u have no soul whatsoever....


>I think what makes it work is the moment - Prince stepping
>out in his outfit in front of a bunch of establishment white
>guys and just playing until his fingers catch on fire. Very
>much a "look, I can do THIS" thing, and for that aspect alone
>it's fun as hell to watch.
>
>As a piece of music though, it does almost nothing for me
>except for the first 30 seconds and then a few bits later on.
>It doesn't "tell a story" in guitar solo parlance - doesn't
>build or climax, hits full wank mode with the sixteenth note
>hammer-on stuff only 30 seconds in, and after that it mostly
>feels like a technique display. And it's an impressive one,
>but let's be real, there are other guys that can do that, and
>more of them than you'd think. What I expect out of Prince as
>a musician - the soul, the controlled minimalism dotted with
>explosions of sound that take your breath away, the superb and
>quirky grasp of melody (that sometimes just pokes its head up
>for a few moments per verse on his funkier numbers, but other
>times generated some of the biggest hit songs of my youth) -
>it's mostly absent here, after a pretty solid beginning. It's
>a dude rummaging all over the neck finding different ways to
>freak a pentatonic scale (with a few modal highlights here and
>there - wish there were more of them).
>
>Truthfully I always thought Prince was at his weakest as a
>guitarist. Not technique-wise, but just for producing music
>that blows me away. He can obviously shred, but if I might
>steal a popular OKP comparison, he's more singing than
>sangin'. One of his obvious models, Jimi, knew how to do
>both, and his solos were works of art. Prince's solos, I
>somehow never feel them like that.