The Infidel

This is blowing my mind thus far. He only made a few performances on the show, so I'm not sure how long this is supposed to last tonight, but it's great seeing all these vintage clips.

Great intro by Jimmy Fallon.

TomOpus

I can't wait to see the afterparty performance that has not been shown.

SuperJim88

I can do a little less of uh...umm.....uhhh..ahhh.....

The Infidel

Not that they had a lot to work with, but I was a little disappointed. The first part was great, seeing all the performances, and even the afterparty clip was cool, but the rest was nothing but that stupid Armisen/Rudolph skit. Not much of a tribute.

mike7162

Might have been better if they had spread those Prince Show clips between the performances, but I guess they felt the need to front load the episode with music. I can't tell if Fallon's speech pattern is an affectation, but it's a real chore to sit through. I was also surprised that Prince never performed any of the "hits" on SNL, unless the footage was unavailable or my memory failed me.

boredsilly

I think we didn't get any of the hits because he never came to SNL during that time. Though, SNL seemed to be pretty big on acts playing non obvious songs in the past, so even if he did come around during 1999 to Sign O the Times I think he might have played something other than the expected.

But what we saw tonight was basically the totality of his SNL live performances I think. Pretty wild that he hasn't been on more, but just checking the SNL Wikia Madonna has only been on twice, and MJ was never on, so not all that crazy I guess.

Unclejosh

Forgot how much I liked that performance of Fury. Blows away the album version. In fact I was disappointed when I got the cd specifically for that song. One of his best live performances in my opinion.

Neil M.

Yeah that didn't make much sense to me. They should have alternated between performance and skit and then ended the show with the after party clip.

DVD Josh

My lord those Prince talk shows were just the worst. Although Mya did look slamming.

Bill Needle

Seeing them all back-to-back shows just how repetitive the recurring sketches are. Every beat is exactly the same in each version.

It is too bad Prince didn't perform his better known stuff on the show, but oh well. And the after show party clip was the highlight. And what the heck was Jay (minus Silent Bob) randomly doing on the stage? I thought he was a Morris Day guy?

Dr. DVD

I did enjoy seeing him perform something off of the Batman soundtrack.

JeffTheAlpaca

That is a big gap from 1981 to 1989 and he did not perform once on SNL during the 1999, Purple Rain, Around World 80 Days, Parade, and Sign O' The Times eras?

sportsfan64

Tim Kazurinsky video of Prince's SNL 40th anniversary afterparty performance. I'm not sure if this is the same one that was shown last night.

Neil M.

Not the same video. I liked the angle on SNL better.

Decker

My thoughts as well. Fury was the highlight of this show, it was a scorching performance.

So many Prince Show bits don't work well in succession. They're all slight variations of the same skit.
During the first, oldest one, still in SD, my 14 year old daughter turned to me and asked "Man, how long has Keanan Thompson been on SNL anyways?". Too long. Much, much too long.

Giles

he was a musical guest on SNL:

February 21, 1981
February 4, 2006
November 1, 2014

The Infidel

^ You forgot the 1989 date where he performed "Electric Chair" from Batman.

windom

The 1989 performance was from the SNL 15th Anniversary special. Not a regular episode, thus no musical guest billing.

The Infidel

Well he was still there, so...

Original Desmond

they should have ended this with the afterparty performance, then it would have been good, the sketch stuff after that was rubbish