Some artists announce their concerts months in advance, but not if you’re Prince Roger Nelson. Then you announce it 2 weeks before you’re coming.

I’ve seen quite some Prince concerts already but yesterdays concert in the Gelredome was one for the books. It was a blast.

We arrived early to get into the ‘inner circle’; the part closest to the stage. Prince was scheduled to play at 20:00 but we didn’t expected him to show before 20:30 or even 20:45. And since the house lights were still on, it was a suprise when he walked on stage at 20:15.

From there he took us on an almost 3 hour trip which went in all directions, starting with Billy Cobham’s “Stratus” and Janet Jackson’s “What Have You Done For Me Lately ?”. The annoying part the house lights were still on and stayed on during the first 5 songs. Luckily they went off later on but he brought them back on several times.

The man is 52 but he still dances and moves like he’s in his twenties and still has charm like a m/f. And the crowd participates without thinking in almost any song. Singing and clapping on exactly the right times, they needed no encouragement.

He said Goodbye and thank you several times but did a total of 5 encores with a comeback like “Are you crazy ? I’ve got too many hits.”, which were mostly medleys of his hits. I particularly liked “Sometimes it snows in April”, which I haven’t seen played that often.

More and more hits followed until it was almost 11 when he called it a day… And that was good, we we’re wasted from standing/dancing for 6 hours, almost without drinks, since no one wanted to leave ‘the pit’. It has been 8 years (I think) since he played in Holland, but damn, was it worth the wait.