Prince remains teh awesome, even when relegated to backing duties as “just” a guitar player for protege Tamar’s last-minute Houston gig on Friday night.

Said gig started at midnight, which is late enough that we took post-work naps to better prepare. We are: old.

Prince’s awesomeness is in no way reducted by the unmitigated halfassery of the venue. They were clearly wholly unprepared for the crowd — which was only about capacity; it wasn’t super-crowded — and had the world’s worst will-call scenario despite knowing in advance that virtually everyone going to the show would be doing will-call. We’ve been in Soviet hotels with better efficiency ratings. A significant number of people were STILL IN THE WILL CALL LINE when the music started, and they’d been there over an hour.

Said venue also manage to have, near as we could tell, only two bartenders. There may have been another bar somewhere, but we can’t be sure. We CAN be sure that the ones we saw were absolutely swamped and wholly insufficient to the crowd gathered ten deep around their bar.

We can’t decide if our favorite part was the “Purple Rain” encore or the moment, early in the show, when Prince dropped the mike and name-checked Sexual Chocolate.