Prince RIP

I watched the 1983 first avenue benefit show on YouTube the other day (v v recommended) and yeah even though purple rain would start filming in just two months, the Prince of this concert is visibly 'just kids'. The difference is amazing.

(It's Wendy's first show w them and she is really just kids!)

The real crazy thing is that the official released track or "Purple Rain" - and one or two other songs, I think- is from the recording of that very benefit, with some very minor sweetening. Maybe that was even the first time it was ever played in public.

Re: the NPG piece, a lot of that scans pretty familiar practice for a dude at the height of his performance powers who hires the best and expects them to be ready for anything. It's really no different than, say, the pick-up guys waiting in the studio for Sinatra or whatever. What the piece does not get into is which of the people in the NPG was the de facto music director in charge of getting everything tight and ordered for whenever Prince shows up. Also what seems unusual is the degree of improvisation required. They had to be perfectly rehearsed but prepared to do anything at a moments notice and have that be perfect, too. Probably pretty similar to how James Brown worked, I imagine.

Yeah that microphone-gun-to-the-head thing sounds very JB.

Maybe that was even the first time it was ever played in public.

it was

think the NPR musical director was Levi Seacer. and yeah, the thing should have been called "oral history of the NPG," as it stops in 1996. Would have been good to go on to note, for instance, his son's birth and the aftermath and Emancipation and Crystal Ball, but Browne likely had the interviews he had with the musicians, most of whom were gone shortly after '96, and was compelled to finish it ASAP.

yeah Levi Seacer, Jr., according to the Hahn bio.

compelled to finish it ASAP

Proofreading or lack thereof betrays this.

alfred, did you have the hahn bio before two weeks ago or did you get ahold of it recently? I really regret not holding onto it, but when I was fired from blender they did the whole "the shit you were sent belongs to us" thing. I mentioned many hundred of posts ago that Hahn says that the "no drugs" thing was not true, but now I'm wondering if I misremembered, but it seemed to me at the time that his research was totally solid. I presume you've been looking at it: is there anything therein that you find interesting/revelatory etc…

Been holding off on getting that bio until...until I can't hold off any longer, but the part I've read of it is really good.

alfred, did you have the hahn bio before two weeks ago or did you get ahold of it recently? I really regret not holding onto it, but when I was fired from blender they did the whole "the shit you were sent belongs to us" thing. I mentioned many hundred of posts ago that Hahn says that the "no drugs" thing was not true, but now I'm wondering if I misremembered, but it seemed to me at the time that his research was totally solid. I presume you've been looking at it: is there anything therein that you find interesting/revelatory etc…

I bought it eleven years ago and, yeah, your memory is correct: Miko Weaver claims Prince did a couple lines with him.

It's rather badly copy edited, which undermines his authority a bit, but he spoke to a lot of sources on the record.

Only Prince book I have (and will finally read next week) is Matos on SOTT. Are there other good ones?

Oh wait, bio I am talking about is another one, by Matt Thorne, that seems to have come out recently.

I find it hard to picture Prince getting into kind of fist fight... I'll bet he looked like a well-dressed Scrappy Doo.

I'll bet he was one of these tough little guys, like Little Jimmy Dickens, who went right for the sensitive spot.

the only Prince bio I have is Pers Neilson's "Prince: The First Decade", which seems p exhaustive in cataloguing what was recorded/performed when & where and for some insights from various collaborators but it is not particularly well written and (of course) features some opinions I disagree with

Those per Nilsen books are now impossible to find and I have been unable to scare them up in pdf either. Dance Music Sex Romance : the First Ten Years is the one I really want to read.

Matos SOTT is awesome.

the Alan Light book is also well reported

^this

I found the Alan Light book kind of bland, like an especially long Mojo piece. Just realized that I have the Hahn book right here, though. A friend lent it to me months ago, actually, saying that it was somewhat salacious and second-hand, but probably the best we'll get about a person like Prince.

Maybe you knew more of the details already when you read the Alan Light book. I thought it created a pretty compelling narrative with lots of good quotes from and character sketches of the various parties involved.

so it's bland and well reported?

It's not written with any particular style or grace, no: it's, as you said, an excellent long piece of reporting.

Dance Music Sex Romance : the First Ten Years is the one I really want to read.

yup that's the one I have. just looked on Amazon and uh $500?!? wtf it's not that good.

so it's bland and well reported?

Yeah, there's nothing bad about it, I was just hoping for a little more life in it.

I have and love the Nilsen and Matos but that Matt Thorne one starts off ok then goes off on some strange personal taste tangents (i.e. He really loves some terrible Prince music and knocks some of the straight up acknowledged great stuff) and never recovers.

It's not written with any particular style or grace, no

So, it's a book by Alan Light, a writer who was born to be a VH1 commenting head?

There is also the late 80s book by Barney hoskyns, Imp of the Perverse, and a book by a guy named Ronin Ro, and the Toure book, and an academic book called Prince: The Making of a Pop Culture Phenomenon.

I understand the Toure book is recommended by a wide array of notables, from ?uestlove to ilxor tylerw.

also A Pop Life by Dave Hill, think this came out late 80s

Ronin Ro is a great, well-respected writer

ha did i recommend the toure book? i'd say it was half good half not so good ...

Oh yeah, exactly. Oh no, I have an (admittedly resistable) urge to buy Prince's "Emancipation" set!

i found the matos book kind of like zero-degree contempo rock criticism, complete with the long personal-history framing. i couldn't even finish it. :(

i've yet to read a full book on prince, but i've started a few, and none of them have been any good. :(

Well, if you don't mind bland, competent reporting, without the rockcrit trappings then....

xxp, i guess i did say "recommended!"
anyway, yeah, i wonder who will write the definitive prince bio ...

omplete with the long personal-history framing

I think you're remembering this incorrectly. The personal history he limits to a few paragraphs at the beginning and end. The rest is basic explication du texte.

it's a few pages IIRC. anyway, the explication du texte seemed kind of boilerplate to me.

i would have really liked to have read prince's memoir :(

I'd bet any amount - and i say this grudgingly and with a sad heart - that memoir would've been a giant, self censored yet self aggrandizing mess. Remember -- this was Prince. There wouldn't be any Miles Davis-type warts n' all autobio coming out of him.

yeah, probably the whole jehovah's witness thing means he would've been pretty circumspect about it all.

a memoir by prince ca. 1988, on the other hand....

good show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L7t4q9xFA4

I'm sure his memoir would be just as crystal clear as one by any other scrawny, song-oozing, self-mystifying Minnesotan.

xpost Yeah both those Montreux 2009 shows are very good. The first one (early show) has a guitar solo on "Empty Room" that blows away the "While My Guitar..." one IMHO. Transcendent shit.

THIS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Onx3sbNRbIY&spfreload=5

goddamn

That "While My Guitar..." solo has turned until the musical equivalent of the "Chuckles Bites the Dust" episode of The MTM Show.

I'm glad that "get away from my plants"/Prince magically appearing story is out there. A friend who was on a gig with the trombone player quoted in the RS article relayed the story to me a few years ago. Also talked about getting called in to do horn parts late at night and not being allowed to leave with any recordings, so Prince essentially left them alone in the studio overnight to arrange and record all their parts.