Prince and The Revolution 08/03/1983 Minneapolis

Benefit Show for Minnesota Dance Theater - First Avenue, Minneapolis. Putting this in into context: "When Doves Cry" was the #1 single in the US for five weeks, from July 7, 1984 to August 4, 1984... Six days earlier, July 27, 1984 was the release date for the Purple Rain movie. During Prince 's next tour, in November of 1984, the band was doing three to five night runs in north american arenas:

1. Let's Go Crazy
2. When You Were Mine
3. A Case Of You
4. Computer Blue
5. Delirious
6. Electric Intercourse
7. Automatic
8. I Would Die 4 U
9. Baby I'm A Star
10. Little Red Corvette
11. Loyce Houlton Speech
12. Purple Rain
13. D.M.S.R.

# Prince: Lead vocals and guitar
# Wendy Melvoin: Guitar
# Brown Mark: Bass
# Matt Fink: Keyboards
# Lisa Coleman: Keyboards
# Bobby Z: Drums

3.36 GB....mpeg 2...720X480
snatched this description from the internet nether regions:

the classic First Avenue 1983 concert which spawned the Purple
Rain album versions of 'I Would Die 4 U', 'Baby I'm A Star' and of course
'Purple Rain'. The recording has been sourced from the circulating video
footage, and because of this the audio suffers from the same glitches the video
footage does. These are slight, very minor and affect only a small part of the
show. They are most obvious during the opening 'Let's Go Crazy, 'When You Were
Mine' and again during the intro to 'Purple Rain'. Sabotage have attempted some
repair work on the tracks, and have done a pretty decent job of patching up the
incomplete parts with a different source recording. As this is sourced from a
video recording it has a slightly gritty feel to it and is certainly not as
crisp and clear as one would like - that said it is an improvement over the
various other releases this show is circulating on and is undoubtedly the best
we have to date. The show has quite rightly earned itself legendary status for
reasons including the birth of many Purple Rain tracks and Wendy's live debut as
a member of The Revolution - however mention must also be given to the
performance which is inspired and amongst the best of Prince's career. Full
length live versions of tracks such as 'Computer Blue and 'Purple Rain' are
special enough however add to the mix the only live performance of the
unreleased 'Electric Intercourse' and it's quite impressive how many unique
moments are stuffed into the 65 minute concert. And I shan't even mention the
closing funk jam of 'D.M.S.R.'.

Here's what came to mind as I was watching this: first of all, it is pro shot multicamera for the house video...It was hard to get screenshots of anyone other than Prince. He's basically on screen for the duration of the whole show. Highlights include a very rocking "Computer Blue"...and fantastic spacey keyboards throbbing away at the ending to "Delirious"...The drums could have been miked louder...the picture could use some saturation and contrast...but it's all generally noise free. The disc can hold the interest of casual viewers for a few songs or so.


. I imagine you can't find this stuff in youtube because of Prince's well publicized antagonism to the network. I wonder if there's some lowly websurfing Google employee whose job description is whack-a-moling Prince videos.