Prince RIP

prince looks really like his father. not sure what you mean about not rising all the way to the surface. just seems like a joe jackson sort of thing. father who was a working musician, for a while at least, but didnt 'make it', not big anyway. not sure if john wanted prince to make it as he didnt, like what joe wanted for his sons though. ive no idea if he encouraged prince to play. from what i know, he actually stopped prince from playing the piano that was in their house. and i dont know if john was good or not (apart from him writing the bridge on computer blue).

Right, Joe Jackson or Murry Wilson even.

Maybe I meant he had some impulse to create and some amount of talent but not the ability or circumstance to develop it properly.

The Judith hill article made me think specifically for the first time about how Prince didn't just have a close call on that plane but a full blown nde

In re to the last paragraph of the piece

Speaking of which, I always feel like the appearance of the surprising/ jarring chord with the minor second (between the minor and major third) in "Sometimes It Snows In April" evokes a soul flying past as it leaves the body, or circles back to earth for one last look.

Did Prince's dad not release any recordings ?...always imagined him releasing some Private Press records in the Minneapolis locale...

I think he made tapes and would send them out to people, maybe as gifts on holidays, to some of the people he met that had been Paisley Park employees.

Really, what fraction of his talent did his dad have is what I would like to know, if that is a valid question.

https://www.discogs.com/John-L-Fathers-Song/release/5931519

"Really, what fraction of his talent did his dad have is what I would like to know"

why?

his dad played with him at some aftershows. maybe if you can find those, you might hear how good he was.

that fathers song release does not look too promising.

3 passengers on a private jet. Nice enviro footprint, Prince.

I don't know why. Because. Curiosity killed the cat, I know.

his mum was a singer too.

Right. Of course.

nice to know prince was listening to betty davis.

yeah not too surprising given the Larry Graham + Miles connections

sometimes i think as he got into his 40s all he listened to was sly, p-funk, and 70s soul stuff (ie things he would have played in his teens, his comfort music), so nice to know he still had his ears open.

kinda cool tour of prince's MPLS -
http://thequietus.com/articles/20442-prince-rip-minneapolis

so nice to know he still had his ears open

to ... other 70s soul stuff? idgi

is there more than one betty davis...

Betty Davis also not very good

#challengingopinions

pffft

betty davis is good -- her resurgence in recent years led to some hyperbolic accolades, but she's still good.

"Betty Davis also not very good"

#highlyquestionableopinions.

"to ... other 70s soul stuff? idgi"

lol but still not the usual stuff. shes more out there.

actually, i often get confused by what princes faith did and didnt allow. cos you would think he would be listening strictly to gospel or something in his last decade or so. not betty davis. and he shouldnt surely have been making sexual innuendo as he still sometimes did. and yet, when he did in his later years, it just seemed rote, and mechanical, rather than genuinely amorous. i think this is why i liked the rainbow children album best. it seemed more honest. more authentic. and in a way, while i know a lot of of (corny/old) fans were like 'what?! no darling nikki?!', i kinda wish he did just have a full on gospel/christian/JW period. like how little richard did or al green did. it would have been better. plus, i just like gospel/god fearing music.

agree he didn't seem too committed to his latter-day licentious moments. I would've been fine with wacked out gospel subject matter, it's the sound of Rainbow Children I didn't like

my fantasy of an album of 12 variations on his PR b-side god fills me with great pleasure

‘It’s only by God’s grace that I’m even here. I had to fight for my life. I remember hearing your voices from afar and saying to myself, “Follow the voices, follow the voices, get back in your body, you gotta to do this.” And he said it was the hardest thing he’d ever done, to get back into his body like that.

😢

That part was ;_;

ive only seen the sheila e performance so not sure if there were others on the BET Awards, but this was SO good. never even knew she played guitar, but she gets funky. typical melody stuff, so just the climactic parts of his funkiest songs (no beautiful night though), and some of sheila's own songs that prince wrote. shes not an exhibitionist/show-woman like prince, but how can you not love a woman who does THIS much in 8 mins? (plus, she still looks incredible)

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

this only a bit of it. the full thing i saw only on facebook on the purplestream page.

just saw that bilal and badu did something too.

cant wait to watch it but will have to wait til after work - cant be getting emotional right now.

http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/7416604/prince-tribute-bet-awards-2016

all the tributes were great

but sheila e's was the best, with janelle and maxwell a close second

So Sheila E. went long because D'Angelo backed out.

Anyway. She killed it, as well she would. It seems of all his collaborators and musicians, Prince remained closest to Sheila E. the longest.

cant imagine dangelo would have been that good, nor able to hold it together.

she was incredible anyway.

i cant wait to see bilal's performance. more than dangelo, he has the right voice/range to do prince justice. only maxwell i think is in the same league.

d'angelo held it together just fine on that Sometimes It Snows in April tribute. have you seen his live shows? it's straight out of the Prince playbook.

bilal killed it though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCT2Vmpuiss

Damn.

im a huge d'angelo fan and i thought that snows in april cover sucked real bad

u mad

im a big dangelo fan too and thought the same.

i know his shows are cribbed heavily from prince, but thats also why i dont really rate him quite as highly as some do (the jam he adds onto lady on the voodoo tour for example is basically exactly what prince did for mutiny on the 1986 tour). obv prince borrowed a lot too but i never get the sense dangelo really 'owns' the stuff he borrows. hes too respectful.

still not seen the stevie, jennifer hudson, or janelle monae ones, but bilal killed it, though he could have held on to the mic a bit better and kept his shirt on. sheila e was just amazing though. love her.

CMU Beef Of The Week #317: Prince v Weird Al Yankovic
Weird Al Yankovic has parodied the songs of anybody who's anybody over the last 40 years. If you've written a massive hit, then chances are he's piggybacked off your music at some point. And you loved it, didn't you?

Well, except James Blunt, whose manager once responded to a request to approve a rework of 'You're Beautiful' - retitled 'You're Pitiful' - with an email saying: "Both James and I will never approve this parody to be released on any label".

Because, you see, Yankovic does get permission from the original writers of the songs he parodies before releasing his own versions. Which is nice of him, given that under the parody provisions of US copyright law he might well be able to get away with not bothering. But he doesn't want to merely get away with it. He wants approval. And that is why you have never heard a Weird Al Yankovic version of a song by famous naysayer Prince.

In an interview with People this week, Yankovic revealed that he'd had various ideas for joke reworks of Prince songs, but they'd always been knocked back. He'd hoped that things would change at some point, or that maybe he'd come up with a funny version of a new Prince song that the musician would actually like. But now Prince is dead. In many ways, Weird Al Yankovic has been hit harder than anyone by the death.

"It's too bad", says Yankovic. "I hadn't approached him in about 20 years because he always said no, but I had this fantasy that he'd come out with a new song, I'd have a great idea, he'd finally say yes and it would erase decades of weirdness between us. But that's obviously not going to be the case".

Yes, a man who has the word 'weird' in his name was worried about weirdness. Of course, another person Prince had a weird relationship with was Michael Jackson, who was parodied by Yankovic four times in his lifetime.

"Michael Jackson wasn't just cool about my parody of 'Beat It', but he also loved my version of 'Bad', which was 'Fat'", says Yankovic. "He even let me use the actual 'Bad' subway set for the 'Fat' video. He was very supportive, which was huge with opening the doors with other artists. Because if Michael Jackson signed on, you couldn't really say no".

Just think, if Prince hadn't been such a humourless curmudgeon, he could have had one of his songs turned into something as hilariously funny as 'Fat', which contains the actual lyrics, "The pavement cracks when I fall down / I've got more chins than Chinatown".

Shamone. But, hey, we should at least hear Weird Al out. Maybe he really did have some great ideas for reworking those Prince songs. "I had a parody of 'Let's Go Crazy' that was about 'The Beverly Hillbillies'", he explains, getting off to a bad start. "And I wanted to do something funny with 'When Doves Cry', and 'Kiss'. For '1999', I wanted to do an infomercial where you could get anything you wanted by dialling 1-800-something-1999".

To be honest, if that was the actual pitch he gave to Prince, it's easy to see why he wasn't keen. Though that 'Beverly Hillbillies' idea was later recycled for Yankovic's take on 'Money For Nothing' by Dire Straits, so we can get an idea of what might have been:

Yeah.

I would have thought the 1999 parody would be about $19.99.

Prince on the Muppet show was basically Prince proving he could make fun of himself (at least a little) and change his song lyrics to be about food as well as Al could.

I went to the American History Museum yesterday and they had the yellow cloud guitar out on display! I guess it's been out there since he died, but I had no idea and I turned a corner and there it was. It was a lot smaller than I had imagined, but like, duh. I was with my family and we were in a bit of a rush so I didn't get to spend quite as long chilling with it as I would have liked, but I'll probably go back next week on my lunch break sometime.

And speaking of the Muppet Show, Kermit is apparently "not currently on view" at the Smithsonian, so the kids were a little bummed.

Pretty sure Kermit summers in Martha's Vineyard.

It was a lot smaller than I had imagined

Like Prince himself I'd imagine

Yeah, that's where I was going with that. And I guess also it doesn't look too huge here, for example, but the extended horn fools the eye a little.

http://www.guitaraficionado.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/prince-Patrick-Riviere-GettyImages-GA.jpg

Remastered Blu Rays on the way

http://theseconddisc.com/2016/08/08/die-4-blu-princes-filmography-coming-high-definition-video/

http://theseconddisc.com/wp-content/uploads/Prince-Movie-Collection-237x300.jpg

finally we can revel in the fully restored glory of the Grafitti Bridge bridge set