Prince RIP

It is a similar fine distinction to that of figuring out when TWU is in a bad mood vs. when he is merely let down once again by the faulty reasoning of his inferiors.

If modern people being dumbasses made me mad, that throbbing vein in my temple would have burst long ago.

http://i3.ytimg.com/vi/Vg5gPnUdbc8/hqdefault.jpg
Your world frightens and confuses me

would rather the grammy-type tributes be handled by the likes of janelle monae / miguel. obvious choices but good ones.

xxp

― dc, Friday, April 22, 2016 6:05 PM (1 month ago)

I just rewatched "Gently Weeps," if you look around the 5 minute mark you can see Petty and Prince clicking in together. I don't think Petty's bullshitting, I think that that was probably a fun thing to be part of.

janelle did that at the BET tribute in 2010. her voice seems a bit ill equipped for it, not sure why. or maybe shes trying too hard.

http://pitchfork.com/features/greil-marcus-real-life-rock-top-10/9895-i-need-to-scream-what-it-means-to-be-a-fan/

small greil marcus bit on prince, which includes the line - “Does this mean that because he died intestate his lawyers stopped enforcing his copyright claims for fear of not getting paid?”

im still not sure why but im assuming this is it. i suppose even this, which he was so focused on while alive, wasnt planned for.

Qui sait?

In any case, have been meaning to watch this New York Dirty Mind tour show:
https://youtu.be/gyh2AFZnicQ

Hang on
http://www.youtube.com?v=gyh2AFZnicQ

Hang on.. must..get this.. right

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyh2AFZnicQ

Original, Family version of "Nothing Compares 2 U" is somewhat similar in spirit to "(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me." No wonder Burt Bacharach was a fan.

Still keep turning over in my head what is so compelling about the guy's work and how to say anything about it without either damning with faint praise, overstating the obvious, lapsing into rock crit parody or rehashing all the many good points already on the thread. He was just some kind of incredible combination of gifts and talents and work ethic plus esthetic concepts, like a great studio house band and songwriting arranging team (Funk Brothers + Holland Dozier Holland) + super-energetic rock band (The Cavern Club/ Early Beatles) + old time tunesmith (Irving Berlin) + ntergender/pan-human pop/funk/rock cartoon afronaut (sly &the famiy stone/jimi/p-funk) all rolled into one five foot two package, with one decade in which he was at the very top of his game, on top of the world, firing on all cylinders, working on all kinds of projects and plenty of other decades in which he did all kinds of other pretty high quality stuff some of which we haven't even heard yet.

(Hoping that perhaps writing a sufficiently cringeworthy post may perhaps break the spell)

That's a good post, James Redd.

Great post, tbh it still makes me think why this guy declined in the studio whilst still in his 30s

I'm sure there are other examples to prove the opposite but gross generalization, most artists I like have a ten year period when they are untouchable and then everything after that with exceptions is like the genius has left but they keep going.

tbh it's the way some people speak of him as this all-time synthesist of all things pop music, I find it hard to balance or reconcile either extreme.

Liner notes for the comp released: https://medium.com/@anildash/princes-own-liner-notes-on-his-greatest-hits-3a7baf4aec66#.3v2sfsxu3

B-b-but where is the note for "La, La, La, He, He, Hee"?

CREAM
"PRN wrote this standing in a mirror."

I'm left wondering what the group vocal of '1999' sounded like!

I''ve no real idea as to why the decline happened but it Dec had something to do with him falling as a commercial artist after purple rain. Barman was a hit obv but by then I think he just wanted to show he still had it in billboard terms. That became his goal. Plus in MPLS jam and Lewis had put out good live band RnB records by new groups like mint condition and that plus Prince getting swept up in ppl saying husvrecords lost their RnB roots, started paying too much attention to the expectations/bill shut spread by others. I mean he did the black album as ppl thought he lost his funk but housequake came out just a year earlier! Just a sudden lack of confidence really. Strange how it seemed to happen so fast.

Argh. Auto correct issues.

very few artists have been able to come down gracefully from world-conquering peaks like Purple Rain. it fucks with their head

Those liner notes are great. Has anyone heard Patrice Rushen?

Oops, never mind, I guess there's a thread: RFI: Patrice Rushen

Xpost - yeah. But still incredible that he had a new album out a year later that sounded so different.

Something people forget re:Batman soundtrack is a big part of it's success vs. Prince's immediate prior releases was that it was the Batman soundtrack . That movie was a massive phenomenon at the time, anything Bat-related selling like proverbial hotcakes.

im prob just repeating the usual thoughts around this period, but yes, graffiti bridge, the year after, didnt exactly remind anyone he was still a chart contender. so with D&P, he def had something to prove. and i think with less confidence about his position/status in the market, he felt he had to play it a little safer than in years past.

could also just be that after a spectacularly productive first decade, the inspiration was starting to run a little dry. i remember that spin cover piece in 1991, even then, it was quite well discussed that he hadnt had a proper hit in some time, and that regardless of the musical content itself, his place as a leader in music was no longer seen as what it used to be. there was a timeout piece the year after where he was kinda mocked in a review of a harlem show for trying to compete with OPP and hip hop tracks that were ruling at the time. tbh, it was the rap element that made this stuff so easy to mock/made it seem lesser. if that wasnt there, the albums would prob be viewed with less prejudice.

Things certainly seemed simpler and more effortless when he was going after "that Duran Duran money" with The Family.

I think a lot of the appeal was also the Revolution, this crew of oddball musicians with Prince as their eccentric but well-loved leader - after he replaced them the music headed off in a control freak sort of direction, suddenly it was weird-ass custom guitars, blow wave hair, pastel suits, Cat, and a relatively anonymous New Power Generation whose name sounded like a line of kids' toys. Compare the interplay between P and Wendy in the "Kiss" video with P and Levi Seacer in the "Glam Slam" clip - the former is clearly friends bantering, the latter is a bandleader and a supporting musician. In the context of the Revolution, I felt a kind of affection for P, but around the time of Lovesexy he became kind of insulated and self-referential, which persisted thereafter. I don't presume to know what he was really like as a person at those times, but that's the perception I had as a fan.

True. But the 87/88 band was the best band he ever had.

I think its just that the npg, even though they had a distinct sound to his earlier bands, didn't challenge him musically like the revolution or lovesexy line up. and he wrote with them in mind.

prince's greatest can't by any means be reduced to just his genius as an inventive arranger but for me his best period is inextricably tied up with the way he pioneered new sounds and new ways of blending traditional instrumentation and electronics (synths and drum machines). there are just so many new /sounds/ to be found on his records through the "batman" soundtrack and whatever his other skills (esp. his skills as a singer and instrumentalist, which scarcely dimmed, ever) there's a retreat from this that makes his 1990s music (and beyond) less engaging and idiosyncratic. you can see this retreat in his rhetoric, too, which starting w/ "graffiti bridge" grows more conservative/traditionalist. i don't know which is the chicken and which is the egg in this story.

er, prince's GREATNESS

i remember those liners; what a little nutjob he was

“U GOT THE LOOK”
a friend of PRN used 2 jump up and dance whenever Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” came on. As a test this song was recorded to find out of the friend would dance 2 a similar groove or just chill because it wasn’t a hit. Sure enough the friend didn’t like the song until it was in the Top 10.

He wrote this liner notes while looking in a mirror.

Those

“KISS” -
PRN after recording this shelved it because he thought it 2 strange a production 4 human consumption. It was included in the Parade album was an afterthought.

Nice bit of self-editorializing here... He completely omits the fact that he gave the song to Mazarati, because he didn't think he had use for it, but when Mazarati demoed their version, he liked it so much he took it back and used the Mazarati arrangement as the basis for his own recording of "Kiss"... Mazarati only gets a credit for background vocals or something in the Parade liner notes, so I can sorta understand why they were pissed off about this all.

Really awesome, sorry if it's been posted already:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srlJkzS3VlM

I think a lot of the appeal was also the Revolution, this crew of oddball musicians with Prince as their eccentric but well-loved leader - after he replaced them the music headed off in a control freak sort of direction, suddenly it was weird-ass custom guitars, blow wave hair, pastel suits, Cat, and a relatively anonymous New Power Generation whose name sounded like a line of kids' toys. Compare the interplay between P and Wendy in the "Kiss" video with P and Levi Seacer in the "Glam Slam" clip - the former is clearly friends bantering, the latter is a bandleader and a supporting musician. In the context of the Revolution, I felt a kind of affection for P, but around the time of Lovesexy he became kind of insulated and self-referential, which persisted thereafter. I don't presume to know what he was really like as a person at those times, but that's the perception I had as a fan.

― MatthewK, Sunday, May 29, 2016 11:39 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^all the dings

welp
http://pitchfork.com/news/65832-listen-to-amanda-palmer-and-jherek-bischoff-cover-princes-purple-rain/

why is everyone doing Purple Rain? he had dozens of hits. also, i thought Springsteen's cover was awful, is it just me or was he strumming one chord throughout the whole thing?

I agree it's annoying - feel like everyone's doing it because a) it's easy and b) it's iconic/it's the title track from his most successful album. But I'm p done with hearing other people butcher it.

like as far as big hits to cover go it's far and away the most straightforward, it has a clear chord sequence that repeats ad nauseam, easy to play on guitar without too much trouble, no spectacular chops required or tricky arrangements to master

"Purple Rain" is also slow and kind of relatively 'easy' to learn, even compared to his other big hits, i'd imagine. much more attainable to do a pleasant generic take of that than for someone who's not Prince to sing "Kiss" without sounding like Tom Jones or worse.

True. I think this was said upthread, but most of Prince's songs aren't defined by a single voice, it's the sum of a dozen or so instruments or elements doing their own thing.

"The Cross" obv hasn't been covered much, but that one is super easy to learn and play solo and properly convey on an acoustic guitar. Even something like Raspberry Beret is filled with augmented chords and doesn't quite come across as complete without the strings.

i always wanted to hear Soundgarden or someone like that cover "The Cross." sadly, Chris Cornell has only recorded a bland "Nothing Compares" cover in response to Prince's death.

weirdly i'd always thought prince woulda tore the shit out of "the day i tried to live" ala the "creep" cover.