50 great things about Prince's 'Sign O' The Times'

64. The encouraging way he says "Go on, Cynth" at 1:58 of Starfish and Coffee

65. Sheena Easton's "Oh please" in U Got the Look, which will be eternally cool

66. How this album basically introduced Camille. I remember how WEIRD it was to first hear that vocal effect on a Prince song the day I brought the album home (bought it the weekend of release). But this was Prince and he always aaaalways had something new up his sleeve then.

67. the best use of factory presets on a record ever?

68. The literally phoned-in rap in "It's Gonna Be a Beautiful Night".

69. The Fairlight orchestral stab sound is one of the most memorable parts of the titular song, and yet the stab is heard only two times, towards the end of tune. It takes only about two seconds of the 5 minute song, but Prince sure knew how to use those two seconds most effectively.

70. The ending to 'Play In The Sunshine', which is not so much psychedelic as an utterly bizarre mess that somehow works!

This is one of the few consensus "best albums" that actually is his best album. It really encapsulates everything I love about Prince.

Including those glasses.

71. "Mind if I turn on..." *drum fill* "...the radio?"

72. That there are just enough songs on this that I forget a few and am pleasantly surprised when I remember them every now and then.

73. Side 3 is prob the best run of songs Prince ever did:

U GOT THE LOOK
IF I WAS UR GIRLFRIEND
STRANGE RELATIONSHIP
I COULD NEVER TAKE THE PLACE OF YOUR MAN

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/65/38/98/65389838d91e18c556a6f280aab23df1.jpg

Glasses!

The sleeve art on the double LP was such a shock - we had "slick Prince" as the mental image, black and white crop top, 30s chic in Cherry Moon, and then suddenly SotT drops and we have neopsychedelic Prince, Cat (who?), peach'n'black, ashram robes, flokati vests and Haight-Ashbury glasses. That plus Camille knocked me for a loop. And Sheena "My Baby Takes the Morning Train" Easton? Where's the Revolution? WTF?

did people really think this was him?

http://img.cdandlp.com/2012/09/imgL/115554290-2.jpg

one of the great back-of-the-sleeve shots ever.

According to Cat, some people did.

MatthewK totally OTM

Yah I remember folks thinking it was him :)

67. the best use of factory presets on a record ever?

― flappy bird, Friday, May 13, 2016 6:15 AM (4 days ago)

73. Side 3 is prob the best run of songs Prince ever did:

U GOT THE LOOK
IF I WAS UR GIRLFRIEND
STRANGE RELATIONSHIP
I COULD NEVER TAKE THE PLACE OF YOUR MAN

― flappy bird, Monday, May 16, 2016 12:23 AM (Yesterday)

yesssssssss

74. Those finger cymbal things that I want to call castanets but aren't, particularly on Strange Relationship

Crotales iirc? Love the way he uses them. They are all over the atwiad LP.

was anyone else annoyed by this line in the p4k retrospective review of SOTT?

“Housequake” is, perhaps, the most obvious songs on the album, a funk jam that would have been a hit single if he’d allowed it to be released as such. But the care of the track’s construction belies any shallow analysis. It starts with a cartoony voice (maybe a Camille reference), a synthesized drum heavy with echo, then adds bass, keyboard stabs, and rhythm guitar. The synth drum and snare drum merge while there’s a double-beat on the kick. Live horns come it and the bass line moves as there’s both a synth bass keyboard and a live bass doing playing different lines. Various backing vocals float in and out with Prince doing his James Brown impersonation as singer/MC. Compared to the simple loops of your average club banger, “Housequake” is a symphony of syncopation. The beat moves even as it grooves.

wtf the drum machine couldn't be any more dry

none more dry

Perhaps we should have Camille step back from the drum machine so s/he doesn't trod on it.

I already got into one stupid argument about Prince productions earlier this week but until I just replayed this, I had thought it was the bass drum w the gated reverb too. I guess it's a detuned tom?

The sleeve art on the double LP was such a shock - we had "slick Prince" as the mental image, black and white crop top, 30s chic in Cherry Moon, and then suddenly SotT drops and we have neopsychedelic Prince, Cat (who?), peach'n'black, ashram robes, flokati vests and Haight-Ashbury glasses. That plus Camille knocked me for a loop. And Sheena "My Baby Takes the Morning Train" Easton? Where's the Revolution? WTF?

― MatthewK, Sunday, May 15, 2016

you hadn't heard "Strut" or "Sugar Walls"? Those were massive hits.

p4k retrospective review

these were so terrible, especially the ATWIAD one discussing his politics

er Controversy one

I meant to say

yeah over here she was Sheena 'From BBC TVs The Big Time' Easton to me too. in the UK she hadn't been heard of since forever. Sugar Walls? in with a bullet at 95 in the UK charts, while Strut didn't even get that far! her last hit had been For Your Eyes Only 6 years earlier.

73. Side 3 is prob the best run of songs Prince ever did:

U GOT THE LOOK
IF I WAS UR GIRLFRIEND
STRANGE RELATIONSHIP
I COULD NEVER TAKE THE PLACE OF YOUR MAN

I say this very thing enthusiastically and quite often!

that SOTT review was absent minded

like nelon george wrote it with 50 tabs open

75. such a great cover

http://img.cdandlp.com/2015/10/imgL/117728616.jpg

That one took a while!

76. "Reefer." So quaint.

77. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlBxxOPEVsg

76. "Reefer." So quaint.

― dinner boat, Friday, May 20, 2016 10:33 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

even more so, who calls it "horse"??

I thought horse is a fairly common slang word for heroin, or at least it was back when Prince wrote the tune?

Both jazz terms, yeah?

When I think of the magic of this record it makes me sadder than all others, that this guy is not with us any more.

My guitar teacher thought it would be interesting to help me figure out the chords to "Dorothy Parker," and yeah, it was! We realized one reason Prince played everything himself is that it would take a lot less time to do that than to explain to someone else how to contribute to a totally out there sui generis song like that one. In fact, there are a couple of tracks on "Sign" that similarly transcend genre in really fascinating and less than obvious ways.

Also, I decided the opening drum sequence of the title track makes a really cool ringtone.

Which tracks are you thinking of?

Well, Dorothy Parker, for one. It's funky, and jazzy, and just - weird. The bridge-thing where he quotes Joni Mitchell, wtf is that? Or Forever In My Life, what is that? Strange Relationship, that's another one that's funky but not really funk. It's like looser influences like jazz or folk have altered more immutable forms, like funk or dance pop or whatever. I mean, Play In the Sunshine is essentially ... rockabilly? Something like that. But then it's got that crazy fusion-y coda.

forever in my life is quite gospelly in its arrangement i think.

the melody i mean.

xps what are the chords to Dorothy Parker?

And does it feature the famous Prince "sus 2" chord?

Dorothy Parker doesn't have that sus2 chord. That's the weird chord in the third line of the chorus in "Sometimes it Snows in April." It does have plenty of weird quirks and changes.

The main progression in TBDP is a descending progression from Am7 (iv) to Em7(i), making every stop in the descending bassline before a quick trip to the V to build tension before the final line (before "Dorothy was fast," etc). Looks like this:

Am7
Dorothy was a waitress
Ab(flat 5)
On the promenade
Em7/G in bass F#m7
She worked the night shift
Fmaj7 B
Dishwater blonde, tall and fine
Em
She got a lot of tips

The bridge, as it were, changes from E minor to G. The second bridge modulates from A minor to A major on the "should have done it sooooneeeer" part. The ballad of dorothy parker line looks something like this:

A Bm Am Bm B+
This is the ballad of Dorothy Parker

Then it goes back to the main progression. This tab (and the rest of the tabs on this website) seems pretty good: http://princetabs.50webs.com/dorothy.txt

Sorry, click the link for better spacing, I haven't been able to figure out how to space text on ILX

xxxps to StillAdvance --- To me, Forever In My Life seems to be a minimalist version of a Sly Stone song. The melody reminds me a lot of Everyday People, weirdly.

I'm not good enough at this stuff to recognize if it's right or wrong, Only chord in our own little chart not up there is Cmaj7, maybe in the very early intro? Before the singing starts. There's a brief measure or two at maybe the end of the bridge where we just wrote a big "?," because it just goes wacky.

xpost It's totally Sly-y, but the muted-ness of the vocals and rhythm are even weirder, kind of like sing in the shower demo-esque.