Photo: @mnwild
The world lost a legend this week. In addition to being a virtuoso musician, prolific songwriter, advocate for artist rights, and a generally funky dude, Prince was also a favorite son of Minnesota. Before the Wild were eliminated by the Stars 5-4 on Sunday afternoon, Xcel Energy honored the late great genius.
Here’s the pregame tribute and moment of silence.
After every goal, Xcel blasted Prince songs. “Raspberry Beret” doesn’t exactly conjure Ryan Suter’s gritty play for me, but I like the notion.
And here’s a lovely arrangement of pucks on the boards spelling out Prince’s name, since the symbol would’ve been way too hard.
All wonderful gestures by the state of hockey.
(Forgive me a moment of indulgence.)
Prince was only 5’2″, but he was a giant. On guitar he was a new Hendrix, but he did it behind his back, in high heels, dancing his ass off in the pouring rain, and playing through a garbage Crate amplifier. Prince’s songs were like tiny little demolition charges designed to blow up the barriers between people: genre, race, sex, fashion, religion, whatever. Prince didn’t pretend those constructs didn’t exist, he just danced around and between them. His music spoke authentically and at length about lust and faith as if they were they same thing.
I remember when Prince changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol to protest his record contract. People thought it was the most arrogant move for Prince to refer to himself as “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.” But in hindsight I can’t think of a better title for the man than Artist.
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