Prince - Columbia '81 (2005)

As I’m sure just about everyone is aware, this show can be found on the excellent ‘City Lights: Columbia/Saginaw’ release. It would only be fair to say that the original recordings on the City Lights set are amongst the cleanest, clearest soundboard recordings already circulating, so anything done to the audio is minimal – due to the fact the recordings were of such high quality, to begin with. What 4DaFunk has done is repaired the 5-second drop-out during ‘Do Me, Baby’ which was a slight annoyance on the original City Lights set. Not only have they repaired it, but it is flawlessly done and I can guarantee it would go unnoticed to anyone who wasn’t aware of it being there – really excellent work. The audio also receives a boost and sounds fresher than before. The show itself is one of the longest from the Controversy tour due to the rare addition of ‘Sexy Dancer’ along with two encores. The undisputed highlight is surely the guitar masturbation on ‘Head’ which not only includes some feedback guaranteed to blow your speakers but guitar work that epitomizes the phrase “chicken scratching”. ‘Party-up’ is also extremely lengthy clocking in at 9 minutes and is followed by the closing ‘Jack U Off’. My only complaint about the show is that the opening ‘The Second Coming’ is missing from the recording (as with the Saginaw recording), however, that’s no slight on 4DaFunk who used what was already circulating. So, is this rehash? In my opinion, the fact 4DaFunk has actually done some major repair work on the previous recording means that it can’t be classed as a rehash. This evidently hasn’t been put through a cheap sound editor and released – time, care and effort have been used on this – and the results are impressive. The original City Lights set will always be amongst the best ever released – this release should simply be viewed as an updated version and not a replacement. I’d also like to point out that the show has been verified by the University of South Carolina as having taken place at their Carolina Coliseum.