Prince RIP

xpost Funny Bachman should mention Lenny Breau, he's another guitar great a lot of Canadian musicians cite. I think Danko and Helm played with him early on Anyway, I think he had a serious drug problem and ended his career playing with Anne Murray.

Dig in at yr leisure.

Don't know as much about Clare Fischer as I should except that he wrote a tune called "Pensativa" that is considered a standard and at some point he operated in the area that became known as Latin Jazz. Just read that he got into R&B arranging because his nephew was the drummer for Rufus feat. Chaka Khan.

I don't think that description of Lenny Breau's final days is quite right.

i'm willing to bet the sound on "new position" is a synth and not a real steel drum, because it just sounds... weird. but misidentifying sounds outside of their normal contexts is the easiest thing in the world to do, so.

just thinkin here... probably not saying anything a million people haven't said... but it seems like parade is the album where prince seems to be existing in his own universe... the sonic palette is the most idiosyncratic. he's developing experiments from earlier albums, taking them to extremes. sign of the times is a bit in this vein too, but it's more sprawling and has more stuff that feels like pastiche, or at least prince riffing on more familiar sounds rather than prince riffing on price. and by the time of lovesexy and (esp.) diamonds and pearls, prince is already kind of playing a bit of catch-up, trying to do "prince versions" of sounds reigning on the R&B charts at the time....

just spitballin.

maybe that schematic doesn't work too well, b/c batman in its own way feels very idiosyncratic, too. i guess any schematic would be confused that at this point all of prince's albums are a mix of "new" material, material that's a few years old, and slightly old material thoroughly reworked. so it's hard to make distinctions from album to album to chart a clear pattern of development. to do that you'd have to really listen to the flood of studio outtakes in chronological order.

trying to do "prince versions" of sounds reigning on the R&B charts at the time

man is this the truth. 1990 really feels like the turning point to me, where shifts in recording/instrumental technology coincided with his assembly of the NPG and both of those fed into this feeling of him trying to keep up rather than move ahead (or burrow further into his own idiosyncrasies, which up to now had kinda been the same thing). Really I just love everything up to Grafitti Bridge and then sonically and lyrically he seems to start losing his way, he never really came back and recorded an album that was enjoyable from start to finish. There were still lots of bright spots and great individual tracks, of course. But something like the song "Diamonds and Pearls" feels so compromised - there's a decent riff and melody in there, but the execution is all wrong, the lyrics are clunky as hell, and the production lacks any kind of distinctive touch, it doesn't feel lived in or fleshed out.

this feeling of him trying to keep up rather than move ahead (or burrow further into his own idiosyncrasies, which up to now had kinda been the same thing)

I'm a broken record on '90s prince but imo gold experience/come/basically any material recorded in 1993 on crystal ball tries to have it all three ways and it mostly works imo

diamonds and pearls by contrast is a really unfocused and empty record though imo

Parade is my favorite of the ones I'm digging into this week. (as a side note, it sucks, but these big musician deaths are doing wonders for me catching up to canon records and artists). I kind of feel the same about it as I do Bowie's Lodger -- weirdest overall record, and not that many people's favorite that I can see-- but super easy for me to get into. I wish he'd used a song like "Mountains" as a springboard for his 90s work, because he's really good at that lush Beatles/yacht-rock/gospel hybrid.

I listened to the Batman album in its entirety for the first time since . . . ha, maybe since 1989, and goddamn that is a good record. "The Future" and "Electric Chair" rank among the great 1-2 punches in his discography IMO. Record should be a lot better remembered than it is.

Was also thinking of how weird the drum programming is on "I Would Die 4 U." boom SNAP boom >>clap<< boom SNAP boom (rest). Then no claps at all in the verses so the 4 of every bar has no snare/clap/anything.

that lush Beatles/yacht-rock/gospel hybrid.

haha this is a great description of "Mountains", and boy is the extended mix of that tune a treat

Yeah one of my favorite 12"

Was also thinking of how weird the drum programming is on "I Would Die 4 U." boom SNAP boom >>clap<< boom SNAP boom (rest). Then no claps at all in the verses so the 4 of every bar has no snare/clap/anything.

that rest kind of makes the song IMO. that jagged stop-start phrasing combined with those incessant electronic 32nd-notes (?) going on in the background. great example of how he combines basically simple drum-machine elements to make a busy and involving rhythm track.

idk Parade has always been a favorite, and it keeps coming up in top fives and tens I've seen (it's in mine).

for me it's his most hermetically sealed record: the many stunning moments are exercises in arranging psychedelia into Wire-esque bursts of energy and concision. To this day I don't know another record like it.

it's absolutely my favorite prince record. that suite of miniatures in the beginning!

one take!

hoo boy

http://www.tmz.com/2016/04/28/prince-tyka-storms-out-estate-alfred-money/

Alfred?

i do not remember when i downloaded the 1984 birthday set but fuckin' aye this version of erotic city

xp lol, yes apparently

http://www.citypages.com/restaurants/what-prince-ate-an-interview-with-princes-personal-chefs-8238997

Actually rather poignant

also dickish. I wouldn't work for a dude who made eyeball gestures after finding a smudge on a box

i put together a playlist that mimics the original crystal ball tracklist. these two sides are a wild set of songs jeez

Side 3:
Crystal Ball
If I Was Your Girlfriend
Rockhard In A Funky Place

Side 4:
The Ball
Joy In Repetition
Strange Relationship
I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man

did prince love using flanger so much because flanger units are purple?

or did flanger pedals/units become purple...after prince used it

87 prince is definitely looking around outside his bubble, the next few years were him in some way trying to come to grips w/ and maybe master where pop was moving w/o him, esp w/ rap and dance music. sign o the times has a dash of it though really he's still wrapped up inside his own head there, black album is him scoffing at these damn kids these days ('dead on it' is so bad, i can remember getting in arguments w/ friends over it at the time, they would say 'you have to admit rap wasn't good until run dmc/public enemy/nwa, whatever gamechanger basically' and i'd respond 'no hip-hop has always been awesome, prince just got old'), lovesexy has featured rapper though being prince he could just go get heavy d like janet and michael would, he had to keep it in house. the day glo hippie aspects of a lot of the media w/ lovesexy could also seem to be of a kind w/ acid house and the first stirrings of madchester at the time but really i think that's just convergent evolution, de la soul had the same thing going on the next year and i don't think they were really looking at happy mondays imports, day glo hippie shit was just really really in the air in the late 80s. batman soundtrack has him playing w/ samplers and acknowledging he's been hitting the clubs and likes some of what he's seen and heard ('the future's music) and doesn't like some of what he's seen and heard ('the future's lyrics), 'batdance' got compared to todd terry by a lot of folx at the time. graffiti bridge has the stirrings of npg and 'tick tick bang', which is basically prince attempts to make a hank shocklee record and really the only time for me where prince + hip-hop produces something awesome instead of awkward. diamonds and pearls has a lot of problems but the main thing is it feels (and was sold as) very much like prince doing a blatant reach for commercial relevance, and it worked - his first album w/ multiple hits since sott, his first non-batman #1 hit since 'kiss', his best selling album since purple rain. but oof: 'jughead', 'diamonds and pearls' - the first hit by him i didn't like and hearing fox news in passing use that as the prince song they would play in the background as they talked about his genius etc made me able to get over 'purple rain' turning into 'imagine' the past week or so (don't get me wrong - i love 'purple rain' but i wasn't shaken to the core to realize 'o, it's a journey song'), 'jughead', 'gett off' being kinda the bridge between effortlessly genuinely nasty 80s prince and borderline corny trying a bit 'nasty' 90s prince (here's where i admit i always kind of rmde at 'p control')(so many better songs on the gold experience), fucking 'jughead'. having said that, w/ diamonds and pearls being the first album where i kinda stepped back and dealt w/ the novel experience of a prince album i wasn't obsessed w/ even if i didn't love it at first and i think easily the worst album he had released by that point (there's this weird thing where some ppl act like prince just suddenly got good when he got all-time great w/ dirty mind, those first two albums are great yall), there's some really great stuff on there, like if 'jughead' proved he couldn't do everything in his sleep then 'strollin' proved he could still do some things in his sleep. the next album had the rapping still medicore but not cripplingly so as well as the decent iirc 'i wanna melt w/ u' but everything else (except for the reggae number iirc and obv the kirstie skits) was pretty great.

the second album (the s/t one) is a masterpiece!

seriously. one other 'this is what you kids are into now right?' move i'd forgotten - prince trying for a grunge look sorta for the morning papers video and single artwork -

http://eil.com/images/main/Prince+Morning+Papers+14310.jpg

i thought maaaybe that's from the marc jacobs perry ellis grunge spring 93 collection but that actually looks much better (it's also more interested in defining the 90s than being defined by the 90s though twenty odd years later what's the difference):

http://anotherimg.dazedgroup.netdna-cdn.com/786/azure/another-prod/340/3/343117.jpg

i haven't listened to that album in forever so no idea how it holds up but god i loved 'the morning papers' at the time, couldn't believe it wasn't a much bigger hit, the only track i think i liked better on that album was 'love 2 the 9's'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxVeUvo5COI

love symbol holds up extremely well imo. especially the two songs you mentioned

I included "The Morning Papers" in my '90s list. First track I thought of. I'd also stick "Blue Light" too.

i.e. the reggae one

All CD/digital copies of SOTT sound like shit - way too quiet and flat.

In the absence of proper remasters, a few years ago I 'home remastered' some Prince CDs (plus chopped Lovesexy up into tracks). From memory, this meant putting the music through a stereo enhancer (SOTT CD sounded almost mono) and adding some smiley-shaped EQ. Probably a total hack job if you're a pro audio engineer but well worth it to my ears.

TS: Turrican adopting Prince's eye/u/2/c speak or balls' eradication of all capital letters and (most) punctuation.

SOTT vinyl reissue coming out in August (planned prior to Prince's passing).

Already-reissued vinyl titles -- 1999, PR -- getting enthusiastic thumbs-ups from the kids at the Steve Hoffman forums.

good to hear

Occurred to me that Revolution/outside musicians or no, diamonds and pearls may be the first of his records that sounds like it was recorded with a traditional band. Don't know what to make of that.

it sounds like that because that's what it is

in approx 2001 i bought a new vinyl copy of Purple Rain from Beat Street in Brooklyn, and it had the OG sticker on the front touting the singles, plus the actual poster inside. it was regular price, like $7.99. how is that possible??

jeez i had never heard one nite alone before. gorgeous record

it's pretty good, that was the tour I saw. he's p funny on the live DVD that came w it

xxp dead stock - I bought a sealed 1983 repress copy of She's So Unusual with the hype sticker just last week

I've come around to agree w/Prince about Lovesexy vs. the Black Album. Not that I think it's too "dark" or "negative", but it really doesn't cohere or hang together very well, and the tracks are more amorphous jams than songs, there's very little that feels structured or thought out. It *sounds* great and I love a lot of it, "Bob George" especially, but Lovesexy is superior in every way while still being sonically of a piece, it just has better songs.

love it:

http://i1.wp.com/media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/prince-hair.jpg?w=640

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