Prince RIP

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.

(story was regarding SOTT specifically)

I still have a copy of the SOTT DVD that was given away with the Observer newspaper in the UK. Prince loved giving stuff away via newspaper.

niels
Posted: April 28, 2016 at 8:58:17 AM
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.

In this spate of reading random old Prince articles I have been seeing, generally, that he was not all that into patch programming and liked to just use presets (on his synths as well as drum boxes) -- he saw no problem with that as it was all about the assemblage or where it fit in the 'painting'. I think that's awesome.

NB I am sure fink and Lisa programmed plenty of their own crazy patches for shit they did in the revolution

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

This is kind of neat, too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofKyPTXt5co

Interestingly, in an interview around the release of Rave Un2... Prince says that his old Linn Lm1 was taken out of mothballs for that record after long disuse. He says no other drum machine locks in like the LM1.

Anyway, I am here rn to tell you guys that the 1984 First Avenue Birthday Show is beyond essential. Amazing performances, ideal soundboard sound quality, three unreleased songs, opens with 17 days, fucking get it.

I still have a copy of the SOTT DVD that was given away with the Observer newspaper in the UK. Prince loved giving stuff away via newspaper.

yeah, that was a good sunday.
the following saturday evening, big tv, headphones on loud (i had young kids/wife etc who were not interested), and a few glasses of wine.
bloody perfect.
intend on repeating that experience in the near future.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that one, I've probably got it.

I am here rn to tell you guys that the 1984 First Avenue Birthday Show is beyond essential
yeah so good. "noon rendezvous"!

if there are other purple rain era revolution boots of that quality i would love to pointed at em.

Y'all do know that a BIG part of the drums on SOTT was the Fairlight?

Parade too, right? Lot of odd drums sounds on that one.

Here's something I finished up after the news. Had started it a month ago as an exercise in Princely drum sounds. https://soundcloud.com/professorjorge/peach-and-black-raw-mix

xpost yeah I think there may be some Fairlight on that, too. Like the steel drums on New Position...

Yeah - lots of Fairlight used in 1986 ! http://www.princevault.com/index.php?search=Fairlight&go=Go

The bank has its hands on the Vault: http://kstp.com/news/prince-received-out-patient-treatment-bank-trustee-drills-princes-vault-open/4119830/

dead link

Meanwhile, 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS has also been told Bremer Bank, recently appointed trustee of Prince’s estate, hired a St. Paul company to drill through Prince’s personal vault at Paisley Park Tuesday. Sources said the bank had to move quickly to get inside the vault because, as court-appointed trustee, Bremer is legally responsible for safeguarding and handling all of Prince’s assets.

The vault is known to store Prince’s invaluable recordings, of which, dozens have not been released. Prince was the only person who knew the combination, which is the reason Bremer Bank had to hire someone to drill through the lock to retrieve and take inventory of its contents.

Even though the direct link didn't work I got to the article via main page of KSTP's website

I missed the news that Bremer was appointed the special trustee yesterday:

A trust company has been appointed to temporarily oversee Prince's multimillion-dollar estate.

Bremer Trust was named special administrator of Prince's estate on Wednesday after an informal telephone conference with some of the musician's possible heirs and a judge.

The judge says Bremer Trust now has the authority to manage and supervise Prince's assets and determine his heirs. Bremer will act as special administrator for six months or until a personal representative is appointed.

Prince's sister, Tyka Nelson, asked for the appointment of a special administrator, saying she believes her brother didn't have a will and that immediate decisions about his business interests needed to be made.

In his nearly 40 years as an entertainer, there's no doubt Prince made millions. His estate is rumored to value at least $300 million.

Attorney Christopher Burns says roughly 70 percent of millionaires don't have a will.

"A lot of them figure they didn't need it, it wasn't their time, maybe a feeling of immortality," Burns said.

Because it doesn't appear Prince set anything aside, Burns says Prince could pay nearly $150 million in state and federal estate taxes.

"Certainly Prince could have had Paisley Park as a museum, or a resource for the community had he had a plan, but it is sad that he seemingly did not put such a plan in place," Burns added.

jesus that is sad. i worry that to pay taxes they'll auction off a bunch of shit that ought to be in a museum.

Yep.

this is possibly worst case scenario in action here jesus

what's esp. sad is that given his philanthropic bent, prince could have easily put many of his assets in a charitable trust. in such a case a lot of the money going to his estate would end up helping people. i suspect that some kind of trust will be set up, but its assets will be much diminished in the course of determining how the estate will be divided up.

maybe a melvin dummar will come out of the woodwork and allege that prince, after driving his purple motorcycle off a state highway in rural minnesota, made a secret will naming them as the caretaker of the Vault.

xpost: this. It's why I was so startled at the absence of a will.

given his philanthropic bent

Or his litigious bent!

btw i hadn't realized that he and mayte had two children who died shortly after birth. speaking of sad. :(

i worry that to pay taxes they'll auction off a bunch of shit that ought to be in a museum.

This happened to John Entwistle's estate. The situation was different -- he had a will -- but UK taxes, combined with his massive debt, necessitated auctioning his house and his possessions (massive collection of basses and guitars, medieval armor, stuffed fish).

that sort of thing happens all the time, sadly.

some vegas millionaire will end up putting the motorcycle from the cover of purple rain in the foyer of their casino or something :(

xpost: this. It's why I was so startled at the absence of a will.

me too.
surely his lawyer crew must have said something in the last couple of years.
i cannot imagine he had not been urged to crack on with getting something sorted.
maybe, just maybe, he thought : "f*ck it, you can sort it all out, i'm too busy to think about all that stuff, i got some tracks to make".

(nb : as a old man/parent sideline - sort your will out people, we avoided doing ours for years, but bloody hell, it was a good job we did eventually get it sorted when we did.)

xpost

the second child they lost was a miscarriage

prince's longtime set designer heather mcelhatton was interviewed on mpr and she said something interesting, that prince before the death of his son and prince after the death of his son were like night and day. He apparently became super attentive in the aftermath to knowing the names of everyone who worked for him and knowing things about their lives, asking them questions about themselves etc.

i guess we will never know what kind of changes that experience produced in him. certainly it must point the way to the JW conversion?

that shit is totally traumatic, of course he was changed by it

my wife said she hopes there is a hologram of Prince in the vault doing the Batdance

Mayte's statement the day he died ("he's with our son now") was just heartbreaking.