Prince RIP

bbc4 showing a prince docu tonight but its the wrong one (one of their 'we have schedule time to fill' cheapies) - they should be showing the omnibus docu from the 1990s.

TWU - you realise that speculating on an artist's death and religion when we don't even know the reason yet and concluding "he fucked himself" is pretty dumb, right?

Sure. So's holding grudges against people you don't know over years.

That said, TMZ is reporting an overdose last week, that Prince has needed hip and knee replacement and not gotten it because of the JW prohibition on blood transfusion is common knowledge, so it's not that far to fetch. I was mostly about giving Tomas an out on cursing his favorite artist for religious beliefs -- I'm agnostic on the cause of death.

Tthe crazies are already speculating that because Prince had a history with epilepsy he had an adverse reaction to a flu shot, which is bonkers, so I just want to wait for something closer to the truth to clear the air.

for now I don't give a shit about the why, just leveled that it happened. we can dissect the reason for it, as we did with MJ, after the initial shock has worn off

One of the things Prince does amazingly well – so well that no one really notices – is make songs that don’t have chords. Each instrument plays its own little thing and they come together to make the song, but there isn’t necessarily a piano or guitar leading you through a harmonic pattern.

Was listening to Sign O' The Times on the way to work this morning and thinking about exactly this. Like, "U Got The Look" is basically just a I-IV-V variation in B, but the guitar arrangement (until the solo and outro) is so sparse that it leaves room for so, so much. Same with the title track, or "Forever In My Life" and plenty of other tunes. It's this amazing combination of space and density.

The only thing that catches my attention - and I agree, this is such a huge shock I don't really want to speculate - is that Prince was so smart, so in control, so seemingly healthy and, afaik had no real relationship to addictive drugs, alcohol, even smoking (cigarettes). The guy was always fit like a master. I just can't believe that something as mundane as drugs did him in. MJ was clearly messed up on multiple levels, surrounded by sycophants and enablers and sketchy people. Everyone knew that. Prince was weird, but that was part of who he always was, not something he became, or something he and a huge army of handlers had to surmount. He wasn't isolated, but he was always in control, of his music, image, environment, everything.

"When Doves Cry" barely has chords, right? And "Sign" has all sorts of novel experiments, from no chords, to VU chug, to Beatles pop, to hard funk, just finding his way around the possibilities of music.

The irony is, to me who was born in the 90's and didn't really get to experience him as a vital artist outside the odd time Diamonds and Pearls or The Most Beautiful Girl was on mtv, he never quite felt real; like, how could this guy exist?

I was born in the 70s and he didn't seem real through his vital 80s! "Vital" is a word I've seen a lot in the past day. I think his vitality on stage is what makes it such a shock that he was ultimately as mortal as the rest of us.

1999 and Purple Rain were huge with me and my friends when we were teenagers. We grew up in a very much white guys with guitars world and I hope Prince managed to open our minds a tiny little bit to other possibilities.

I hadn't listened much to him in recent years (I bought Purple Rain on the train home last night as for some reason it had never made its way onto my ipod!) but like everyone else I assumed he was always going to be around making records and being Prince.

I like that two of the stories I've read of people meeting him and also one from a guy on BBC news last night all mentioned how good he smelled, that there are people all over the world going "I met Prince and he was awesome and funny and he smelled great!"

"The only thing that catches my attention - and I agree, this is such a huge shock I don't really want to speculate - is that Prince was so smart, so in control..."

He was also a complete loon. The crackpots in my FB feed are posting this and also speculating that Sony and Warner Bros have assassinated him and Michael for pulling their stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwjefpNkuas&feature=youtu.be

Not sure if it's been posted yet but I like this piece by Ned on the 30th anniversary of Purple Rain. It chimes strongly with me as Ned and I are the same age and Purple Rain seemed to hit him in the same way as it did me and my friends.

http://thequietus.com/articles/15259-prince-purple-rain-anniversary-review

Reposting this from my FB because why not:

“People call me rude
I wish we all were nude
I wish there was no black and white
I wish there were no rules”

“I’m not a woman
I’m not a man
I am something that you’ll never understand”

“Am I black or white?
Am I straight or gay?”

In some ways, it’s easy to see Prince as representative of no one but himself. He was his own country, his own planet, orbiting a sun that was also him. (Baby, he’s a star.)

But he was also a heartland American, a black man from the white Midwest who was at home in a seemingly endless stream of cultural forms – funk, rock, R&B, pop, disco, folk, New Wave, psychedelia. He eventually stubbed his toe on hip-hop, but that was just the human exception to his superhuman rule. And even at that, he never really lost his balance.

The first album I heard was 1999. The first one I bought – the first album I ever bought by a nonwhite artist, as far as I can remember – was Purple Rain. I knew I needed it before it ever came out, because one night I was sitting at the kitchen table doing homework with the radio on and an electric snarl erupted from the speakers behind me. I dropped my pencil and just listened. Dig if you will a picture of a straight suburban Reagan-era white kid having his mind blown in real time.

Inside the LP sleeve was a promotional poster of Prince and the Revolution, in all their lace-and-pearled, multi-racial, multi-gendered splendor. I was bewitched, boggled and bewildered. I had no reference points for the existence of people who looked or acted like this, so confident in their bodies and cool in their collective. They didn’t just suggest an alternate reality, they manifested it on the page – and even more, in the music.

Segueing from the monstrous rock of “Let’s Go Crazy” (with its shamelessly shredded guitar climax, designed to make all my Rush-loving friends admit that, OK, that guy can play) to the spry, groovy come on of “Take Me With You,” with the dirty secrets of “Darling Nikki” buried at the end of side one, before the astounding quartet of Doves Cry-Die 4 U-Baby I’m a-Purple Rain on side two, it was (is!) a manifesto of liberation and revelation, satiation, salvation and resurrection, gobbledygook about purple bananas and computer blues, saturated in sex and religion and as confounding and exciting as either.

And it’s not even his best album.

(Probably. I don’t know. Don’t make me pick.)

Fluid by instinct, unlimited by instrument, genre, gender, race, sexuality or even his own name – who else would so casually throw away a name like Prince? – I’m sure he used whichever restroom he damn well felt like.

So much more to say, so many songs and moments, the Purple Rain and Lovesexy concerts I saw, the samizdat thrill of scoring a muddy cassette dub of the Black Album from a Manhattan street vendor, the confused and endearing politics (and maybe prophetic too – Ronnie did talk to Russia), the eventual enduring sense of him as a national trickster, popping up on rooftops, in jazz clubs, at the Super Bowl, playing music for no reason except that nothing made him happier and no one did it better.

He enacted a world (of never ending happiness), and inside it he made room for everyone. White, black, Puerto Rican, everybody just a-freakin'. Let's go uptown, let's go crazy, let's pretend we're married, go all night.

One of the things Prince does amazingly well – so well that no one really notices – is make songs that don’t have chords. Each instrument plays its own little thing and they come together to make the song, but there isn’t necessarily a piano or guitar leading you through a harmonic pattern.

Was listening to Sign O' The Times on the way to work this morning and thinking about exactly this. Like, "U Got The Look" is basically just a I-IV-V variation in B, but the guitar arrangement (until the solo and outro) is so sparse that it leaves room for so, so much

man I had the same thought driving into work this mornin listening to "U Got the Look," i.e. "What is going on here? It's so damn spare."

he irony is, to me who was born in the 90's and didn't really get to experience him as a vital artist outside the odd time Diamonds and Pearls or The Most Beautiful Girl was on mtv, he never quite felt real; like, how could this guy exist?

A student at our uni radio station who interviewed me admitted she was born in 1994, the same year as Prince's last top five smash, and knew Prince because her dad would explain the passages "that sounded like jazz" and from summer road trips.

"When Doves Cry" does have chords, but they're implied rather than performed.

Oh, and until someone says otherwise, I'm assuming pneumonia.

The last six CDs he bought on Record Store Day sum up his aesthetic pretty well
http://www.mprnews.org/story/2016/04/21/prince-last-cd-purchases-at-electric-fetus

I'm finally getting my head around his passing.
Prince has been inspiration, joy, influence and frustration for me since I was 12 and I bought the "Controversy" 45- along with EWF's "Let's Groove" - with my newspaper route money. These were the first two records I bought on my own.
He's found his place in Heaven I'm sure. I hope it's fun.

http://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2016/04/22/prince-dead-stevie-wonder-full-intv-ac-cooper.cnn

please let stevie wonder live forever at least

prince's production manager in the 80s is on the current right now, telling stories

peak period, mid-80s german outdoor show with 80,000 people ready to see prince. prince finds out that a building on the grounds was an SS headquarters. he says he won't perform while looking at the building. german promotor somehow employs a club of hot air balloon enthusiasts to sail their balloons to the concert grounds and land them in front of the SS building, blocking it from prince's view so the show could go on.

http://stmedia.stimg.co/08-411072+25PAISLEYrjs042216.JPG?h=400&w=637&fit=crop&bg=999&crop=faces

Man I wish I was home right now

(Even setting prince aside, my mom is recuperating from a broken ankle in Roseville so man I sure wish I was there)

if you want a good cry this morning here's Q Bear and Shed G from the North Minneapolis community station KMOJ
Q Bear grew up with Prince on the Norhtside and remembers him growing up...."It's okay to cry"

http://video.startribune.com/at-kmoj-radio-it-s-ok-to-cry/376647871/

that CD list is too perfect! it's like a magic formula to create Prince.

yeah i know! it was so cool to see, Swan Silvertones Gospel Greats + Best of Missing Person haha who else?

1) Stevie Wonder, "Talking Book"

2) Chambers Brothers, "The Time Has Come"

3) Joni Mitchell, "Hejira"

4) Swan Silvertones, "Inspirational Gospel Classics"

5) Missing Persons, "The Best Of Missing Persons"

6) Santana, "Santana IV"

You'd think he had most of these already.

Then again, might be lendies.

Didn't he once say Hejira was his all-time favorite record by anyone? Or was it The Hissing of Summer Lawns?

You'd think he had most of these already.

Then again, might be lendies.

― Mark G, Friday, April 22, 2016 8:48 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Oh man is this Carlos's band? I should really listen this stuff instead of always being 'good show' when I see him."

i could somehow imagine prince cracking open a brand new copy of hejira every time he wanted to listen to it tbh

Actually, the fact that he went to the Fetus something really just struck me that maybe won't translate to people outside of the Twin Cities...way more that Westerberg, Dylan, any of the other big names from town, Prince was "one of us" in the way those others aren't.

I'm reminded of the stories New Yorkers told about Bowie encounters over the yrs, like literally everyone I know in Mpls, from punks to my parents have a Prince story.

"Yeah yea Carlos....cool,good to see you...looked like you guys were having fun up there"

Actually, the fact that he went to the Fetus something really just struck me that maybe won't translate to people outside of the Twin Cities...way more that Westerberg, Dylan, any of the other big names from town, Prince was "one of us" in the way those others aren't.

totally, like he hosted that party for the Lynx when they won the WNBA champtionship, him and Jimmy Jam were big MN sports guys, like maybe Westerberg digs the Twins but it's not like Dylan is watching Vikings games and shit

Like I've never seen Westerberg out and about (even though he lives like blocks from my parents) but I've seen Prince around.

Prince and Grant Hart (not together).

i could somehow imagine prince cracking open a brand new copy of hejira every time he wanted to listen to it tbh

lol otm

Man I wish I was home right now

― scarcity festival (Jon not Jon), Friday, April 22, 2016 8:36 AM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a friend (the one who got me into Prince in a serious way) went to the First Ave block party last night, looked like a hell of a scene from the pics/videos.

i have to hold on to the idea that at some point grant hart and prince have hung out and had the most loony conversation

"Oh man is this Carlos's band? I should really listen this stuff instead of always being 'good show' when I see him."

― chr1sb3singer, Friday, April 22, 2016 9:52 AM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Yeah yea Carlos....cool,good to see you...looked like you guys were having fun up there"

― rockpalast '82 (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, April 22, 2016 9:56 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

irl lol, but Santana was his favorite guitarist.

(also: "Hey Carlos! Good job!")

i imagine has about 50 copies of every joni album ever.

"The Hissing of Summer Lawns"

he said this was his favourite album of hers.
and secret life of plants was his favourite stevie album.
around the time of around the world in a day though so he may have decided they were his favourites after people were giving him shit for not making purple rain 2.

Dammit Prince, making me resubscribe to Tidal

Tidal is an illuminati plot...

oddly on amazon uk his cds seem to be pretty much the same price (unless they were cheaper than £5 before today), but under the cherry moon is now about £30-50 on DVD lol

KODE9 on twitter:

‏@kodenine
That bit in vibrator when vanity goes next door to ask prince for some batteries 😂😔

friend on FB:

"I guess he finally let the elevator break him down"

is there a good spotify playlist anyone has found of the songs he wrote for other artists? (manic monday, sugar walls, glamorous life, etc?)

friend on FB:

"I guess he finally let the elevator break him down"

So many people get this lyric wrong. It's "Are we gonna let de-elevator bring us down"

The de-elevator being Satan of course.

I’m sure he used whichever restroom he damn well felt like.

Men's, the one time I stood closest to him in a club. He was right ahead of me, his bodyguard Big Chick stopped me from following so Prince could finish his business in private.

something about the rhythmic flexibility and eclecticism of "hissing of summer lawns" really does recall prince, doesn't it.

still in disbelief this morning.

one thing that's kinda funny re: min-80s mpls is that the guy in panties, high heels and fishnets ended up being a jehovah's witness with some problematic conservative sexual views and the everydude flannel & jeans hamms guzzling rockers in husker du were gay