The Revolution and the Fam Commune with Prince’s Spirit at First Avenue
June 24, 2024
Standing in line to get into First Avenue to see the Revolution last Friday, as I approached the door, I overheard the woman behind me introduce herself to someone. It was Susan Moonsie — formerly of Vanity 6, then Apollonia 6. The man replied with a hearty laugh: “Oh, I know!”
This set the tone — for me, not the other people attending the show. Most of the others were in the Mainroom as part of Celebration, Paisley Park’s annual Prince-athon. Friday’s Revolution show was night one of two, and Moonsie was one of the many purple associates taking part, old and new.
Twenty years ago, I complimented the writer Barry Walters, who’d delivered a presentation on Prince at the annual Pop Conference, then in Seattle, on his paisley tie; he told me I was the only person there who’d noticed it. The Celebration crowd did him about a thousand times better on that front. Paisley was everywhere at the Friday show, along with lace gloves, ruffled collars and sleeves, and all manner of iconography. Best T-shirt, by far: a solid royal blue with, in giant white letters, YES, LISA.
Have you heard? It’s the 40th anniversary of Purple Rain. Oh, please — you’ve been inundated. (I, too, did my part, with an essay about Minneapolis in 1984 for Mpls St. Paul Magazine.) But being among the Prince Fam, as his lifers who attend Celebration are dubbed, is a different experience than not being able to leave the house without hearing his music unbidden. These lifers aren’t just dressing the part. Prince’s entire ethos — dance, music, sex, romance, sure, but also politics (shout out to the pair of Baltimore-themed shirts I saw on different people at different times), tech, and fair play for artists — resonates with and guides them. Unlike a restaurant playing “Raspberry Beret” in the background, there’s nothing de rigueur about that kind of commitment.
At 9:03, an announcement: “Are you ready?” What do you think they opened with? Wendy Melvoin, looking professorial, hit the opening riff of “Let’s Go Crazy” on a guitar with a familiar pattern. According to this piece from Ultimate Guitar, the Hohner “Mad Cat” with a leopard-print pickguard — Prince’s signature instrument in the days before Purple Rain, and a regular go-to afterward — was his primary guitar while making that album, though in the film, the “Cloud Guitar,” which had been built as a prop, was playable enough to add to the arsenal; it’s what he played on the Purple Rain tour.
That leopard-print guitar sounded great. So did the band, no surprise at all. For much of the 80-minute show, the Revolution’s five members — Melvoin, keyboardists Lisa Coleman and Matt Fink, bassist BrownMark, drummer Bobby Z — framed the stage alone without the dervish who brought them together at the center. That gap was filled in by the audience, frequently at Melvoin’s urging. During a joyous version of “Mountains,” the crowd yelled “Guitars and drums on the one” as lustily, as loudly, as it sang along to the chorus.
The center didn’t stay empty the whole show; for several songs, singer-songwriter and Prince protegée Judith Hill stepped in to sing lead, joining first on “The Beautiful Ones.” After that song, she stepped away for a bit, and as the band started up “Raspberry Beret,” BrownMark told us, “You sing it!” Near the song’s finish, Melvoin led the crowd through two more choruses. I recalled the first Revolution reunion show at the same place eight years ago, Wendy telling us (quoted from memory): “This is yours; this belongs to you.”
But it also belonged to the Revolution. For “Kiss,” another number featuring Hill, the Revolution duplicated the recorded arrangement, which Prince almost never did in concert; BrownMark even cheekily shed his bass altogether for that famously bass-less song.
When the main set finished, the crowd almost automatically began: “Oh-wee-oh! Ohhhh-oh!” — the “It’s Gonna Be a Beautiful Night” chant, via The Wizard of Oz — and BrownMark, back onstage for the finale, sang, “Follow the yellow brick road.” With the band back up for one last go, Melvoin told the Fam, “We love doing this, and we love doing it for you guys … I guess it’s obvious what we’re going to do now.”
Then she interrupted the opening strums of “Purple Rain”: “Do I dare say it’s a mind-f**k?” she asked. Melvoin had played the song live for the first time 41 years earlier, as a 19-year-old also playing her first show as part of Prince’s band. “This is cognitive dissonance for me.” On paper, it might read a little stagy. In person, something else was happening. It was the kind of moment you need the right people around you to fully process. She had them.
