Prince

“I May Not Know What Its Like When Doves Cry, But I Know What Its Like When I Cry” An Open Letter To Prince

Dear Prince, or can I be less formal and just refer to you as Prince Symbol?

Where should I begin? Well I guess to start I started listening to you back in grade 11. Your 80’s heavy new wave funk totally rubbed me in the right way. From your rare videos on YouTube that usually were taken down because of copyright issues to the dirty nature of your lyrics. You were the dangerous man’s Michael Jackson. With lyrics that eludes to female masturbation and partying like its “1999” who couldn’t fall in love and want to party!

My first experience with your music is listening to the Purple Rain Soundtrack. Never did I wish I could have experienced the 1980s like I did when I heard the first few notes of “Computer Blue.”

From the recommendations from different friends and my guitar teacher at the time, I came to realize that this tiny pop freak was also a guitar freak that totally shreds as good as any of the legends I was into at the time.

The culmination of my love for your music bloomed into a jam of “Darling Nikki” that me and my friends planned to perform in front of my Catholic High School. Sadly this performance never happened due to the teachers stopping the set after one song – my friend in a leopard leotard with his crotch stuffed probably had something to do with it…

That brings me to a month ago. Glory hallelujah the news was in, “Prince Live In Saskatoon!” This was a dream come true. I was finally going to see one of the best guitar players live on stage.

Even though I knew you have had hip surgery and probably couldn’t quite move around like you did in the 80s but it didn’t stifle my desire to see the show at all.

One week passes and somehow my friend scores us fourth row tickets. Insane!

Even more exciting my friend Evan from Lethbridge was coming down for the show. I couldn’t wait to hang with that dude.

Now fast forward to yesterday. The news articles hit like a shit-ton of bricks. “Concert Cancelled.” Not the full tour mind you, but just the Saskatoon show.

Pardon my French but WHAT THE FUCK DUDE! Did you not sell enough tickets? Were the floor seats that were almost $200 a pop not enough for your extravagant tastes?

Throughout this letter I held back from mentioning some of the more colourful stories that are floating around about you. Remember when Sinead O Connor covered your classic, “Nothing Compares 2 You”? Hell everybody remembers, but what most don’t know is the story about you getting into an apparent fist fight with her because you wanted your drummer Sheila E to cover it!

Or how about turning down Weird Al from doing what could have been the best parodies ever, multiple times! Hell even the King of Pop MJ let Al do parodies of his songs!

With all this anger being put aside, I still want to mention that Sign o’ the Times is still one of the best albums ever. Please return my phone calls.

Jerk.