Prince RIP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFk1o83uMW8
I'm all about "Joy in Repetition" right now...another sick guitar performance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muqxaW2jAOc
"you know i wrote this while i was looking in the mirror right? ...i'm serious!"

Xpost he could have gotten someone incredible on bass if he really wanted to. He just chose not to for his own Prince reasons.

yah prince was a better bass player than every bass player he ever had in any band, including levi.

― kurt schwitterz, Thursday, May 19, 2016 12:54 PM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

uhhhh Larry Graham duh. but then, as close as they were, it looks like LG only played in Prince's band regularly for a few years in the late '90s/early 2000s.

So this Sign o' the Times rehearsal gig video

So this Sign o' the Times rehearsal gig video

"Strange Relationship." Jesus!

Andre Cymone was also pretty damn fantastic, the hell you people talking about? Only really mediocre bassist he worked with was Brownmark.

Yeah Andre was good. If you guys like Prince's bass playing, watch the beginning of this Melkweg video if you haven't already:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4id-FY2ReO0

don't know if this has been posted but here is a really beautiful Prince inducting George Clinton into the RRHOF

https://rockhall.com/video/8820/

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/watch-madonna-stevie-wonders-prince-tribute-at-billboard-music-awards-20160522

let's not and say we did

I watched, because Stevie Wonder, and I wish I hadn't.

I mean Stevie was fine but Madonna murdered Nothing Compares 2 U on that evidence.

Also she still has her British accent wtf?

i liked the idea of madonna doing a tribute (i quite like how she looks), but hearing from that video, both her and stevie sound horrific. i hope the BET tribute next month is better (i think it will be - the tribute they did with alicia keys, patti labelle, etc was mostly really good), but most of these tributes arent up to much. even dangelo ruined his by thinking he could pull off a highly distracting white fur waistcoat (or whatever it was), and choosing the wrong song to sing (IMO he doesnt have the right voice for sometimes it snows in april).

the santana and springsteen ones are the best, from what ive seen.

A club here in Dublin had a showing of Purple Rain three weeks before he died, and me and a few friends have been on a Prince binge ever since. All the live clips, weird stories coming out, the hits, the deep cuts, the metric ton of unreleased stuff that's going to drip out for the next 20 years - it's like a bottomless well of awesome that can never run dry.

back when Madonna was first announced they just said she was going to "honor" Prince and i thought maybe she'd come out and tell a cool personal story about recording with him and then introduce a video package or something, and i kinda wish she had. i bet she has some cool Prince stories! but then the twitter hysteria about how one of Prince's few commercial peers shouldn't pay tribute to him was pretty stupid, there's gonna be a lot of award shows doing a lot of stuff for Prince up through the next Grammys, a lot of chances for better covers than Madonna could pull off.

i thought the D'Angelo tribute was great personally. he got to sing a relatively obscure album cut that was especially poignant on The Tonight Show while everyone else was just doing big dumb obvious "Purple Rain" covers.

she could have sung a different song (in fact i hope the BET tribute will feature songs that arent purple rain or nothing compares 2 u). im cool with her paying tribute to him. not like they were operating in diff universes in the 80s. so much overlap between what they were doing.

i suppose it was cool dangelo didnt do lets go crazy or something, but his voice doesnt really suit that song i dont think.

i think its hard to cover prince though, TBH. if anyone here hasnt seen alicia keys do adore on the BET prince tribute from 2010 though, i highly recommend it.

i thought the D'Angelo tribute was great personally. he got to sing a relatively obscure album cut that was especially poignant on The Tonight Show while everyone else was just doing big dumb obvious "Purple Rain" covers.

Also, they nailed that one especially unusual chord.

Charade is D'Angelo's best Prince tribute imo.

But yeah Snows In April was fine fine fine

read this the other day - i think its OTM

https://mediadiversified.org/2016/05/23/the-holy-riverman/

"He showed us that life didn’t have to be a morose, terrifying experience, that artists didn’t have to be perpetually tortured, self-destructive, addicted, and depressive. It’s something I’ve remembered over the last weeks, listening to his albums again, mourning but feeling unable to remain unhappy for too long. Prince’s music doesn’t allow you to be unhappy. He insists you celebrate life with him, and his insistence is infectious, irresistible. Life and art, his music shows, can be positive, joyful, and transcendent of misery while remaining transgressive, avant garde, complex, and honest.

It’s a repudiation of so much that I learned in my teens from my peers and my schooling, from near all modern European thought where the intellect was everything and spirituality scorned, a suicidal intellectual leap that has become synonymous with progress. It was there in existentialist novels; it was there when rock stars shot themselves even though they were living everyone else’s dream. The message was that if one wanted to be an artist, to live distinct from ‘the mainstream’, one had to be unhappy. Happiness, like spirituality and advertising, was a photoshopped corporate illusion.

As weird as David Bowie could be, his formative stuff is oddly accessible and really lends itself to interpretation, not unlike Dylan, though I think singers have to struggle not to imitate Bowie. But Prince was so formidable and gifted, I don't think he's as easy to cover. Sure, it can be done, especially if you emphasize his guitar side or his long funk jams, like "Controversy," but by and large it takes another super talented person like D'Angelo to do his stuff justice.

When Madonna goes, some time in the next 30 years, I imagine the tributes will be ridiculous and embarrassing.

I imagine the tributes will be ridiculous and embarrassing

so... totally appropriate then

I'll be more saddened by Madonna's death when it happens tbh but I doubt she'll ever die.

Condition of the Heart is like the best 70s deep cut Stevie Wonder imitation ever. Somehow I think Bowie would have sung this one well

love that acoustic set so much

I'll be more saddened by Madonna's death when it happens tbh

Dare I ask why?

i'm kinda with alfred. she's where i started with music, identity, individualism period

as sad as i was over prince & bowie, and as much as mj's death wrecked me, i dont want to think about madge going, i can'y

i mean she'll prob live be 900 anyway so its kinda moot

*crosses self, spits*

^^^^

Hey, take it over to the psychology and politics of talking about CELEBRITY DEATH on the internet (and ilx)

I'll miss her in an end-of-an-era sense. But in a way there's a lot about Madonna I miss already.

Re: Prince, I'm still in mourning, and still blown away by the wealth of ... stuff just floating out there.

tbh I don't cry and Madonna will outlive me.

i can't recall another famous-musician death where i spent the better part of a month (and counting...) just listening to a shit-ton of their music, continually discovering new things. it helps that prince recorded so much damn music, but it's also just so diverse and deep and of such a high quality.

with bowie i'd just about heard everything there was to hear. there are some good live bootlegs, but nothing too revelatory. with prince it's just endless, in the best way possible.

same here.

^thirded, more or less

yup

I'll miss her in an end-of-an-era sense.

This is where I'm at. Without derailing this thread, I will say that, even now, I can't shake the feeling that Madonna's celebrity has always outstripped her actual importance to popular music. And I don't even really mean that as a criticism. Comparing her to Bowie would've been tough -- comparing her to Prince feels completely pointless.

the interview chris rock did with prince in 1996 is worth a look on youtube. he asks some stuff i think a lot of journalists didnt or werent brave enough to (or just didnt care enough to ask).

This is where I'm at. Without derailing this thread, I will say that, even now, I can't shake the feeling that Madonna's celebrity has always outstripped her actual importance to popular music.

not the thread for it, so when she dies we can debate the barminess of this position

I find her musically totally inconsequential so I can see that. Her impact seems more along the lines of glass-ceiling-shattered for women in pop, and doesn't have much to do with her actual material, ability, musicianship, songwriting etc., she's more like a media figure than a musician and as such is the template for where pop music went

If you want to argue that her celebrity has often outstripped her considerable songwriting and musicianship, fine.

The question of importance or influence has never mattered to me (and her influence has been considerable too).

her first few albums are classic 80s pop. i mean, physical attraction, borderline, into the groove, theyre pretty unimpeachable really.

not to me. they sound like music by and for 7yo girls.

how bout a prehumous madonna appreciation/celebration/reminiscence thread since she will never die