Prince’s legendary Syracuse concert gets official release | Arts

Prince performs during the Pepsi Halftime Show at Super Bowl XLI between the Indianapolis Colts and the Chicago Bears on February 4, 2007 at Dolphin Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. (Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

• Many icons of the 20th century have a concert that has gone down in music lore.
• There’s been James Brown at the Apollo Theatre, Jimi Hendrix at Monterey Pop and Kurt Cobain in New York.
• For Prince, who died in 2016, it is the show in Syracuse at New York’s Carrier Dome on 30 March 1985.

A concert of near-mythical proportions – Prince at the peak of his powers in Syracuse during the 1985 Purple Rain tour – is getting an official release on 3 June, the late singer’s label said Wednesday.

Many icons of the 20th century have a concert that has gone down in music lore: James Brown at the Apollo Theater, Jimi Hendrix at Monterey Pop, Kurt Cobain unplugged in New York.

For Prince, who died in 2016, it is the show in Syracuse at New York’s Carrier Dome on 30 March 1985.

“Listening to the Syracuse concert again… we sound like a rocket taking off,” said Brownmark, bass player of The Revolution who accompanied Prince.

“It was powerful. I attended many concerts, but I have never seen anything like it.”

The concert was broadcast live by satellite and released as a movie at the time. Low-quality bootlegs have been circulating ever since.

But now, the performance has been remixed from the original tapes taken from The Vault, the collection Prince kept at his Minneapolis home and which keeps fans supplied with a steady stream of posthumous releases.

One track, Let’s Go Crazy, is already available for streaming, ahead of CD, vinyl, and Blu-ray versions from Sony’s Legacy Recordings and Prince’s estate in June.