ST. LOUIS — A Missouri man is honoring Prince in the most emotionally moving way possible: by paying to listen to the late singer’s music.
Prince fan Kevin Fenske, 41, says that over the years he has downloaded “six or seven” albums, hundreds of hours of bootlegged concert videos, and that only last month he watched “Purple Rain” on a free video streaming site.
“Ever since Prince died last week, I’ve been looking for a suitable tribute for a such a great artist, a man whose sexy, evocative music has touched my life in so many ways,” he said. “It might sound weird, but I’m thinking that offering money in exchange for his songs is sort of how Prince would have wanted to be memorialized.”
As of Wednesday, a dozen or so grieving fans had gathered at the St. Louis-area Starbucks where Fenske was attempting to use iTunes for the first time to purchase the 1980 album “Dirty Mind.”
He later gave up, however, when he learned that he would have to open an account and pay $9.99, describing the deal as “highway robbery.”