prince

Why stiff? Dance on isnt awkward or stiff!

Who dyou think was a better drummer for prince?

I’ve always found stuff made with a drum machine as the core rhythmic foundation rarely translates well live - or just loses a much of its character - no matter how awesome the drummer. Case in point : “Kiss” live

Agreed, but if you're using drum machines live, then releasing that show on CD, I'd like it to sound better than this. Compare this even to gonna be a beautiful night on sott and you can see tir difference.

a lot of ppl think sheila e isn’t a very good drummer, and they’ve said it on this very thread

i’ll say she’s downright amazing on “play in the sunshine”

I have to admit Play is great and likewise Dance On. The latter feels more like her timbale work, which I love, to me. But isn’t Play drummed by P? or do you mean the live show?
I mean, her percussion work on The Glamorous Life and Romance 1600 is to die for. Don’t get me wrong.
And I love the Linn drum, it may be wrong but I don’t wanna be right. Some of that was played live on the buttons anyway, I believe. I guess my answer would be that the best drummer for Prince, is Prince. “New Position,” QED.

oh i meant the live show

either eric leeds or matt bliston confirmed on the podcast that that's bobby z on the drums on "power fantastic," which, imo, just personally, holy shit

Yeah it's great to hear Bobby Z play like that, brushes and everything, since I remember hearing he comes from more of a jazz background?

I agree that it's hard for the drum machine-driven material to translate live, and the best it ever sounded was the early years where they had the Linndrum running through the PA, and poor Bobby was relegated to only playing cymbals (and maybe some trigger pads, although sometimes I think those were just for show).

I love Sheila E's drumming too, although her percussion setup & playing is what really became part of the Prince sound for awhile.

Speaking as someone who played drums in a Prince tribute band for a long time, I think the challenge is keeping it simple 90% of the time, and then interpreting tricky drum machine beats for the other 10%. Fwiw I think John Blackwell was the best at that 10%, although by then I think the sound was totally live on stage.

Blackwell was practically a gospel chops fusion player. Placing a cymbal behind his head was just showing off, and also awesome.

I love watching drummers online break down the "777-9311" groove.

Prince was finicky though. He usually had to try and recreate the studio sound on stage, not always necessarily, though sometimes I can see why (kiss). On the utrecht show the line is so prominent it sounds like it's a rehearsal at times, in the sott movie, it sounds less distracting. Having never attended an 80s prince show, idk what it would've sounded like being there

I dunno know, I think even in the '80s a lot of his shows had the feel of a review. Jams, medleys, interpolations. I think partly because some of those songs, like When Doves Cry, can't really *be* accurately recreated live.

sheila's drums are the best thing about lovesexy ime

If loving “Blanche” at first sight despite it being a by-the-numbers funk runthrough I don’t want to be right.

Guess that date had been coming for a long time as the saying goes.

Great review, Brad! (link)

Co-sign! Wonderful read

Brad I got chills, you opened up new insights to a record I've loved for 33 years. Outstanding writing.

Yeah, well done, Brad, even better than your Human League piece and that’s saying something.

aaahhh thanks y'all <3. hard period to write about

Indeed, but excellent new framings on offer for the period there. Nicely done.

Also chiming in to say that's a fantastic review

Guitar on blanche is superb

Nice review. I agree on the show tuneiness of Wally.

Only thing I object to a little is the ending, as if prince immediately went into decline after 87. Um lovesexy was just a year later. No boring funk drills there. No real trend following there. Diamonds and Pearl's was four years later! And even then, as many problems as disappointments as I have with 90s prince (never mind 20th century prince), that decade still had plenty of great, if innovative or innovative songs. It doesn't deserve to be wholly written off.

Yup, great review Brad! Love SOTT as Prince's dream house

Yes sott was the apogee in many ways but prince didnt fall off on Jan 1st 1988.

as if prince immediately went into decline after 87

i didn't say this and aggressively worked on not saying this in that paragraph

i love lovesexy! my favorite prince period (and the source of my favorite prince bootleg ever) is the continuum of come and the gold experience! but i think it's fair to say something shifted during and after sign o the times; his vision was never as sharp in terms of like... conceiving of/releasing/editing his projects. his music also didn't seem to be progressing in a direction anymore (as much as it ever seemed to, but i think there's a real sense that he keeps pushing himself further and further from 1999 -> purple rain -> around the world -> parade -> sign). his music eventually got kinda reactionary in a way that i don't think it was before, even though that also made for great music, cf. one of the great things about love symbol, come, and the gold experience is hearing prince songs sit in the world of new jack swing

The drum solo on the NYE show by Sheila E is absolutely horrible. I have since become convinced Sheila E was a mediocre drummer at best. https://youtu.be/v_aAug_PpUM?t=2751 watch this and convince me she was a great drummer. I've seen better solos from amateur youtubers. In fact, i've never seen a worse solo from amateur youtubers.

gtfo w/ that nonsense

ok, the performance is right there. Maybe she was just terrible on that night. Maybe she was a great drummer. Point to a timestamp of her drum solo there that you think illustrates her expertise on her instrument. Perhaps i'm just uneducated in quality drumming.

To me (even though a bunch of the songs are reheated leftovers) Graffiti Bridge is distinctly the beginning of the end. Not the last album of his I heard, but the last one I bought automatically.

Case for the defence.

https://youtu.be/efkS7NUFPDI

like... much as i love lovesexy, it's slightly stiff-and... forced(?)-sounding, like it is determined to provide an invariable brightness at the expense of everything else, and it's also literally a reaction to a record he didn't release until 1994. if i'm listening to it in context i'm like "ok the plot is getting a little lost here." which is ultimately fine, but it makes it feel very separate from the way the records were stacking up before

nothing to add to this discussion of sheila e's skills except 1. she lobbied to join prince's sign o the times band because she wanted to prove her mettle behind a full kit, a decision i deeply respect, and she really put herself out there too, she was one of the main focal points of his show 2. she's an inarguably brilliant percussionist 3. as an amateur drummer some of the sixteenth notes she hits on the hi-hat and a lot of the double bass drum work would be very difficult for me to replicate, would have to study 4. protect sheila e at all costs????

Not the last album of his I heard, but the last one I bought automatically.

True here too. (Hell I even got the "Thieves in the Temple" single.) But everything after that, they were used purchases and I could always find them pretty easily after about a month.

I can't get with Lovesexy, and I've tried.

I can't get with Lovesexy, and I've tried.

I downloaded a version that had been cut up. Now I like it more.

I own it too. The remix of "I Wish U Heaven" is good, "Alphabet St.," the rest defines "meh." He'd done it all already but was less focused about it.

Graffiti bridge is literally the 80s end point. Has many 86 leftovers re recorded. After that he waved goodbye to that version of prince. Lovesexy has an over determined sense of optimism and joy and rebirth. But, it also has alphabet st, glam slam, I wish u heaven, Anna Stesia and when 2 r in love. It is true that after sott, his editing got worse (though the 90s were the decade of overlong albums in fairness), his vision for albums got less interesting (when when there were songs in the 80s not so great, they still felt part of something bigger,or were just interesting in some way).

The black album is actually much better than ppl give it credit for. Too funky, as the man himself might say.

That live Glamorous Life percussion is exciting and impressive.

Sheilas solos in the sott movie and lovesexy 88 live shows are proof she was a goddess both in front of and behind the drums

Thing most irritating about lovesexy isthat it really makes no sense outside of itself. It's such a total hermetic prince universe album that I can see why ppl didnt quite get it.

Releasing it as a single track was an incredible act of self-sabotage; I can't understand how any WB executive let him do that.

Maybe in 88 it didn't matter as much as vinyl and tapes were still popular formats

Exactly. I bought it the week of its release on tape and never had reason to think about the track thing until upgrading to cd in the mid nineties

I had just gotten my first CD player a couple of months before and I had no problem with it. Go figure!

Genius percussionist, all round awesome musician, but as a drummer she feels stiff and awkward to me.

You guys are nuts.

At the same time, it is a tragedy that so many prince drummers were subordinate to the drum machine on stage. I blame prince being anal about replicating the records/thinking he was being esp novel/forward thinking.

How do y'all rate Prince as a drummer? To me it's the instrument on which he's least interesting? Not bad, just rote. As opposed to, Stevie Wonder, whom I'd rate equally as keyboardist and drummer.