VIDEO MUSIC AWARDS GET PRINCE LIFT

This year, MTV’s quest to build an “untraditional” ceremony around its Video Music Awards was Prince-ipally a success.

Never mind that the show, broadcast live on the cable channel Friday from the Universal Amphitheatre, fell prey to any number of more traditional awards-show pitfalls--like the fact that the runaway winner, Peter Gabriel, was not on hand, and that the broadcast ran closer to four hours than the scheduled three.

Less conventional was the show’s eschewal of nearly all acceptance speeches in favor of devoting air time to live (or almost live) performances from 13 top-selling acts, which led the way for the domination of the evening by a figure who wasn’t even nominated this year: Prince.

His two-song set late in the show--consisting of lengthy, jam-filled versions of “Sign ‘O’ the Times” and “Play in the Sunshine”--was unquestionably the evening’s anticipated highlight, and provided the one instance of a sense of anything can happen in a show that seemed to be struggling valiantly in search of some kind of irreverence.

Prince’s dominion didn’t end with the telecast. Afterward, while a few thousand of MTV’s closest friends jammed like sardines into the Universal Studios lot for the official after-show party, a few hundred lucky others headed out to Reseda’s Country Club, where the often reclusive singer and his new band were putting on a “surprise” midnight show, which actually didn’t get started until 2.

Gabriel, who is currently on tour in Europe, is probably lucky that he wasn’t around to have his thunder stolen.

During the ceremony itself, the suspense was definitely bearable: Gabriel’s acclaimed video clips for “Sledgehammer” and “Big Time” won, to almost no one’s surprise or chagrin, in every category for which they were nominated--a total of nine, including best video and most experimental video.

Ironically, while many rockers were waxing eloquent on the potential of music video as an art form, best director winner Stephen Johnson--who is responsible for both state-of-the-art Gabriel clips--was backstage readily admitting their primary function. “These things are primarily commercials for songs,” he noted.

Gabriel lost out in only one stray category. The “viewer’s choice” award, voted on by the folks at home by phone during the live telecast, went to U2 for “With or Without You.” Talking Heads’ “Wild Wild Life” was the only other multiple winner, for best video in a film and best group video.

The fast pace of the fourth annual show (the first to originate entirely from Los Angeles) was generally held to be a marked improvement over last year’s bicoastal schizophrenia. Only a few of the 13 live performances appeared via satellite, and surprisingly little lip-sync subterfuge was involved.

If singers Cyndi Lauper (in Los Angeles) and Whitney Houston (via satellite) were able to manage the most quietly effective moments, it was up to Prince to galvanize the audience into MTV’s intended party spirit.

And over at the Country Club in the wee hours, he and his new 10-piece backup revue--which includes a horn section, as well as Sheila E. on drums--did more of the same for a packed house until well after 4 a.m. “This beats hanging out in a hotel, I’ll tell you that!” he told the crowd, a mixture of fans and invited guests.

Oldies from Al Green, the Staple Singers, Sly Stone and James Brown (two of which featured keyboardist Boni Boyer growling estimable lead vocals) took their place alongside Prince’s own “Housequake” and “It’s Gonna Be a Beautiful Night” as highlights in a concert that emphasized furious group funk over the occasional rock guitar-heroism.

If the resulting show was far from Prince’s most thematically provocative, it found an altogether new level of musical sophistication, exhilaration and community. With the players responding instantly to their leader’s cues, yet seeming far more relaxed in doing so than the Revolution used to, the most delirious moments almost suggested a popular reinvention of jazz fusion’s relevance to the late ‘80s, so astounding and joyful was the jam. And there, of course, was the most shining “untraditional”-ism of the evening.

A concert film documenting this band’s recent European tour is due in November, and American tour plans will be announced later in the fall, according to Prince’s publicist.