Prince RIP

Enjoy the fruits of his songwriting labors if nothing else:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STQ6Z4NnukY

Jon, I immediately think of Jim Henson every time something like that happens, too! When I think of Henson dying at 53 it breaks my heart.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMfAXjoqDks

https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfa1/t31.0-8/13041385_10154114849074841_6340402726226358794_o.jpg

can't process this. saw him in London during the Lovesexy tour, still one of the best concerts I've ever seen nearly 30 years later.
;_;

There have been a lot of recent deaths of people whose music I grew up with enjoyed immensely, or at least respected but none of them were as big a deal to me as Prince.

He's one of those artists that was around for as long as I was paying attention to music; when I heard he died I immediately remember the 1999 and Little Red Corvette videos (probably on Night Tracks while playing with Legos during sleepovers at my friend's house) and listening to my cousin's Purple Rain tape on a walkman while reading Mad Magazine. But he's one of the few that I stayed interested in as an adult.

I never saw him live and really regret not doing so in Seattle a couple years ago, I remember thinking ticket prices were insane and he wasn't that old and would probably be around again at some point. Alas.

xxxxp see also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1NLrpNhfRc

Prince and Vanity both dead, both at 57 :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQQdA2aat2k

Like imagine being in your 50s and still being onstage being consistently, outrageously sexual and never once looking sleazy or creepy? No male musician in history has ever been able to pull that off, plenty of dudes 30 years younger can't, and Prince did it pretty much effortlessly.

Goddamn, I can't even listen to a Martika song yet without feeling overwhelmed! Fuck!

I'm right there with you Jon & mh. Jim Henson is probably still the most impactful celebrity death of my life, and the weird, out of left field, too damn soon deaths of Prince and Bowie are close runners up.

I really want to re-watch that one old awards show clip of Baby I'm a Star that's like 11 min long and just full throttle energy all the way through.

Also very curious to see what happens to his catalog & vault.

xpost Like people who you'd reasonably presumed had transcended such petty human concerns as death.

the jukebox in my high school lunch room had "Erotic City" on it and I can remember female fans trying to convince school admin that it was okay because he was actually saying "funk" on the chorus and not "fuck" lol

henson was a jhvh witness too, right? or xtian scientist?

https://www.facebook.com/uspto.gov/photos/a.128840003796166.21901.114912688522231/1267507836596038/

Also very curious to see what happens to his catalog & vault.

^^^ I brought this up earlier on Prince threads. with no children and no clear heir and *tons* of unreleased stuff + the back catalog you have to wonder who he was willing to cede control of his estate to.

Like imagine being in your 50s and still being onstage being consistently, outrageously sexual and never once looking sleazy or creepy? No male musician in history has ever been able to pull that off, plenty of dudes 30 years younger can't, and Prince did it pretty much effortlessly.

well Prince didn't exactly look like a 57-year old man to begin with. he was more like...a space alien

the jukebox in my high school lunch room had "Erotic City" on it

wow lol

i wrote my high school's comedy revue one year and had a really age-inappropriate prince parody in there that somehow was allowed in.

henson was a jhvh witness too, right? or xtian scientist?

― scarcity festival (Jon not Jon), Thursday, April 21, 2016 1:39 PM (47 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The latter, I think? And I'd always assumed that had something to do with his death, but the biography that came out a couple years back painted it as kind of a legitimately freak thing, like a very rapid decline pretty much out of nowhere.

don't know if this has been posted but to me this is the best thing to watch right now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAYQUbh8HHA

the current tribute is great, except for the banal, Minnesota nice public radio commentary, just like whatever that SNL skit was.

In terms of well known african american music from Mpls, there really isn't any after him and the scene he presided over, is there?

in general i hate arena shows -- i probly have been to 20 max -- but he filled up MSG like a cabaret on both Lovesexy and the Musicology tour.

what Prince and Jam & Lewis aren't enough for you

xp

with no children and no clear heir and *tons* of unreleased stuff + the back catalog you have to wonder who he was willing to cede control of his estate to.

i think its pretty clear the man was seriously lawyered up, so, would like to think this aspect has been well and truly locked down.
i mean, he was insanely tight on his archive, so, there should be little problem sourcing mastertapes etc. for the inevitable boxset excess.

just so long as we dont get any l.a reid lead albums.

xpost Sure, they pretty much dominated a couple decades worth of popular music, but who hasn't?

i will buy all these prince box sets, no shit

still so bewildered and confused right now

!

saw prince for the first and only time with 3rdeyegirl last year

we had seats way back in the gods, there were no screens to bring the onstage action any closer, and even though from that distance we could barely see him his charisma was still utterly transfixing. never seen anything like it and i guess i never will again.

It never occurred to me that he could die...it just wasn't on my radar. Wasn't he just starting to write his memoirs? Shit.

ps: props to Prince for outliving Rick James by one year

2016 can seriously go suck a fuck already.

― Fat Idiot (Old Lunch), Thursday, April 21, 2016 1:33 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

btw re his queerness, it was quite literal, via an anecdote someone i trust shared with me recently

anythingthatmoveslikeaholeinyohead

maybe this is weird but I keep thinking about how D'Angelo is handling this news

at home i have all these fan-made "deluxe editions" of his albums with contemporaneous singles, 12" mixes, outtakes, etc. etc. the "sign of the times" one is like 9 discs and it's fucking glorious.

can't wait to get home to listen to those. stuck at work listening to prince marginalia...

I just looked at Miguel's Twitter for that same reason.

i thank whichever ilxor made those "Perfect Unreleased Prince" comps a few years ago, i listen to those all the time.

not my favorite cover, but cool all the same

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3pIxfGEhM0

probably one the best pop songs ever no?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd6JI5MD_cQ

So grateful that I was able to go to the Baltimore show last May. An amazing show, and his song BALTIMORE is fantastic. God, he had so much energy. Completely perplexed because of his straight edge, super healthy life style. Listening to MSNBC right now and one of the guests mentioned that at some point Prince refused a hip replacement because Jehovah's Witnesses don't believe in blood transfusions. Just awful. Bowie and Prince were the two biggest rockstars that EVERYONE liked. Insane that we lost them in a three month span.

Saw him on the One Nite Alone tour at a relatively small concert hall. About twelve rows back. Although the seats were plush and comfortable, the audience was on its feet from the moment he was onstage. Played a bit less than 2.5 hours. I've never met anyone more charismatic, regardless of the profession. I actually missed his presence the next day.

Having a difficult time keeping it together this afternoon.

it's just that, having never been to Mpls but understanding it to not be a Afr-Am stronghold, it seems that there isn't a deep bench of black music. Its his scene, which Jam and Lewis were part of, and then… what? anything? Or beforehand? Being that I just finished the Replacements book, that band and its ilk makes sense. Prince's achievement seems all the more massive in that he came out of a vacuum.

my show was in the 90's during one of many retirement tours, mostly just him and a piano
at one point he backflipped off the piano into the splits. In stiletto heels.

http://gawker.com/wolf-blitzer-fondly-remembers-the-prince-classic-purpl-1772313930

it's just that, having never been to Mpls but understanding it to not be a Afr-Am stronghold, it seems that there isn't a deep bench of black music. Its his scene, which Jam and Lewis were part of, and then… what? anything? Or beforehand? Being that I just finished the Replacements book, that band and its ilk makes sense. Prince's achievement seems all the more massive in that he came out of a vacuum.

you ought get that 'purple snow' comp on numero group, has a lot of stuff on the scene out of which prince emerged.

it's unreal and depressing to me that over the past few years we've lost the three biggest iconic solo artists of the '80s (well, three of the five including springsteen and madonna), each of them basically unassailable in their specific skill set and in their performance abilities, and all of them far too young.

also: http://waxpoetics.com/features/articles/prince-and-andre-cymone-formed-the-band-grand-central/

it's unreal and depressing to me that over the past few years we've lost the three biggest iconic solo artists of the '80s (well, three of the five including springsteen and madonna), each of them basically unassailable in their specific skill set and in their performance abilities, and all of them far too young.

I dunno, Bowie at 69 seemed alright - it's just that alongside Prince these are dudes who seem like they're 25 forever

it's unreal and depressing to me that over the past few years we've lost the three biggest iconic solo artists of the '80s (well, three of the five including springsteen and madonna)

wait, when did sammy hagar die?

j/k

well i was talking about whitney and MJ and prince there, as much as i love Bowie his '80s were a shade below the others, status wise

prince was really into recording pretty much everything he ever did, right? like whoever has his estate probably has thousands of hours of recorded material sitting there. wouldn't be surprised if there's a recording of every song he was into by other artists that he covered just for fun

entire closet of tapes of him outdoing every guitar solo that was praised in a review he read

That Purple Snow comp is incredible. So much great stuff there.