Last Sunday I was finding all the videos for this week, and - as mentioned in the spoiler above - I discovered there's almost no videos of When Doves Cry on Youtube. Seems Prince and his lawyers go after stuff aggressively...
I did find one video. It was posted on Feb 25, still active on Sunday, but it's gone now. It was basement rehearsal footage, from the 1984 rehearsals for the Purple Rain tour. It was really amazing. I'm sorry it didn't last.
Want to know how a guy like Prince rehearses his band for a major tour? It was clearly a basement, no one on camera but the band - not even a mixer in the house, as Prince would occasionally run off camera and the sound would change. Nonetheless, they played like they were in front of ten thousand. They had all the stage moves, Prince was doing his James Brown thing and all - but in normal jeans and t-shirts, not the usual big purple coat and such.
Prince, when not singing and dancing, would stalk around the band and stare everyone in the face for like a minute solid. I'm not sure what that was all about. Maybe he just wants to make sure they have their parts down, maybe it was part of how he maintained leadership in that band. Remember, if the movie was at all true to life, it was a contentious band - and it was notably Lisa (the keyboardist who stands up to Prince in the film) that he gave the longest and hardest stares to.
Most interesting, it had bass. The bassline was dropped from the studio track - the rare #1 hit with no bass, may they be damned.
Sadly the bass was buried in the mix and the result didn't sound much different.
