Prince RIP

UK/US titles maybe?

The Per Nilsen book is outstanding if you want to get into the details of recordings, production, personnel. How the music was made, essentially. That's why I love it. Personally, I'm not that interested (though I am a little) in who he slept with or how good he was at ping pong or what he represents for race or gender studies.

And speaking of JB, here is another interview with Alan Leeds, which in the end is about Miles Davis and Price but has a ton of information about his relationship with the Godfather.
http://thelastmiles.com/interviews-alan-leeds.php

― Wrecka Stow Ralph (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, May 7, 2016 8:49 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hahaha:

Prince was loath to give out his number and I was one of a couple of people who would handle most of his calls. So, whenever Miles was trying to find Prince, he'd call. Sometimes I'd come back from the grocery store and there'd be this raspy voice on the answer machine saying "tell that little purple motherfucker to contact me!"

omg, only now got a chance to read further in that interview and just got to the dinner part.

"tell that little purple motherfucker to contact me!"

i can 100% hear that in miles davis's voice and now my life is a lot better, thank you.

+1, that's story is awesome

Can't remember who, but somebody was saying the other day that when you tell a story about Miles Davis and quote him, it is mandatory that you try to imitate his voice.

i don't think i'd even heard Davis's voice much when i read his autobio yet i somehow heard that voice in my head

love the Per Nilsen book, not super well written but it's such a helpful crash course on the specifics of Prince's career

speaking of which, has anyone seen that don cheadle film about davis? i imagine it could be decent, but it could also be abysmal. don cheadle seems like a smart dude, so i'd bet on the former.

went to the los angeles memorial party outside city hall last night. kind of low rent and slapdash all around, but it ended with stevie wonder singing "purple rain" more or less, and they released a bunch of doves while playing a recording of "when doves cry," which was awesome, and bj the chicago kid did a pretty great "do me, baby." but hearing prince's originals blasted over a decent p.a. while thousands of devotees decked out in purple danced was the best part of all.

I will admit not to knowing much about Miles, but purely as a cinematic experience, it was middling.

The worst parts are the buddy cop moments which fortunately are only a quarter of it.

Xpost

Don't get a good vibe about that movie.

i got v drunk last night and passed out in my apt. i woke up about an hour later with tears running down my face and the cross playing on loop. i have no recollection of getting out my laptop, sitting it on my bed, opening my media player or putting the song on. still trying to understand the sigficence of this

i figure 1 of 2 scenarios are possible. either for the first time ever a drunk person forgot they did something while drunk OR angel prince visited my apt in a beautiful act of compassion.

def the second

adorable much? feel like its his take on the sexy librarian look.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4odGpPzn2E

holyyy shit

i love how he never just casually does an appearance on a show, he sets out to melt faces every time

an afternoon talk show. fuckin crazy

That clip is at once the most delightful and the most heartbreaking thing I've seen in ages. As I think I commented back when that photo of him with Eva Longoria started floating around online just after his death, it is harder to see recent photos or clips of him where, far from being this distant figure from my childhood and adolescence, he was still going around being awesome with astonishing regularity. It makes me regret the only tangential attention I had been paying to his work in recent years--especially seeing the prices that the Lotusflow3r album is going for these days (that "Crimson and Clover" cover was only on the physical copies of the album--anywhere you can "acquire" it the album digitally is missing it).

Also, Sheila E!

Yeah the sexy librarian thing was done in 1987...with that double album he put out

he was really good at pulling it off.

sexy as hell imo

he just looks so damn great in that clip. sounds great. plays great. looks great.

sexy and so cute!

Unfortunately the guy seems more 'vital' in a way that it's hard to accept....whatever

He would seem 'vital' if he was playing a show tomorrow.

i love that he KNOWS how good he is. and how he loves being reflected back at himself

I think what I miss most about Prince 90s - studio work is that sense of nonchalance. It's atill there onstage. But he made too many things seem like too much hard work on record. That effortless melodicism was more or less gone.

I mean, Prince in the studio before the 90s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPHo9y4xxs8

Had completely forgotten about the original, musical version of the James L. Brooks film I'll Do Anything and don't think I ever knew that many (Most? All?) of the songs were written by Prince.

Yeah that's something I think is a bit undercovered right now -- the swathe of soundtrack songs and efforts he did beyond his three starring-role movies and Batman. Hell, he did a bunch of songs for Showgirls!

The IDA songs are pretty terrible. One or two popped up on the Old Friends 4 Sale compilation from the '90s while the rest are out there as boots.

interview with tavis smiley on BET in '98 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqyjwhFiQqg)

i'm still inconsolable

Some good stories about Wendy & Lisa's dads in Kent Hartman's Wrecking Crew book.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItJO7VOXe8w

dick gregory getting conspiratorial on both how warners wanted prince dead (though he also seems to suggest prince didnt really own his masters when he died), how he wasnt ill/didnt have aids, etc etc. there will be more like this.

interview with tavis smiley on BET in '98

it's a fascinating interview, but also depressing to see just how delusional prince could be. he spouts a lot of nonsense, and his ambitions for the NPG label are alternately impossibly grandiose and (occasionally) modest. the idea that larry graham's album on NPG would sell 700,000 copies!! alan leeds apparently quit running paisley park b/c it was clear prince didn't really want to run a real label, and NPG was even more of a shambles from that point of view.

basically it sounds like a guy who is losing touch w/ his audience (and his muse, probably) and can't understand why. so he blames his lack of success on nefarious folks at warner bros sabotaging his releases. one can sympathize with prince in that moment and still recognize how he copes with the reality in large part by trying to create a world of his own making that only resembles the real world a little bit. granted he's nowhere near michael jackson levels of disconnectedness.

that said, the funniest part of that interview are the horrible DIY videos NPG put together in the late 1990s. this is obviously before hi-def cameras and sophisticated, easy-to-use linear editing suites became omnipresent, and your uncle could make a professional-looking video. prince's video looks like something a few high school bros might have put together over a free weekend.

i should have said that the videos are charmingly horrible. especially the low-rent video effects. reminds me a little of the bar mitzvah videos my cousin was shooting and editing around the same time.

the unpublished rolling stone piece from 2014 was also tinged with sadness and delusions.

i can sympathise that it must be hard to bear not being at your former commercial peak but its odd for any artist in his 50s to wonder why beyonce gets to play her current music on talk shows, while he is asked/expected to play something old (not that this is even 100% the case from what i can see - he still seemed to be playing songs from his not esp great newer albums like funk n roll etc).

funniest part of the RS piece is that prince, away from WB, suddenly seemed to understand why they might not want to release music all the time (or at least, found that his new freedom meant that he didnt have to release all the time). he was a good contrarian, prince, always kicking against whoever he felt was controlling him, or going against the internet trend of newer artists putting up everything for people to hear. i wonder if he was a newer artist today, if all those vault songs would have been up on soundcloud.

i just clocked this mix that stirmonster made:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03rymc8

DEA is launching an investigation:

DEA Agents Revisit Paisley Park As 'A Component of a Complete Investigation'

Agents with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration revisited the scene at Paisley Park in Chanhassen Tuesday evening as "a component of a complete investigation."

Investigators brought a large suitcase on wheels into the compound, big enough to hold the paper trail they're following. Fans, like Dan Hedrick, who watched also wondered, "You would think there should be something they can look at this doctor giving drugs to him."

Multiple law enforcement sources say the DEA is probing the link between Prince and the addiction doctor in California, if someone else gave Prince the narcotics and if Prince was using his real name or an alias to get painkillers.

Authorities are searching for paperwork to support their theory, including records like canceled checks, credit card charges and statements, bank documents and examining Prince's medical history, even his personal relationships. One fan lingering outside the compound Tuesday said, "sometimes you don't even want to know really what a legend does, but I'm here because of course curiosity, " according to Kim Ensminger.

The visit follows the release of a search warrant for Prince’s medical records, which shows the musician received a prescription shortly before his death and that the physician who prescribed it worked for North Memorial Clinic in Minnetonka.

The physician, identified as Dr. Michael Schulenberg (although misspelled as "Schulemberg" in the warrant), said he prescribed Prince medication on April 7 and that it was to be filled at a Walgreens, according to the warrant.

Prince also underwent tests on April 20, according to the document, and Schulenberg was dropping off the results at Paisley Park on the following day, the day of Prince’s death.

A North Memorial spokeswoman told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS that Schulenberg was no longer employed at the clinic and had no further details . Schulenberg is also no longer employed at Ridgeview Excelsior Clinic, where online records showed he worked, according to a woman who answered the phone at the clinic.

The search warrant also states investigators were told Prince was treated for an illness sometime in 2014 or 2015 at Ridgeview Hospital in Chaska. There were no details explaining why he needed treatment.

5 EYEWITNESS NEWS reported prescription pills were recovered at Paisley Park the day Prince was found dead.

Meanwhile, according to two law enforcement sources close to the investigation, the potent painkiller Percocet was found in Prince's system. Percocet contains oxycodone and acetaminophen, which also showed up in his system, according to sources.

While Prince had known hip problems, it's unknown whether he was taking Percocet to treat the pain. The sources also said Prince had a dangerously low red blood cell count, meaning he had been sick.

Investigators still do not know Prince's official cause of death - that is part of the toxicology report, which has yet to be released.

http://kstp.com/news/prince-search-warrants-medical-records-north-memorial-clinic-prescription-dr-michael-schulemberg/4133344/

Ronin Ro book is fine. But after reading that and several other things, I just got the Per Nilsen book out of the library and it seems like with much of the material he got there first and also provided a little more detail.

Meanwhile that infuriating Matt Thorne book is Amazon's #1 Best Seller in Soul Music.

To pick a few random but serious nits, off the top of my head - u see what eye did there? There is a point a few chapters in where he talks about Prince starting to record for Warner Brothers but there is absolutely prior to that about his initial interactions or negotiations with any label at all, WB or otherwise. Also, he seems to think the term "to gaslight" originated in a Steely Dan lyric. Finally there are several bizarre paragraphs in which he takes Prince to task for reading some kind of New Age Self Help book, something to the effect that "I expect I have to tolerate a little bit of this from my idols and other creative types but really, Prince, in this you've gone too far." Atrocious.

Toure book was really engaging and he really gets at some great things I hadn't thought about. Made me laugh out loud a few times too. Also earned some eye rolls from me but that's ok. It helps digest the tone to know it was expanded from a series of lectures. He seems to have had some of his own conversations with Dickerson, Leeds, Fink, Susan Rogers etc too.

I think Prince could have been more contemporarily relevant toward the end, if he wasn't such a control freak dick. If you do everything your way and your way alone, you really can't be that surprised when no one else is on your wavelength.

Is it really not abundantly clear that doing everything his way and his way alone was infinitely more important to him than seeming "contemporarily" "relevant"?

if only Prince had done things Josh in Chicago's way!

Nobody called Picasso a control freak dick

That's not what I meant!!!! I meant that if he wanted to sell more records or whatever he prolly could have. I was referencing the post referencing the RS story, and conspiracies re WB, all the people keeping Prince down, or delusions of Larry Graham going gold. Just saying there were alternatives, but Prince was not one to compromise.

Whether that's for the better or not is a different matter. I know it's been noted that AOA, his best later album, was his only with an outside producer.

Was just saying that if popularity or album sales were ultimately that important to him, he could have made it happen, but at least partly on someone else's term, or in partnership. Like, a high profile reissue series, or even the Purple Rain 25th, which came and went despite news he reclaimed ownership and had remastered it. Just Prince being Prince.