One can never have too many Sheila pics in these threads...

OldFriends4Sale said:

Cool! Do you know if the above artwork was actually intended for the Camille album, or is it fan art? Either way, it will look snazzy embedded in my lossless Camille iTunes album...

OldFriends4Sale said:

Love this pic. They look great together.

BlackbeltJones said:

I don't know, some say it the one below
I like em both

mycherrymoon said:

Koo Koo is the only song from the Sheila E album that sounds like music from SOTT
Most of the rest of the music feels like Parade/Dream Factory





Koo Koo
Come see Koo Koo man
Doing very worst he can
See him spend his lonely dime
Things design the Koo Koo time

CHORUS:
Koo Koo, Koo Koo
Koo Koo, Koo Koo

Everybody, come see Koo Koo girl
She can't resist the Koo Koo world
2 young 2 know better, 2 old 2 refuse
First she had an abortion, now she's got the blues (She got the blues)
Yes

CHORUS

Come and dig the Koo Koo war
Rumor has, it got started cuz our leaders got bored
New toys with a laser teach children 2 kill
Who knows when they're older, maybe they will
Nothing gained, paradise lost
Koo Koo's the trip and death is the cost
It's your world... 4 a little while
Peace, mother, brother, peace of mind
We got 2 love one another all the time
Cuz a kiss on the lips is better than a knife in the back
Can U get 2 that or is your blue train runnin' on a Koo Koo track?
U're 2 laxed, 2 lazy 2 dig all the facts
What it is y'all? We need a new plan, new plan of attack
Everybody jam, we've got the knack
Let's party y'all, let's party y'all
Cuz a kiss on the lips is better than a knife in the back
Now everybody say it

Koo Koo, Koo Koo
Koo Koo

It's your world (Your world)
4 a little while

© 1987 Girlsongs / Sister Fate Music - ASCAP

Prince's baffling brilliance
(no rating)

SIGN O' THE TIMES
PRINCE
Paisley Park/Warner Bros.

BY KURT LODER

Prince is beginning to be a puzzlement. Sign o' the Times, his ninth album in what is now a nine-year recording career, is of course largely dazzling; sixteen tracks spread across two LPs -- half of them brilliant, half merely better than ninety percent of the stuff you hear on the radio. There really is no one else like him (although a lot of people try to be), and he remains that rare pop artist to whom you can attach the word genius --or artist, for that matter -- without gagging.

But three years ago, with his album Purple Rain perched atop the charts and his movie of the same name racking up boffo box office, Prince appeared to be poised on the verge of some Great Statement -- some grand new synthesis of black and white musical forms, of sexual redefinition and spiritual devotion. He seemed, in short, to be about to put it all together. But in the wake of Purple Rain, he has drifted. Maybe the movie, with its quasi-autobiographical themes and its implicit challenge to his powers as a budding auteur, focused his creative energies in a one-time-only way. Maybe the Prince-mania that attended its release frightened him. (Or disgusted him. Or bored him.) Whatever the case, with the subsequent Around the World in a Day and Parade, he has been backing away from that peak ever since. Now comes Sign o' the Times, and the Great Statement remains unmade.

This is only a relative letdown, of course. Coming from almost any other artist, Sign would be cause for celebration (not to mention mad partying). The best music here is tough and inventive and exuberantly experimental. Dispensing with his former band, the Revolution (it appears on only one cut, the funk workout "It's Gonna Be a Beautiful Night," recorded live in Paris last year), Prince scales back its creative attack to what is essentially a one-man-band operation, with overdubbed assists from two estimable horn men, sax player Eric Leeds and trumpeter Atlanta Bliss. (There are also key bits by percussionist-singer Sheila E., ex-Revolutionaries Lisa Coleman and Wendy Melvoin, Wendy's sister Susannah Melvoin, pop singer Sheena Easton and a new vocalist named Camille.)

The resulting minimalism, especially after some of the string-laden pretensions of Parade, is wonderfully bracing. "Sign o' the Times," the album's first single, sets up an immediate tension between a rubbery bass riff and a ponging percussion figure, blossoming rather darkly with the addition of subtly unsettling keyboard chords as Prince decries the contemporary prevalence of drugs and war and suggests, as an antidote, "Let's fall in love, get married, have a baby/We'll call him Nate (If it's a boy)." This is pure Prince -- the formidable rhythmic power, the sociosexual transcendentalism, the loopy humor -- and it's perfect, a piece of real aural art.

Elsewhere, and with equally impressive results, Prince reasserts his mastery of both black funk idioms and white psychedelic and hard-rock styles. "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man," with its Who-like crunch chords and its irresistible keyboard riff, is the most irresistible guitar rocker Prince has done since 1980's "When You Were Mine." And "It," with its Pink Floyd-style guitar tones, and the delightful "Hot Thing," which features an odd little Oriental keyboard hook, re-confirm Prince's genuine affection for Sixties-style trippery. The stylized funk tracks are even more revealing -- they seem in some ways to be almost homages. The sexy "Slow Love," with its jaunty keyboards and neck-nuzzling delivery, vividly recalls Sly Stone at the peak of his powers. And the uproarious "Housequake" is a virtual survey of thirty years of black performance styles: the title apparently refers to house music, which erupted out of Chicago last year; the singer's boastful persona is borrowed from rap; the wicked beat and machine-gun horn lines are pure James Brown; and the goofy exhortation that brackets the track -- "Shut up, already! Damn!" -- is lifted from Little Richard. As might be expected, the whole things smokes ferociously.

The balance of the album finds Prince being his unpredictable self -- which is, if nothing else, never dull. "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker" takes it title not from the celebrated quiptress of the Algonquin Round Table but rather from a fictive blond waitress who has "a quicker wit" than Prince and (like him) loves Joni Mitchell. The hilarious and sexually arresting "If I Was Your Girlfriend" is a funk-thunk number with weird crowdlike backup vocals; it finds Prince wheedling his beloved with the disconcerting question "Would you run to me if somebody hurt you/Even if that somebody was me?" Then there's "The Cross," one of his most straightforward religious songs, which starts off as a sort of folk-rock ballad, then erupts into overpowering power-guitar chords and concludes in a shimmering puddle of jazzlike vocal harmony straight out of the Four Freshman song book.

In fact, Prince's virtuoso eclecticism has seldom been so abundantly displayed, from the Hendrixian funk that crops up on "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man" and the Wizard of Oz drones that form the unlikely center of "It's Gonna Be a Beautiful Night" to the razory instrumental run in "Play in the Sunshine" and the eerie keyboard wheezlings in "Housequake."

That all sounds pretty interesting. In fact, it is. "Sign o' the Times," "Housequake," "Hot Thing" and "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man" will be new Prince classics. "It," "Slow Love," "It's Gonna Be a Beautiful Night" and the almost-heavy-metal "U Got the Look" are almost as good. There would be one great LP hidden in the sprawl of this double album if the songs exerted any uniform effect. Unfortunately, they don't. That's okay; one takes great songs wherever one can find them. But simple virtuosity -- mere brilliance, one might almost say -- seems too easy an exercise, at this point, for someone of Prince's extraordinary gifts. And he is beginning to repeat himself: "Play in the Sunshine" is the sort of soulful raveup he's tossed off several times before, and the little bass idea that so memorably animates the title tune crops up again in both "Hot Thing" and the mildly intriguing "Forever in My Life." This way lies decadence.

Prince appeared on the scene as a champion of outcast originality. He demonstrated for a new generation the beauty of true style and unconstrained personality, the complexity of the interplay among love and God and sexuality and -- most important -- the essentially multiracial nature of rock & roll music. He is an artist capable of altering popular consciousness in concrete ways, but Sign o' the Times seems unlikely to alter anything more profound than the face of the hit parade. Nothing wrong with that, but it's rather like the story about Jesus feeding the multitudes with miraculous loaves and fishes. Such fundamental nourishment is always appreciated. But when a full-blown feast is so obviously within Prince's capabilities, one wonders: Why doesn't he go for it?

(RS 498)

OldFriends4Sale said:

I have goosebumps.

OldFriends4Sale said:

I remember this review I agree with most of it.It's funny the way Kurt seriously lists Camille as one of the album's guest stars,even referring to that person as "a new vocalist"

BlackbeltJones said:

That face and "Prince" has been taken from the cover of Gett Off...
So, Fan Art.

OldFriends4Sale said:

Cat looks like she's recovering from a long and laborous bout of fuckin' with Long Dong Silver.

dseann said:

lol Cat represents the wild & loose
Sheila represents the demure and chic
those 2 should have had a photo taken together showing that
for me Levi just didn't have that 'purple vibe' like Brownmark always looked the part, Levi just seemed like someones uncle at the barbeque
Mico shadowed Prince's quirkiness really well

..am guessing you guys on this thread might be able to confirm. Am i going mad or did he cancel a gig on this tour at Blenheim Palace (UK) in '87. Google is throwing a blank. It def wasn't the later D&P tour. Once of the scans on this thread mentions the tour was cut short? It was open air at Blenheim Palace and the weather was shite so he cancelled as all the rigging would have been too dangerous in the wet. Grateful if anyone can confirm.
I remember it being a week or so off the date - i had all th epeach & black gear sorted and being soooo gutted - i was about 15!
Anyone? Thanks

Dinner Party March 24,1987
Dinner with Prince & Miles Davis

TLM: You were part of an amazing dinner party on March 24 1987 that included Miles, Prince, Prince’s Dad, Sheila E and you. Was that the first time you met Miles?

Eric Leeds: He had come by a rehearsal for the Sign ‘O’ The Times tour that afternoon and I was introduced to him then. I had gone home after rehearsal and got a call from one of Prince’s assistants, “By the way, Prince is inviting you to have dinner with him,” so I jumped in my car and went over to Prince’s house. I kinda think that Prince wanted me there to open up the conversation with Miles and get things rolling. Miles was as much a performer during that dinner as he ever was on stage. You couldn’t get him to shut up and it was very funny! There are some aspects of that evening that I’m not sure I want anybody else to know about, and if I do, it’s going to be in my book! [note that at present, Eric has no firm plans to write a book].

But basically the most interesting aspect of the relationship between Prince and Miles was the dance that they would do around each other. What Prince really related to about Miles was his character – his legacy, his mystique and everything that Miles represented as a personality. Prince saw in Miles so much of what he thought of himself – the person that goes against the grain, that’s opinionated, that doesn’t allow himself to be controlled by any aspect of the industry for his own artistic vision. And that’s very much what Miles saw in Prince. He saw a young version of himself but there was always something about the generational thing. It was like “The King is dead, long live the King.” You had these supreme egos that had an undying respect for each other but neither wanted to give it up to each other. So with Miles, you could almost see the cartoon balloon over his head saying: “Yeah you’re young and hip, but I’ve got all of these years of experience that you haven’t had yet.” While Prince was looking at Miles and saying “Yeah, you’re the icon – but you’re old! I’m the new version!” And it defined and characterised every aspect of their relationship and it was hilarious to sit back and watch that unfold. That was the biggest enjoyment for me – watching these two dance around each other.

TLM: Any more recollections you want to share?

Eric Leeds: At one point in the evening, Miles grabbed me by the arm and said: “Eric, let me see your carriage!” I’m looking at him and trying to be cool and I say: “My what?!!” And he says, “Your carriage! Show me how you hold your horn!” And then I realised: “Oh my God, he’s using an archaic definition of the word carriage. He said “Show me how you stand when you hold your saxophone.” Then he goes: “Do you do it like this?” And he mimicked the way a saxophone player holds his horn. I looked at him and laughed and then I said, “Is that the way I should hold it?” And he said “Yes,” and I replied, “Well Miles, that’s exactly how I hold it!”

When we were sitting down the first thing I wanted to ask him was about the acid funk band with [guitarist] Pete Cosey [1973-1975], which is the band that I absolutely loved. I was one of the few people at the time that did! And Miles looked at me and said “You liked that band? Nobody liked that band! I never met anybody who liked the band. You liked that band?” I said “Miles, there were some of us who loved that band.” I also got the indication from his demeanour that that was a period of his life he didn’t remember too much about and what he did remember, he didn’t want to remember. I don’t think a lot of people realised that a lot of what Miles said, he said for effect. That he really wanted to say dumb stuff at times just to see how you would react or it was his way of making of point. So it was a case of trying to figure whether he was saying something for effect, or was heartfelt or was a direct response to a comment.

I remember asking him “Are you into someone like [trumpeter] Lester Bowie? A part of me said “Lester Bowie comes from the Art Ensemble of Chicago, a kind of music Miles was known for disliking, so what will he say?” Miles changed his tone of voice and looked at me very seriously and said: “Why wouldn’t I like Lester Bowie?” But then it would not have surprised me if I saw an interview with him in a magazine the next week where he dissed Lester Bowie! Because he was going to say what he was going to say depending on how he felt or what he felt the purpose of the question was. It was an interesting night.

Hot thing - barely 21
Hot thing - lookin' 4 Big Fun
Hot thing - what's your fantasy?
Hot thing - do U wanna play with me?

Hot thing - baby, U dance so good
Hot thing - baby, I knew U would
Hot thing - tell me what U see
Hot thing - when U smile, when U smile, when U smile
Are your smiles, are your smiles 4 me?

Hot thing - maybe U should give your folks a call
Hot thing - tell'em U're goin' 2 the Crystal Ball
Hot thing - tell'em U're comin' home late if U're comin' home at all
Hot thing - U can tell'em U found a brand new baby doll

Hot thing - I can't... I can't wait 2 get U home
Hot thing - where we can be alone
Hot thing - I could read U poetry
And then we could.. we could make a story of our own
(We could make a story of our own)

Another cool era in Prince's career! Great album, film, and tour! Related projects were great also.

lovesexy72 said:

Sorry I have nothing solid, but I believe the cancelled shows were in Birmingham. They were supposed to be the final shows of the tour, but they couldnt obtain a license and had to cancel. It was early July 87.

I have all the details in one of my old Uptown mags, but I aint diggin that out right now!

SIGN O' THE TIMES
3 Stars (out of 4)

By Roger Ebert

Prince labors under the misfortune of having made one of the greatest rock movies of all time, "Purple Rain." Now his career is beginning to take on some of the same hint of nostalgia that dogged Orson Welles all of his days: If you start with "Citizen Kane," where do you go from there? "Purple Rain" contained not only great rock music but also a strong dramatic story and powerful performances by a whole crowd of unknowns. It was a great debut movie, and it made Prince into a sitting duck with whatever film he made next.

His next film was, of course, the disastrous "Under the Cherry Moon," an odd black-and-white exercise that seemed to owe something to old movies by Fred Astaire, Harold Arlen and even Rudy Vallee. He was paying tribute to a tradition that was not even a memory for his fans. Now comes "Sign O' the Times," obviously a more cautious and calculated film, in which Prince returns to his concert roots and tries to give his fans, if not "Purple Rain," then at least what they paid their money for.

This is a concert film, with all of the usual conventions of the modern rock concert film: the towering percussion section, the synchronized backup singers, the sweating superstar in sexual pantomime and, of course, the standard shot of the star leaning forward to tantalize his fans as the first row of the audience surges forward in orgiastic bliss.

To this basic mix Prince has added some adornments. He intercuts the concert footage with what look like glimpses of a dramatic story, in which sex, intrigue and a sense of danger are laid on heavily, although no coherent narrative emerges. These shots symbolize a night world of rock clubs, seedy saloons, hookers and players and johns. They burst out onto the stage in several musical numbers, including one steamy duet between Prince and Cat Glover, rumored to be his current squeeze.

Prince also shares the stage with various visitors, drop-ins and guest stars, notably Sheena Easton. But the person who literally steals the show is Sheila E., who plays percussion and then climbs down from the drums for a solo and a duet. Her energy level in this movie is awesome, and she looks great, too. She can also play drums. Sheila E. says she thinks of herself as a drummer first and a singer second, but on the basis of this movie she could flip a coin.

"Sign O' the Times" was directed by Prince, and he does a good, sound job without finding an answer to the problem of all directors of rock concert films: After you have exhausted the basic repertory of obvious shots and audience reactions, what do you do then? In "Purple Rain," Prince found an answer in his own life, and provided intercuts to an autobiographical story. This time, he lets the music simply speak for itself. It's fun as far as it goes, but "Purple Rain," of course, went further.

Date of publication: 11/20/1987

Sign O' the Times

Cineplex Odeon presents a film starring Prince, Sheila E., Cat Glover, Sheena Easton, Dr. Fink, Miko Weaver, Levi Seacer Jr., Wally Safford, Gregory Allen Brooks, Boni Boyer, Eric Leeds and Atlanta Bliss. Directed by Prince, and produced by Robert Cavallo, Joseph Ruffalo and Steven Fargnoli. Photographed by Peter Sinclair. Edited by Steve Purcell. Music by Prince. Running time: 90 minutes. Classified PG-13. At local theaters.