MIXTAPE PRESERVATION SOCIETY HOUR SEVEN
It could happen...
Perhaps saying too much about it will attract unwanted attention but I feel like I owe it to listeners and fellow fans to understand what I'm trying to do. I wanted to make this podcast in April when the first anniversary of his death came around but at the time I hadn't even gotten off my ass to make the first episode, let alone a tribute to Prince. So I aimed for his birthday as a target date, and so here we are.
Before I begin to break down the podcast by each selection, here's a synopsis on what Prince meant to me:
1999 was the album that I climbed on board for, and by the time Purple Rain hit I was fully embedded in his purple majesty. My older brother and our cousins (all of whom were the same age) had their fingers on the pulse of youth culture at the time, and it was either Michael Jackson or His Royal Badness... Madonna was in there, true, but she was mainly third chair in a public rivalry over who could control the hearts and minds of the kids of America and the world.
Prince's music spoke to me because I was coming of age and on the cusp of puberty and all that entails; I feel like Prince, for all his sexual self-mythologizing, never really escaped his adolescence when it came to his musical lyricism. The songs were for adult ears but they came from the stillborn fantasies of a teenage Lothario. This is not an insult, but rather a realization as an adult looking back on what could possibly appeal to me as a ten year-old. The answer is that his lyrics opened doors unashamedly, unabashedly, nakedly... but they were also a little juvenile and immature.
But then you had the lyrics that sang about his heart being broken and songs like "How Come You Don't Call Me Anymore?" that spoke to the loneliness of anyone, young or old, male or female, white or black, straight or gay... This was the more mature Prince, singing the blues and always playing the romantic fool. There came a certain point in his career when he stopped singing about heartache. I haven't had the time to pinpoint it, but I believe it generally happened around the time of Lovesexy, after the infamous Black Album had been shelved indefinitely. Both of those albums have a pronounced lack of lovesickness in their lyrical content. The closest either of them came to approaching that unrequited lover persona was the track they both shared, "When 2 R In Love" (a song that almost made the cut in this podcast) but upon further listen that song is actually a celebration of love and lust, perhaps even monogamy. I can't think of anything he created post-Sign O' The Times that has that dejected-and-mistreated POV in it. I think Prince turned a corner and never looked back, as he was wont to do throughout his career.
The third aspect of his lyricism has to do with his religious convictions. As much as I love the songs he did that celebrated the sacred and holy, I always felt they were a necessary counterpoint to the sexy stuff; how else can you appreciate the sheer smuttiness of his more risque tunes if you didn't have that spiritual angle playing the foil? Indeed, I could do an entire podcast hour on just the God -oriented songs alone and still wouldn't have enough room. In this podcast there is no real reference to that side of him, because I chose instead to focus on my favorite songs... which, of course, is almost impossible to do with Prince, seeing as I love almost everything he ever recorded. And even though some of his best songs (and a lot of my favorites) are religion-themed, I also wanted to focus on lesser-heard deep album cuts or rarer versions.
In all those respects, I may have failed. I may have also bitten off more than I could chew. This is surely the hardest podcast I've put together so far, because there were no easy choices. And not enough time: many tunes were simply too long to include, and I really hate some of the radio edits that came down the pike in the near-fifty year span of his career. But we make do with what we can, because I'm serious about one day having MPS down to a 15 minute science-- it just ain't gonna happen today, folks.
What will happen today is that I'm going to discuss the songs I chose and why I chose them. So here we go:
It starts with a scene from the much-maligned Under The Cherry Moon movie featuring The Purple One, now decked in tux and tails with chicken grease in his neatly shorn curls; Jerome Benton as Tricky, his trusty sidekick; and the film debut of Kristin Scott-Thomas, playing the love interest. You can't see the note Prince is holding up, but you can find the scene on You Tube and check it out for yourself. The visual gag is not important, however, because it's a bit of ghetto wordplay, and I included it because (1) I have always liked this movie even though the rest of the world detests it without having seen it, and (2) it's funny, but not in a general manner. It's funny to the converted, but certainly not to anyone who isn't a fan. Plus, it's a reference to a record store-- what an appropriate introduction to this edition of MPS?
We then hop into the action with Prince's cover of Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" from the Live At The Aladdin Las Vegas DVD. I picked this mostly because it was a good segue from the official MPS intro that samples "Moby Dick" but also because Prince's onetime residency in Vegas was hot fire for its time. My brother saw him perform there back in the day and said it was the best show he'd ever seen in his life.
Then I introduce the hour, with a quick snippet from an interview that came with a specially priced CD maxi-single (remember those?) for "Thieves In The Temple". The interview is interspersed throughout the hour, and although I have no liner information on where and when it was conducted, I am led to believe that it was in Europe sometime before 1999 was released or maybe even during the Controversy era. It was definitely before he made Purple Rain, because of his reference to wanting to be a grip(!) on a motion picture set.
"Alexa de Paris" was the UK-only B-side of the "Mountains" single from the Parade album. Because it was released in Europe only, it was not included on the stellar The Hits/The B-Sides greatest hits collection that came out in 1993. I have always loved this song, and it is briefly featured in the Cherry Moon movie. This version was recorded off You Tube so it doesn't have the requisite sonic punch it deserves, but as far as instrumentals go it's one of Prince's finest.
The song that goes the furthest back is "Gotta Broken Heart Again" which was originally off the Dirty Mind album but here I elected to use the Live At The Aladdin version. Not a whole lot of early material was considered for the podcast, mainly because some of it sounds dated; "Broken Heart" is no exception, but when I first heard the live version I was floored. It significantly improves upon the original and soon became my favorite arrangement of this song. This also marked the beginning of Prince digging deep into the back catalog and retooling older gems. When I saw him in concert he did a few numbers in this fashion, completely revamping tempos, keys, and even song structures... and they all worked. This is the mark of a true genius.
My favorite Prince album tends to fluctuate periodically, but the best collection of songs he ever put out IMHO was Crystal Ball. Released in 1998, the album was supposed to come out a decade earlier as a three-record set but eventually came out as the double album Sign O' The Times. When Crystal Ball finally came out, it was five CDs, two of which contained original material. The other three CDs were outtakes, bootlegs, and songs that were supposed to be on the original release of the album before it got re-titled and whittled down. The next four songs in the podcast are from this vast archive of delicious Prince virtuosity, and because it was mostly a mail-order affair it also remains an album that few non-devotee fans have ever properly listened to... and it's too bad, because there is a wealth of fantastic music on it.
"Calhoun Square" is just an awesome tune, and I frequently get it stuck inside my head whenever I hear it. "Sexual Suicide" sounds like it came out in the Parade era, and it is as funky as Prince ever got. "Last Heart" is also classic-era Prince, playing the love fool again, crying over some woman who done him wrong. But "Tell Me How You Wanna Be Done"-- which was previously released under the name "The Continental" on the Love Symbol album in 1992 --is absolutely amazing, and I find myself dancing every time it comes on. Featuring a sexy rap by Carmen Electra, "Tell Me" is the perfect mix of old and new styles, something Prince (for all his talent) sometimes had a hard time balancing. (It bears noting that "Tell Me" is technically a remix by longtime Prince associate Kirk Johnson)
Then there's "Erotic City". This is the definitive 12" version that came as a B-Side to the "Let's Go Crazy" extended maxi-single. It's probably the most perfect Prince song ever recorded. It's funkier than nineteen yards of chitlins with onions and sardines on the side, and also a strange declaration or manifesto of sorts, a kind of sexual Mayflower Compact for the AIDS generation. It's also a pretty psychedelic record for a club-banger, with sped-up/slowed-down vocals, Sheila E. on the backup, dinky chicken-scratch guitar, and weird sonic embellishments here and there that still astound the listener even in this day and age.
I only discovered the long version of "Computer Blue" a few years ago. I can't remember how I obtained it, but it fulfilled a lifelong dream of snagging a copy of the original extended mix of this classic Purple Rain track that got edited down in order to make room for the majestic "Take Me With U" on the final release. We all knew it existed-- in fact, the words to the middle section where Wendy and Lisa talk are still on the lyrics sheet for the album! On the Live in Syracuse concert video (which, I hear, is being released on DVD with the deluxe edition of Purple Rain due out this month) the spoken word part is played a cappella during the show. But I'd never actually heard it until recently, and I am positive it will also be included on the Deluxe Edition as well.
Finally, we come to my all-time favorite Prince song, and it's a B-Side. True fans know that the B-Sides were where it was at. I had to pass up so many contenders: "How Come You Don't Call Me Anymore?", "She's Always In My Hair", "17 Days", "God", "Irresistible Bitch", even a throwaway novelty like "Horny Toad" held some nostalgic currency for me... but I have always deeply loved the song "Another Lonely Christmas" which was the flip side of "I Would Die 4 U". It was (and still is) unlike anything he ever wrote, and his vocal performance on the record brings me to tears, especially in light of his passing. This was another case of discovering an extended version further down the line, well after I'd committed the song to memory and the annals of my soul. Unfortunately, I did not include that version on this podcast due to time running out, but I did find it on vinyl in an antique mall for $5.00 in January 2016, four months before he died. Last time I checked on Amazon it was going for four times that amount but I wouldn't sell it for any amount.
So there you have it. I hope the podcast makes you smile and gets your toes tapping. I'm sure there are songs that you wish I'd included, and maybe if I'm still doing this next year those songs will make the cut. I wish I could just do a podcast devoted solely to Prince, but I've already seen a few on iTunes (Dig If You Will The Podcast is a particularly good one) and I want to explore more than just one artist in my podcast. But then again, the man had enough music to match all the artists I've featured so far and then some, so maybe it isn't such a far-fetched idea.
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