Prince RIP

The band who opened for D'Angelo at First Ave with St. Paul Peterson, Eric Leeds, etc. was not that good. Great players of course, but without someone like Prince to direct and frame things it was just jams. The only interesting part was watching Questlove try to keep things in check while the other drummer overplayed.

Loved the New Yorker postscript. I've got to admit, I'd never even considered Prince's iconography or pictograph lexicon as avant garde, but of course they were.

if anyone's unaware of this bootleg it's 1) incredible 2) so nice that i can listen to it at work and completely ignore work

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zQ7SZ1Q014

BN, MOMI is showing Purple Rain Friday night, 7:30

if i weren't going to a birthday party i'd be there. ifc is showing under the cherry moon may 6/7 at midnight iirc and i will DEFINITELY be there

I might be! Never saw the whole thing, and at least he got Michael Ballhaus to shoot it.

it's probably the best looking of the three films

Going to purple rain on 42nd St in two hours

under the cherry moon looks amazing and is ridiculous and incoherent and is therefore my favorite movie

It looks delicious but doesn't Prince get punchable after 10 minutes

Brad's estimation of it is pretty otm. I watched it a couple nights ago. (Haven't been able to bring myself to watch Graffiti Bridge, which has the fewest redeeming values of his films - in fact I think the only redeeming values of that one are that Morris Day is in it)

i've never seen graffiti bridge. nobody really goes out of their way to say the soundtrack is awesome but imo the soundtrack is awesome

you know, i've never seen the sign of the times concert film -- i assume it's worth it, right?

y'all got to SLOW DOWN with posting the rare tracks and concerts and such. i can't keep up!

i've never seen it either but i've only heard it's 100 percent revelatory

SOTT film is v good. For some reason I seem to remember that Roger Ebert liked it?

re: Under the Cherry Moon, Prince is p amusing w/in any given scene, but the scenes don't make a whole lot of sense all taken together

yeah Graffiti Bridge is great as an album. if it was all just the Prince tracks, people would love it. the association with the movie didn't help none. and whoever did the artwork wants shootin'

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/A1L3QDvz4XL._SX522_.jpg

as for SOTT, yeah best 'concert' movie ever even though it was barely a concert at all.

SOTT movie is great. The 'It's Gonna Be a Beautiful Night' video has been popping up lately.

the version of Forever In My Life is just.. flat out sensational.

from a Conan O'Brien Simpsons script that, had Prince not rejected it, would have been the Season 4 premiere:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CgvhDBXU4AESgV7.jpg

Say hel-lo to my lit-tle FRIEND

THE BLUE ANGEL

(Oh my god look at that guitar)

I always thought it interesting how "1999" doesn't start with Prince singing. The only other song I can think that cycles through another vocalist, let alone two, before finally landing on the singer is Stevie Wonder's "You Are the Sunshine of My Life."

xp maybe someone has mentioned already, but the simpsons ppl talk about that episode in one of the dvd commentaries - apparently at the same time prince got sent the simpsons script he also received a fan-written script for a simpsons episode featuring him, and in some kind of mix-up thought that one was the real one. he loved it and gave the simpsons producers some notes, and only when they couldn't match up his notes to their script did they figure out the mistake. then he saw their actual script and rejected it immediately

saw the Sign movie when it came out when I wuz 16; it is absolutely exhilarating. Saw Graffiti Bridge, which I remember chiefly from some awesome Morris-jerome bits…

this is one of the Royal Highness vids mentioned above, must be a warm-up at 1st Avenue in early '87… "hot thing" is off the charts…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s6uSt3jR-s

holy shit yeah.

this used to do the rounds a fair bit, not sure if it's been mentioned so far. hasn't been available for years

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpEgEfgM1vM

listening to so much of his stuff lately I am reminded of a key element that no one really mentions: Prince was really into taking baths. So much bathing.

Paisley Park 12" is so fucking good. I don't really understand why this isn't a more renowned Prince song. It might be my favorite on atwiad. Wendy and Lisa's seesaw vocal melody makes me all misty eyed.

Around The World In A Day, Lovesexy and Come r the ones eye seem 2 be listening 2 the most.

R U doing that UR self or is there some sort of browser extension eye should be looking 4?

xp maybe someone has mentioned already, but the simpsons ppl talk about that episode in one of the dvd commentaries - apparently at the same time prince got sent the simpsons script he also received a fan-written script for a simpsons episode featuring him, and in some kind of mix-up thought that one was the real one. he loved it and gave the simpsons producers some notes, and only when they couldn't match up his notes to their script did they figure out the mistake. then he saw their actual script and rejected it immediately

― lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living (Merdeyeux), Wednesday, April 27, 2016 6:35 PM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hahaha that's amazing

more details:

http://www.stereogum.com/1873291/simpsons-producer-details-rejected-prince-episode-co-written-by-conan-obrien/news/?PageSpeed=noscript

Questove anecdote related on NPR today hearkens back to his infamous rollerskating tale and almost trumps it.

http://www.npr.org/2016/04/27/475721555/questlove-on-prince-doo-wop-and-the-food-equivalent-of-the-mona-lisa

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/04/26/jimmy_fallon_tells_the_story_of_when_prince_destroyed_him_in_ping_pong_video.html

late to the party but the full syracuse show is slaying me. although i love his output from before and after this era, ever since i saw purple rain as a kid this is what i always imagined a prince concert to be.

as a showman the dude was on some kinda level

Still bummed. It ends like THIS?

I always thought it interesting how "1999" doesn't start with Prince singing. The only other song I can think that cycles through another vocalist, let alone two, before finally landing on the singer is Stevie Wonder's "You Are the Sunshine of My Life."

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 27 April 2016 22:34 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I found the video interesting that for the intro and half of the first verse he's climbing down from a balcony and nowhere near the microphone. He gets there on time, just.

VV on the Sign film

http://www.villagevoice.com/film/he-rocked-that-mother-to-the-max-tragically-prince-s-best-film-is-not-commercially-available-8541822

SOTT is superb, but for a straight concert video, lovesexy is unimpeachable.

not watched GB since 1992 or thereabouts (though the artwork for the album/movie is amazing!). dont really need to but UTCM is underrated! it looks great. though i do sometimes think prince should have just let morris day act in his place.

Still bummed. It ends like THIS?

i wish he hadnt died in an elevator, but then, where do most people die? you cant pick where your life ends. :|

I always thought it interesting how "1999" doesn't start with Prince singing. The only other song I can think that cycles through another vocalist, let alone two, before finally landing on the singer is Stevie Wonder's "You Are the Sunshine of My Life."

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 27 April 2016 22:34 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah this kind of thing fascinates me, i tried to make a thread about it once but i didn't really get much further than those 2 songs
songs where 3 or more vocalists trade off singing lead within one verse

Rolling Stones - Salt of the Earth

Still bummed. It ends like THIS?
― Elvis Telecom

would it have been any different? if it had all been allowed on YT when he was alive, it would probably have just been, 'oh, theres some old unreleased prince music'. he already had so much music around, it would have just swamped people. death is an unfortunate catalyst.

I always thought it interesting how "1999" doesn't start with Prince singing. The only other song I can think that cycles through another vocalist, let alone two, before finally landing on the singer is Stevie Wonder's "You Are the Sunshine of My Life."

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 27 April 2016 22:34 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah this kind of thing fascinates me, i tried to make a thread about it once but i didn't really get much further than those 2 songs
songs where 3 or more vocalists trade off singing lead within one verse

And my favorite thing about those "1999" vocals is that, since the whole thing is really just a one-chord vamp with some suspensions, each vocalist's melody lining is hiding the harmony it inside the entire time, until it emerges in the last line of the verse. You can sing each of the lines with any of those three verse melodies and it works.

I would really like to see The Revolution get together and give "1999" and "Purple Rain" the VH1 Classic Albums/isolated tracks treatment. Like, on "Let's Go Crazy" there are so many little synth stabs and riffs that just come in for a couple of bars, but each of them is doing something cool. Or in "Take Me With U," doubling the vocal line an octave below (a Prince trademark, obvs.). Is it crucial to the song, especially one that tends to the folky/pop side of Prince? No. Would it be a worse song without it? Yes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-O-LsD7czo

This Japanese Sign 'O' The Times Blu-Ray, released in 2014, is Region A, meaning it will play on US players. The next time some money lands in my PayPal account, I'm thinking about buying one.

I remember reading somewhere that whereas a lot of musicians were trying to tweak and push the Linn machine beyond the custom sounds and making it do all kinds of crazy stuff, Prince only used the preset sounds - but did so better than maybe anyone else. I always thought that's why SOTT contains all the sounds of the 80s (to me) but not sure if it's near true.