Prince shuts down 3rd Eye Girl (Twitter acount, deletes all Youtube videos)

 

Prince is the greatest live act in the world today.  Like Nusrat Ali Khan and Jeff Buckley he has always struggled to find the union between the sacred and the profane.  He strikes a worse balance between the provocative and profoundly flaky.   3 weeks ago Prince cancelled a surprise show - one of his famous 'hit and run' concerts- at Massey Hall at last minute because he was 'not feeling it'. Virtually every TV, print and radio outlet in Toronto and the nation covered the melee in front of Massey Hall.   Most notably CP24's Kevin Frankish was reporting from in front of the venue right up until the sudden cancellation confirming details such as when wristbands would be handed out to the lucky few at the front of the line.  102.1's Josie Dye announced over the air that the entire station had only been allocated 4 tickets, later tweeted the same and of course deleted the tweets afterwards.  No media outlet has done any reporting on what in god's name happened and simply re-tweeted mea culpa's from his recent crop of female protege's 3rd Eye Girl's cell phone.  This is what passes for entertainment let alone journalism these days.  Now today the CBC is reporting that:

"Twitter accounts for the artist's band 3rd Eye Girl (@3rdEyeGirl) and the New Power Generation account (@NPGOffical) have been deleted.  Prince’s official Facebook page and Instagram (Princestagram) accounts have also been shut down. And, as of Wednesday morning, all the videos on the 3rd Eye Girl YouTube account have either been pulled or been made private."

Anyone who follows Prince closely knows intuitively what happened.  Prince who favours total control in all endeavours, and for whom band mates are little more than muppets giving image and flash to his catalogue and new albums, flaked out and left everyone from the concert promoter, sound and lighting company to his band to dig them self out of the hole they dug together.   It's not particularly surprising that there has been no reporting after the fact.  Canada's journalistic world, as with all print legacy media, is shrinking by the day.  This shrinking job market, which keeps journalists fretting about their next paycheque and unlikely to call out a potential future employer, has been well defined by Jesse Brown who created the independent outlet Canadaland to allay this woeful situation. Only as an 'outside' journalist could he have broke the international story that CBC radio personality Jian Ghomeshi serially abused countless women over a period of years.  Just as comedian Hannibal Burress got the world to take rape allegations against Bill Cosby seriously by simply saying out loud as a man: "Bill Cosby Is A Rapist".  This is not to compare cancelling a concert to severe and life altering rape and sexual assault allegations.  It is a comparison of how Men in Power shield other men in Power from the repercussions of their actions.  It is an argument, by pointing to this colourful nonsense surprise rehearsal/concert, that consolidation of media ownership limits rather than multiplies the diversity of voices in the media landscape.  That and smartphones are making people, dumb, dumb, dumb.

So what did happen?  You won't find it in any 'news' article.  Maybe you'll find it on this blog. Sadly the best account comes from an anonymous poster 'Holly' in the comments of a miserably feeble 'article' on BlogTO:

"What kind of bullshit reporting was this!

Here's the details from someone with multiple inside sources: there were 2 shows scheduled (both Tuesday and Wednesday as confirmed by band members), Massey Hall had booked the show and planned for staff (all the ushers were emailed or called the day before to confirm schedules with 2 call times; one was for the Tuesday, the second was for Wednesday with most staff being under the impression it was a double show on the Wednesday since there was a 7 & 9 o'clock call time - they were then emailed around 3pm to be told both shifts had been cancelled), Prince was staying at the 4 Seasons in Toronto (staff were informed he was there but were told to keep it hush hush), the security detail got the call the night/day before and were told it was Prince (though they were given limited details and were told not to say anything), Prince was supposed to be staying in town for up to 4 days (2 performances at Massey - 1 secret, 1 known by the next day after it leaked, 2 shows at another undisclosed venue, both secret), the stage was set up 2 days before (sound check happened on Monday), and according to 2 of his crew members Prince just ditched at the last minute leaving everyone in the lurch to pick up the pieces.

Was also told one of his security guards mother passed away which may be why he cancelled (though that hasn't been confirmed).

You want leads for some real reporting... there you go, now follow up and offer something legit."