the half: "He delivered one of the best Super Bowl halftime shows -- ever. Consequently, he didn't come across as a painfully safe choice -- or a has-been, the rap against the previous couple of Super Bowl halftime acts, Paul McCartney and the Rolling Stones."]



Anyway, I've yet to hear a good explanation of why he didn't rock.  The reasons I was given by the haters was that he had no energy (a blatant lie if you were watching), they couldn't tell if he was singing (ridiculous, since his vocals during this halftime show weren't nearly as clean as his records are), they couldn't tell if he was playing guitar or not (another absurdity if you knew the songs, knew how an electric guitar works, and actually watched to see if his guitar notes/hammering matched the notes you were hearing)...I think that's about it.  Oh, one other thing I heard was "He didn't even have any cameos."  What the fuck?  He's fucking Prince.  What the fuck does Prince need to have a cameo for?  The guy was the biggest star in pop music, and he will be a legend long after we've forgotten trendy acts like Britney Spears.  He can carry his own weight.  He's bigger by himself than Aerosmith, Britney, Justin and Janet Jackson put together. 



Off course, there's always the "if-you-have-unlimited-resources-then-everything-you-do-should-be-great" crowd.  Which of course is ridiculous.  "You have all this money, why can't you field a great team?!"  "You have all this money, why can't you put on a good show?"  Hello - this wasn't a Prince concert, it was a Super Bowl halftime musical performance in a football stadium, fer chrissakes.  I hate medlies, but I wasn't stupid enough to expect anything else.  I don't need all the pyrotechinics, but I'm pretty sur emost people in attendance enjoyed the pretty colors.  The stage was huge and stylin'.   Even assuming you have good sound people, football stadiums are generally shitty concert venues acoustically.  What more did you expect? 



Plus, what if we extended this kind of reasoning to everything?  "You have all this money, why can't your church choose the perfect pope?"  "You have the second-largest army in the world and the best-equipped, why can't you rebuild a middle eastern nation?"  "You have all this security, how could you let your leader get assassinated?"   You get the idea.  That's just plain dumb.  Back to the show...



That moment where they raised the cloth and showed him in silhouette playing the purple symbol guitar like it was some giant phallus was one-of-a-kind.  In sum, he turned that mutha out.  If you didn't think he did, feel free to provide a legit reason why.   

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