Remembering Prince in North Dakota

The legendary musician Prince has died. He was 57.

On December 8, 1997, Prince performed at the Fargodome. Only 7,114 people were in attendance for the concert due to a specific ticket policy Prince had in place. Concerts would only be announced two weeks in advance. Attendees would then need to purchase a voucher and those vouchers would be exchanged for tickets at the door.

The concert was set for 8pm but not surprisingly, the show did not begin then. Around 8:30pm, the sound of a band was heard but they were in no way affiliated with Prince. The band performing was Larry Graham and Graham Central Station. They performed for over an hour.

The audience continued to wait for Prince. He finally arrived on stage just after 10pm.

Writer Chuck Klosterman, a former employee of the Forum newspaper in Fargo recalls the performance in a 2007 book, The Show I'll Never Forget: 50 Writers Relive Their Most Memorable Concert:

He was just so amazingly good at everything. There was a sixty-second span where he played a keyboard, a bass, and a guitar in immediate succession and I think he played each individual instrument better than anyone had ever played them before, anywhere during any historical period over the past eleven thousand years. And Prince didn't even care. He didn't look happy, and he didn't look bored. He didn't even look focused. It seemed completely spontaneous, yet wouldn't have mattered if he had rehearsed those specific sixty seconds for eight or nine months; the experience would have been exactly the same.

Klosterman had plenty more to say about the brilliance of Prince that night.

Were you at the Fargodome on December 8, 1997? Have you seen Prince elsewhere in concert? Let us know on Facebook.

[CNN | The Show I'll Never Forget: 50 Writers Relive Their Most Memorable Concert]