prince

Alphabet st only gets busy in its second part. The first part (the single version) is perfectly minimal. But yeah prince was really good at stripping out superfluous parts. Maybe that's a James brown trick he applied to songs that had nothing to do with jb.

discovered an old cd single by pj harvey and josh homme which has a cover of 'it' on there. musically its great, a sort of sludgy stomp, but when josh homme starts singing, sounding devoid of any actual sexual impulse, and like he is just bored being there, you realise just how much of princes music is really all about his voice, his persona, etc. plenty of his songs just dont work in other artists hands for that reason (as well as the fact they just deliver poor vocals).

Another thing about Prince songs, which becomes really clear when my brass band has thought about doing instrumental arrangements, is how many of them A) have a melody that's more or less one note, at least in the verses, and B) have the exact same melody for the verse and chorus, just different lyrics.

Nothing wrong with that, it's just very depending on lyrics and delivery. It's also very different to, say, MJ's music, which works perfectly for horns because every section is distinct and identifiable regardless of lyrics.

thats interesting. i was actually going to add to my last post that sometimes i wonder if princes songs arent musically all that comple/interesting from a compositional point (i can only play drums half-decently though so i dont know much about playing them on other instruments), just because most covers of his music really suck, and its HIM that makes them so good as recordings.

A) have a melody that's more or less one note, at least in the verses, and B) have the exact same melody for the verse and chorus, just different lyrics.

immediately thought of "i wanna be your lover" here, but yeah a lot of his songs do this, which isn't a problem in his hands because he was a master of melodic rhythm and phrasing.

Yeah IWBYL was my main candidate (and I'd say that's not a super representative Prince song, as great as it is). There are others of course, but it's surprising how many of them don't work as instrumentals, especially among the hits.

I Would Die 4 U is another one that immediately comes to mind.

to my ears, the verses of i would die 4 u and the chorus do not sound alike?

They don't, although the verse is a classic one-note Prince verse. Reductively the vocal lines are very blocky, square phrases, but when all the elements come together it's amazing.

the verses are pretty much the same note with occasional variations (and the added harmony in the 2nd verse). there is more variation in the chorus but it ultimately comes back to the same note, especially on emphasized “YOU”, making it the focal point again (since the verses are about him, not “you”) to an amazing effect.

I missed out didn’t I
Deluxe CD edition seems pretty scarce

Looks like Amazon still has all versions still available.

ugh

*dances with devil*

I know. I did hesitate to post that. You're right though, it doesn't look like it's very available elsewhere.

im selling mine.
will copy the discs then sell them on.
dont see the point in keeping it just for a book i will prob never read more than once (and dont actually see the point of - its just a massively padded out booklet), if that, and a huge box.
i already own the original album on all 3 formats!

https://lithub.com/prince-was-one-of-the-loneliest-souls-ive-ever-met/

Thanks for that link. I’ll read karlen’s book

Those beck covers of prince at paisley last year are uniformly poor. Just saw them.

More sott formats for rsd in case you need to buy it again -
https://recordstoreday.com/SpecialRelease/13269

That Karlen thing above and the extract from his book over on Rolling Stone seem really padded-out and poorly written.

agree

Anyone read the Duane tudahl book on 83/84? I was kind of interested but the way it has prince quotes scattered throughout rather than just focus on session notes made me put it down after a while. Glad someone has done this kind of book but idk, it seems more to piece together the geneology or chronology of the songs rather than any details on tur actual material?

finally diving into the SOTT super deluxe and how does this thing slap so hard for 8 hours lol

that guitar solo on "crucial"! the backwards "a place in heaven"! the entirety of "when the dawn of the morning comes"!

really happy to hear a good quality version of “train”, that song rules

train is so good

∆ going to c&p and quote this out of context

lol

hahahaha

lmao

Purple Raindrops of Jupiter

kind of cruel that the best disc in this 8-disc box set is disc #6 lol

I really like and that says what and it ain't over til the fat lady sings esp. Can any of you esteemed people suggest any jazz in that vein?

https://www.esquire.com/uk/culture/a35469515/prince-paisley-park-alexis-petridis/

i haven’t read that but didn’t he already write that article?

It does seem familiar.

Yeah it is like a retread of the actual piece he when he interviewed prince in 2015

Sad prince never made a middle aged man album. I get ppl want to hear him come out with a new kiss or get off so they settle for black sweat but I'd rather hear him do something that reflected where he was in life. Or was that what emancipation was, partially at least?

I kind of feel he was already there in the '00s. He wasn't shy about showing his age in either his tastes or acknowledging how much older his audience was now (especially at live shows). On "Lay It Down" (one of the few keepers on 20Ten) he refers to himself as the "purple Yoda." So he was really comfortable as an older dude, but he carried on with style. Towards the end, I felt like he was consciously trying to style his look on the '70s as a throwback to the culture he knew from his youth, right down to his hair.

That's prince doing his 'old man in the club' routine. Idk if that's quite the same as a genuinely middle aged prince accepting his age and career stage. The purple Yoda tag was also a bit silly. Not exactly princes time out of mind or (insert other well regarded album by artist in his autumn years). Honestly as he got older I think a lot of the ballads became rote slightly, seduction by numbers.

But yeah, the hair was him returning to his 70s look, and prob also him trying to show some pride in his natural afro hair after decades of doing it very differently.

i guess what im saying is after the end of the 90s, the most surprising thing prince could do was to stop being a little horndog all the time (and does anyone want that from a man in his 50s?), as after a point, the come-ons, seduction patter, attempts at innuendo and so on started to lose its charm and inspiration, so the freshest thing he could do would have been to lose that shtick entirely. and on a certain number of songs, i think he did.

I'd say "Breakdown" is a good Time out of Mind moment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWUhWE4zn1w

The guy was riding a bicycle to & from the stage; he didn’t strike me as someone settling into middle age. Anyway, I didn’t even want Time Out of Mind from Dylan.

i just wish he wasn't dead

seconded

thirded

fourthed

im no huge dylan fan and i dont even know what time out of mind sounds like (before i get accused of being racist towards prince and black artists and having some sort of bias towards white artists), i just used that as a fairly well known reference point for a kind of 'late career renaissance' album. i dont exactly want prince doing a bowie and adopting a rather self consciously weary voice either (i dont even like bowie doing that), but yeah, there's a handful of songs from the 2013-2015 period that are exactly what i mean and i think are some of the best stuff he made in the latter years: breakdown, way back home, time, june, revelation. and then in the 00s, apart from TRC, you had the word, the dance, a case of u, future soul song, walk in sand, reflection, somewhere here on earth and here and instrumentals like gamillah, arboretum and beverly park, which some people might think are too smooth jazz/easy listening, but theyre better than his instrumental jazz stuff like NEWS IIRC. it might also just be that i prefer mellow R&B-flavoured stuff he to much else he did during this period.

I couldn’t with Prince when he was in his “real music played by REAL musicians” boring uncle family friendly or “going thru the motions “ mode. Give me freaky Prince over that stuff all day any day. That being said - I miss him but am thankful there’s so much wonderful. beautiful and crazy music of his to listen to over the less interesting stuff he made. And it keeps coming. Some amazing SOTT band rehearsals have recently surfaced if that’s more anybody’s speed ( it’s mine). Just great fun to listen to.

prince still trying to be modern and cool in that period isnt that fun to listen to (or avoiding the word sex while singing DMSR on the musicology tour), but the stuff where he stops that, and just sticks to being a good songwriter, with more modest aims i think, is when he did his best stuff, and still worth a listen. breakdown live is 10x better than the recorded version too.

I think the Hitnrun duo and (especially) Artofficialage are good albums! Seems to me he was in the process of putting out some solid music at the end of his life.