Prince (1958-2016)

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ando
Bringing Out El Duende
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Re: Prince (1958-2016)

#51 Post by ando » Sat Apr 23, 2016 12:58 am

calculus wrote:He didn't create in the album format, but he sure understood it.
Exactly. And that format is outmoded now. So enjoy your Prince in whatever form you receive him, especially since he was so prolific. That's all.

Speaking of Let's Go Crazy, here he is with his all girl band, 3RDEYEGIRL back in 2014 with an amped up/funk version of the '84 hit.

Or take his live Peach, from 2002, one of my favorite extended funk jams. His non-commercial music - not always officially released (esp. the 12" singles) always appealed to me more than the mainstream studio stuff I guess.

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Cash Flagg
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Re: Prince (1958-2016)

#52 Post by Cash Flagg » Sat Apr 23, 2016 9:15 am

ando wrote:And that format is outmoded now.
Perhaps if you're a millennial raised on YouTube. Many of us still prefer to listen to music within the context it was originally intended by the artist.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Prince (1958-2016)

#53 Post by hearthesilence » Sat Apr 23, 2016 11:20 am

I'm a millennial and the argument that 'no one listens to albums anymore' is really a business argument of what gets sold now. In terms of listening habits, it's extremely exaggerated because the general public never made a doctrinal habit of listening to albums start-to-finish at the height of the CD era. That was the thing about CD's, it was easy to skip through and shuffle music around. And even then, most casual listeners bought compilations. Serious listeners typically wanted to hear an album, as the artist intended - they were engaged at that level, and this is still true now with the vinyl (niche) boom, which is basically serious listeners taking it to a whole other level.

calculus entrophy
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Re: Prince (1958-2016)

#54 Post by calculus entrophy » Sat Apr 23, 2016 11:30 am

It goes back even further to cassette mix-tapes. Methinks there is too much ado about nothing.

Choice is good :-"

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hearthesilence
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Re: Prince (1958-2016)

#55 Post by hearthesilence » Sat Apr 23, 2016 12:25 pm

Hah, cassettes! Jesus, what a terrible format. To bring things back OT, the first time I heard the Black Album was on the limited edition CD that Warner put out in the '90s (mostly to fulfill Prince's contractual obligations). This was when I was first getting into Prince and I didn't know anything about it. Much later, after becoming quite familiar with the album and the history behind it, a friend found a cassette bootleg of the album and it was like "Wow, so this is how most people probably heard it, huh?" We put it on and sweet Jesus it was like someone put pillows over the speakers. God knows how many generations of dubbing it had gone through.

EDIT: speak of the devil, someone's uploaded it in its entirety. It's one continuous track, but hey just think of it as Lovesexy's twin. (The U.S. CD release for that album was originally one unbroken track.)

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hearthesilence
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Re: Prince (1958-2016)

#56 Post by hearthesilence » Sat Apr 23, 2016 1:37 pm

A follow up to my previous post on page #1 mentioning that beautiful summation taken from Minneapolis' the Current, here's an entry from Greil Marcus' Real Life Rock Top 10 from December 1981:
Prince at the Stone, San Francisco, March 29

Fronting a band of three blacks and two Jews from Minneapolis, Prince stormed into town on the heels of last year’s breakthrough Dirty Mind, was greeted by the most excited and diverse crowd (black and white, punk and funk, straight and gay, young and old, rich and poor) I’ve been part of in a long time, and sent everyone home awestruck and drained: “That was the history of rock ‘n’ roll in one song!” a friend shouted before the last notes of “When You Were Mine” were out of the air. All barriers of music, sex, and race were seemingly trashed by Prince’s performance, and leering organist Lisa Coleman walked off with the 1981 Most Valuable Player award—edging out Junior Walker, whose sax work on Foreigner’s “Urgent” is the closest he’s come to hoodoo in a twenty-year career.

All barriers were in place when Prince opened for the Rolling Stones at the Los Angeles Coliseum in October. He was roundly jeered and taunted with racist catcalls, and after inaccurate reports appeared in the news that he had been “booed off the stage” (Prince left after twenty minutes, all his contract allowed), he and his band were pelted with garbage at a second Stones show two days later. A correct account of the situation given by Ken Tucker in the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner brought this anonymous response in the mail: “You obviously are a fan of that faggot nigger group or you wouldn’t of lied about it. I just wanted you to know that us W.A.S.P. rock n rollers pay to see white performers and not niggers, faggots or tawdry critics like yourself President Reagan has proven once and for all that liberals, niggers, fags and minorities are out. Thank god for that. I can sure bet your ass on one thing, prince wont open up for the stones next time around.”
In two and a half years, Prince would have the #1 album, single and film all at once. God bless him.

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Re: Prince (1958-2016)

#57 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Sat Apr 23, 2016 1:47 pm

Eric Clapton wrote this
"I'm so sad about the death of Prince, he was a true genius, and a huge inspiration for me, in a very real way....In the the eighties, I was out on the road in a massive downward spiral with drink and drugs, I saw Purple Rain in a cinema in Canada, I had no idea who he was, it was like a bolt of lightning!...
In the middle of my depression, and the dreadful state of the music culture at that time it gave me hope, he was like a light in the darkness...
I went back to my hotel, and surrounded by empty beer cans, wrote Holy Mother....
I can't believe he's gone...."
"Holy Mother" is a great song and I can hear the Prince influence now that I've read this.

calculus entrophy
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Re: Prince (1958-2016)

#58 Post by calculus entrophy » Sat Apr 23, 2016 2:44 pm

hearthesilence wrote:In two and a half years, Prince would have the #1 album, single and film all at once. God bless him.
And don't forget those "Money for Nothing" Mark Knopfler lyrics too.

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Re: Prince (1958-2016)

#59 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Sat Apr 23, 2016 3:15 pm

calculus entrophy wrote:
hearthesilence wrote:In two and a half years, Prince would have the #1 album, single and film all at once. God bless him.
And don't forget those "Money for Nothing" Mark Knopfler lyrics too.
?

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hearthesilence
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Re: Prince (1958-2016)

#60 Post by hearthesilence » Sat Apr 23, 2016 3:26 pm

He means "that little faggot with the earring and the make-up." Knopfler sort of talked about this in a 1984 Rolling Stone interview:
I got an objection from the editor of a gay newspaper in London – he actually said it was below the belt. Apart from the fact that there are stupid gay people as well as stupid other people, it suggests that maybe you can't let it have so many meanings – you have to be direct. In fact, I'm still in two minds as to whether it's a good idea to write songs that aren't in the first person, to take on other characters. The singer in "Money for Nothing" is a real ignoramus, hard hat mentality – somebody who sees everything in financial terms. I mean, this guy has a grudging respect for rock stars. He sees it in terms of, well, that's not working and yet the guy's rich: that's a good scam. He isn't sneering.
Obviously it didn't settle matters - he's apparently altered the lyrics many times in concert since, with mixed success. (One time he used "queenie.")
Last edited by hearthesilence on Sat Apr 23, 2016 3:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Prince (1958-2016)

#61 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Sat Apr 23, 2016 3:28 pm

I knew what he was referring to, but maybe thinking by suggesting it he thought what that quote puts to rest. Knopfler has used other adjectives in place of it when singing it live.

The word itself has a double meaning, originating as referring to a traditional dish in the UK. It seemed rather odd when I first heard it in King Crimson's "The Great Deceiver", but I found that tidbit out along the way.

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ando
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Re: Prince (1958-2016)

#62 Post by ando » Sat Apr 23, 2016 11:26 pm

Ok, folks. I know I'm certainly guilty but enough talk. Why not post the best what we can find of Prince jamming on the web?

First good one today. Selections from a very good concert he headed a few years back.

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ando
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Re: Prince (1958-2016)

#63 Post by ando » Sun Apr 24, 2016 2:33 am

Image

D'angelo's great cover of She's Always In My Hair.

Looks like the floodgates have opened - at least for the weekend. Prince videos, at least the most popular, are streaming quite freely.

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Re: Prince (1958-2016)

#64 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Sun Apr 24, 2016 6:32 am

Springsteen opened last night's show with "Purple Rain". There have been tons of concert tributes from what I'm seeing. Hans Zimmer, who's touring Europe playing his film music, even had his band do a cover of that song Friday night as well.
Last edited by flyonthewall2983 on Mon Apr 25, 2016 2:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.


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ando
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Re: Prince (1958-2016)

#66 Post by ando » Sun Apr 24, 2016 5:52 pm

Image

How many aliases did Prince have? Like many I thought that Jamie Starr, the professed writer and producer behind The Time, Vanity 6, The Family, among others, was someone other than Prince.

Of The Time's hits, Get It Up and 777-9311, with that funky bass line are my faves -

777-9311

And, of course, with Vanity 6, Nasty Girl.

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ando
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Re: Prince (1958-2016)

#67 Post by ando » Sun Apr 24, 2016 6:10 pm

Back to covers: Who but a chick like Michelle Ndegeocello would have the balls to cover Controversy?

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ando
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Re: Prince (1958-2016)

#68 Post by ando » Sun Apr 24, 2016 7:27 pm

Image

Somebody posted this raw concert footage/made into a movie release from 1982. Oh, it's ugly; dark, black & white, full of tape marks (but shot from some fairly nice camera angles). But it has be better in the original form. Nonetheless, it's early Prince "doing things at 20" that he evidently abandoned later on. And rightly so. Probably. Anyway, it's nice to see the core of The Revolution holding it down behind him.

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Re: Prince (1958-2016)

#69 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Sun Apr 24, 2016 8:22 pm

That's from an off-shoot of Wolfgang's Vault, a website started by someone who purchased a large portion of the concerts filmed and recorded by Bill Graham productions.

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ando
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Re: Prince (1958-2016)

#70 Post by ando » Mon Apr 25, 2016 1:17 am

Cool. Thanks. Hopefully, this is just a shabby dupe and there's better to come.

Finally...
Purple House

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FrauBlucher
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Re: Prince (1958-2016)

#71 Post by FrauBlucher » Mon Apr 25, 2016 7:36 am



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ando
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Re: Prince (1958-2016)

#73 Post by ando » Mon Apr 25, 2016 3:40 pm

Nice one, fly.

Frau, don't think we need to worry about more music surfacing from any of the so-called vaults despite what longtime collabotator and percussion diva, Sheila E., says ("What's in the vault should stay in the vault."). A lot of it is already out.

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FrauBlucher
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Re: Prince (1958-2016)

#74 Post by FrauBlucher » Mon Apr 25, 2016 5:37 pm

But the old CDs desperately need to be remastered. Apparently, Princes recent truce with WB was to reissue the old stuff. Hopefully, that can still happen.

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ando
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Re: Prince (1958-2016)

#75 Post by ando » Mon Apr 25, 2016 5:58 pm

Well, perhaps if they come with additional tracks that didn't make the original releases, like God, the instrumental love theme from Purple Rain - an 8 minute slow jam that fits quite nicely among the other cuts. Also, The Time's Jungle Love, Appolonia 6's Sex Shooter and/or Dez Dickerson's Modernaire, all of which are featured in the film, might be thrown in. Computer Blue was originally 10 or 11 minutes long - clearly edited for the original album release. Warners made a lot more money releasing these separately and they might make even more re-releasing it in an extended format.

Needless to say, I've (like many purple-heads over the years) listen my own version the soundtrack.

Here's a copy of Prince apparently playing Computer Blue at First Avenue, Minneapolis for the first time.

Nice Alicia Keys cover of a B-Side track.

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