I took a brief vacation to Las Vegas last weekend, and I couldn’t go the entire day without a wholehearted endorsement of Purple Reign, which bills itself as “THE Prince Tribute Show.” It’s impossible to put into words how great these guys are, and sadly YouTube is a bit of a letdown with one poorly shot video that doesn’t even merit being embedded here.

Jason, the “Prince” of these proceedings, is an eerie imitator in both sound and vision, and the band is solid at pumping out the largely Revolution-era tunes. One of the (many) upsides, however, is that faux Prince, unlike real Prince, hasn’t undergone a religious experience that precludes him from playing the nastier portions of his discography, as evidenced by an extended take on “Gett Off” Sunday night at the House of Blues.

While the faux Prince is quite convincing, the real stars of the show were the imitation Morris Day and Jerome, who came out during faux-Prince’s occasional breaks. Besides performing a stream of Time hits and a great deal of handkerchief choreography, Morris ran though a very entertaining cover of “Just Got Paid” on which Jerome worked as hypeman. I briefly considered coughing up the cash to see that Beatles’ “Love” show, but instead I saved myself $200, didn’t have to leave the grounds of my hotel, and had a much better time.

Purple Reign [homepage]