January 1, 2007: Las Vegas

3 Page Feature

This is the fate of geniuses: a handful of fans, specialists, exegetes spy on their every move. The latest example: the purple dwarf arrives in Las Vegas, our funk doctor too.

"Every man is two men, and the truer one is the other" - JL Borges.

LAS VEGAS, SPECIAL ENVOY. Gee! Prince in Las Vegas... The kind of thing you can't refuse, right? Objection! For some time now, in fact, since forever - didn't Prince arouse, even among his most ardent fans, a paradoxical feeling where adoration competed with exasperation, not to say hatred? A plethora of production that took our digestive metabolism by surprise, official live performances often inferior to the more confidential - not to say ignored by all - ones of the (famous) after-shows, a live discography based on questionable choices (see "One Nite Alone Live" focused on a US tour that was out of all proportion to the European tour that followed): for his superior extraction, Prince presented himself as the perpetual saboteur of his (Great) Work and, thus arming the judges, incited some - a bit ungrateful, these ones (but they had ended up, like us, losing patience) - to cry out: "Prince is no longer in tune with the times" (or even more frightening: "Prince has now plummeted to the bottom rung of insignificance").