Watch TV on the Radio’s Moody ‘Purple Rain’ Cover
TV on the Radio added local flavor to their July 30th performance at Minneapolis, Minnesota’s First Avenue by busting out a rendition of Prince‘s “Purple Rain” during the encore. The performance was fitting as the famed venue was the setting for Prince‘s 1984 film Purple Rain, and Prince himself played the 1,600-capacity room at First Avenue, one of Rolling Stone‘s picks for the best concert venues in America, over a dozen times.
Draped by purple stage lights, the band’s Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone trade vocals as the band reenacted the track featured in the closing minutes of Purple Rain. For the moody performance, TV on the Radio were joined on the outro by singer Nona Marie Invie of opening act RONiiA. While it’s not out of the norm for Prince to randomly appear at other artists’ First Avenue shows – he almost joined Gayngs onstage during a May 2010 concert – the rocker was unfortunately a no-show for TV on the Radio’s faithful rendition.
On top of touring in support of 2014’s Seeds, Adebimpe also recently revealed that he, Faith No More frontman Mike Patton and rapper Adam “Doseone” Drucker had formed the avant-garde super-trio Nevermen. The group dropped their new track “Tough Towns,” the lead single off their years-in-the-making self-titled debut that’s due out this fall.
“‘Tough Towns’ is dedicated to anyone remotely young, feeling inexplicably inspired in the ‘nowhere’ they are from,” Doseonesaid. “May you soon escape with style into elsewhere.”