prince

I dunno know, I think even in the '80s a lot of his shows had the feel of a review. Jams, medleys, interpolations. I think partly because some of those songs, like When Doves Cry, can't really *be* accurately recreated live.

sheila's drums are the best thing about lovesexy ime

If loving “Blanche” at first sight despite it being a by-the-numbers funk runthrough I don’t want to be right.

Guess that date had been coming for a long time as the saying goes.

Great review, Brad! (link)

Co-sign! Wonderful read

Brad I got chills, you opened up new insights to a record I've loved for 33 years. Outstanding writing.

Yeah, well done, Brad, even better than your Human League piece and that’s saying something.

aaahhh thanks y'all <3. hard period to write about

Indeed, but excellent new framings on offer for the period there. Nicely done.

Also chiming in to say that's a fantastic review

Guitar on blanche is superb

Nice review. I agree on the show tuneiness of Wally.

Only thing I object to a little is the ending, as if prince immediately went into decline after 87. Um lovesexy was just a year later. No boring funk drills there. No real trend following there. Diamonds and Pearl's was four years later! And even then, as many problems as disappointments as I have with 90s prince (never mind 20th century prince), that decade still had plenty of great, if innovative or innovative songs. It doesn't deserve to be wholly written off.

Yup, great review Brad! Love SOTT as Prince's dream house

Yes sott was the apogee in many ways but prince didnt fall off on Jan 1st 1988.

as if prince immediately went into decline after 87

i didn't say this and aggressively worked on not saying this in that paragraph

i love lovesexy! my favorite prince period (and the source of my favorite prince bootleg ever) is the continuum of come and the gold experience! but i think it's fair to say something shifted during and after sign o the times; his vision was never as sharp in terms of like... conceiving of/releasing/editing his projects. his music also didn't seem to be progressing in a direction anymore (as much as it ever seemed to, but i think there's a real sense that he keeps pushing himself further and further from 1999 -> purple rain -> around the world -> parade -> sign). his music eventually got kinda reactionary in a way that i don't think it was before, even though that also made for great music, cf. one of the great things about love symbol, come, and the gold experience is hearing prince songs sit in the world of new jack swing

The drum solo on the NYE show by Sheila E is absolutely horrible. I have since become convinced Sheila E was a mediocre drummer at best. https://youtu.be/v_aAug_PpUM?t=2751 watch this and convince me she was a great drummer. I've seen better solos from amateur youtubers. In fact, i've never seen a worse solo from amateur youtubers.

gtfo w/ that nonsense

ok, the performance is right there. Maybe she was just terrible on that night. Maybe she was a great drummer. Point to a timestamp of her drum solo there that you think illustrates her expertise on her instrument. Perhaps i'm just uneducated in quality drumming.

To me (even though a bunch of the songs are reheated leftovers) Graffiti Bridge is distinctly the beginning of the end. Not the last album of his I heard, but the last one I bought automatically.

Case for the defence.

https://youtu.be/efkS7NUFPDI

like... much as i love lovesexy, it's slightly stiff-and... forced(?)-sounding, like it is determined to provide an invariable brightness at the expense of everything else, and it's also literally a reaction to a record he didn't release until 1994. if i'm listening to it in context i'm like "ok the plot is getting a little lost here." which is ultimately fine, but it makes it feel very separate from the way the records were stacking up before

nothing to add to this discussion of sheila e's skills except 1. she lobbied to join prince's sign o the times band because she wanted to prove her mettle behind a full kit, a decision i deeply respect, and she really put herself out there too, she was one of the main focal points of his show 2. she's an inarguably brilliant percussionist 3. as an amateur drummer some of the sixteenth notes she hits on the hi-hat and a lot of the double bass drum work would be very difficult for me to replicate, would have to study 4. protect sheila e at all costs????

Not the last album of his I heard, but the last one I bought automatically.

True here too. (Hell I even got the "Thieves in the Temple" single.) But everything after that, they were used purchases and I could always find them pretty easily after about a month.

I can't get with Lovesexy, and I've tried.

I can't get with Lovesexy, and I've tried.

I downloaded a version that had been cut up. Now I like it more.

I own it too. The remix of "I Wish U Heaven" is good, "Alphabet St.," the rest defines "meh." He'd done it all already but was less focused about it.

Graffiti bridge is literally the 80s end point. Has many 86 leftovers re recorded. After that he waved goodbye to that version of prince. Lovesexy has an over determined sense of optimism and joy and rebirth. But, it also has alphabet st, glam slam, I wish u heaven, Anna Stesia and when 2 r in love. It is true that after sott, his editing got worse (though the 90s were the decade of overlong albums in fairness), his vision for albums got less interesting (when when there were songs in the 80s not so great, they still felt part of something bigger,or were just interesting in some way).

The black album is actually much better than ppl give it credit for. Too funky, as the man himself might say.

That live Glamorous Life percussion is exciting and impressive.

Sheilas solos in the sott movie and lovesexy 88 live shows are proof she was a goddess both in front of and behind the drums

Thing most irritating about lovesexy isthat it really makes no sense outside of itself. It's such a total hermetic prince universe album that I can see why ppl didnt quite get it.

Releasing it as a single track was an incredible act of self-sabotage; I can't understand how any WB executive let him do that.

Maybe in 88 it didn't matter as much as vinyl and tapes were still popular formats

Exactly. I bought it the week of its release on tape and never had reason to think about the track thing until upgrading to cd in the mid nineties

I had just gotten my first CD player a couple of months before and I had no problem with it. Go figure!

Genius percussionist, all round awesome musician, but as a drummer she feels stiff and awkward to me.

You guys are nuts.

At the same time, it is a tragedy that so many prince drummers were subordinate to the drum machine on stage. I blame prince being anal about replicating the records/thinking he was being esp novel/forward thinking.

How do y'all rate Prince as a drummer? To me it's the instrument on which he's least interesting? Not bad, just rote. As opposed to, Stevie Wonder, whom I'd rate equally as keyboardist and drummer.

I love the four song opening salvo on Parade - P on drums, one continuous take

and "Tambourine," of course.

prince’s drumming is what makes “the cross” run fast

he’s still very good at them though

yeah I always feel mildly anxious when "The Cross" goes too fast

He's kinda sloppy as a drummer when he tries to get fancy. I saw him in a club once and for some reason he played bass on "Kiss," strumming an awesomely muddy approximation of the chords.

He prob doesn't play with a click track.

I like him as a drummer and wish he played more. I love him on parade, tambourine, soft and wet. Hes no technician but he can def come up with funky, unusual stuff.

How do y'all rate Prince as a drummer? To me it's the instrument on which he's least interesting? Not bad, just rote.

Least interesting = least interested, probably. His favouring the Linn probably speaks to his relative lack of interest in drums as an instrument or an element of composition / improvisation. He could play real drums well enough to lay down a track & then do all the stuff that actually engaged him over the top, and he learnt one machine well enough to do the same. Done, move on.

Similarly, he lets Sheila thrive when she's doing fun percussion stuff that surprises him above the regular beat, which he doesn't care about?

I think he's actually an awesome, totally original drum machine programmer. Like Dorothy Parker, or that Time song I referenced, 777-9311?Just nuts.

There are all these pop stars that play drums like they really know how, like Bieber or Bruno Mars or the guy from Panic at the Disco. But Prince plays like a guy who plays well for someone who lists drums last on their resume.

iirc according to susan rogers he did not play with a click track, correct

yeah he's great on the Linn obv! but he stuck to that one machine - it didn't spark interest in picking up newer drum machines and learning what he could do with them

(never owned anything post-80s, but my impression is that NPG onward is predominantly live drums, and iirc Batman sounds likely programmed on computer or hardware sampler, rather than a current drum machine?)