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Scofield's (great) work is far from being traditional jazz. A COMPREHENSIVE PRINCE DISCOGRAPHY (work in progress ^^): https://sites.google.com/...scography/ | |
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I think, to sum up your post, you are saying that when listened to retrospectively Prince's jazz albums are better than initial reactions might have suggested at the time because they are so different (bad?) they are actually innovative and therefore... good? Sighh... And this, folks.. this is why I come to Prince.org. I remember back in the day when I tried to convince some "1999" era fans, that Prince hadn't lost it. "200 Balloons" was actually just as good, hell, even better than, uh, let's just not. This is what it has come down to for Prince's biggest fans and supporters. Arguing the definition of "bad" music. I was doing it all the way back in 1989 in Northland Mall, outside Detroit. And you are doing it in 2014.
A couple of points. Pop jazz, smooth jazz, hiphop instrumentals were selling like hotcakes in the 80's. If Prince was doing anything so great, he would have cornored that market too.
Next, I have a problem with the word "dated" as applied to music. That's a trap term, that is only applied to music. Particularly Dance, R&B, Soul and Funk. I don't think it's a valid criticism of a production, particularly a pop production, to say it sounds dated. It literally was supposed to sound like the technology and popular trends of the era in which it was created. Music is a market competitive product, built to sell afterall. If in retrospect, at some point in time it does or doesn't sound dated, that's just happenstance. Prince didn't leave linn drums off his jazz records because he didn't want to sound dated. It was because he was trying to emulate true jazz records. And they are mostly good albums, but nothing spectacular. It's still an amazing fact that this guy even has jazz records, he's a pop star funk and roller afterall, and the fact that his records are fairly enjoyable so long as you don't ask to much of them, is good enough. Honetly, it's AMAZING that Prince has jazz albums. WTH? But trying to say they are some form of avante garde, this or that, is an incredible stretch. | |
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[Edited 7/20/14 9:35am] A COMPREHENSIVE PRINCE DISCOGRAPHY (work in progress ^^): https://sites.google.com/...scography/ | |
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I pretty much do believe that the higher quality stuff sells what it's supposed to. I'm a big believer in "to the winner, belong the spoils". No matter how much promotion something gets, at the end of the day there usually has to be enough right about the track to excite people to a purchase. I hated Biz Markie's "Just A Friend". But then again you've got to give him credit for being relateable to a lot of people and you could make the argument that his song has artistic merits as a throwback to early blues and negro spirtual slave-era work songs. But that whack-azz piano... yep also a throwback to early blues records. Things slip through the crack on both sides of the argument, but in the end, I believe if a major-label project, overall, was as good as it's supposed to be for it's genre and era, it's going to do what it's supposed to do.
Madhouse got promotion. I remember stumbling across magazine adds of Moneca Lightner's cover. There were posters in stores. It was promoted as well as most things were at the time. Back then music videos were not mandatory and songs oftentimes broke on radio before the video was filmed. Though if I remember correctly Prince filmed like an entire music video/movie for the album, right? WB passed on releasing it, I wonder why? They must not like money (or maybe they do and they didn't want to waste theirs).. Anyway, "Erotic City" got zero promotion, it wasn't even it's own single, yet we all know how that blew up. Why? Because it was perfect for Prince's audience. Prince delivered precisely what he had conditioned his audience to crave from him. That's how it's done. With Prince's jazz projects, particularly Madhouse, it's a heat check. He's trying to blow a jazzhead's mind, and then deliver the coup de gras mind-fuck, that on yeah, btw, that's PRINCE doing all this bish! That's what it was all about, and in the end we got not so much a jazz album, but another great Prince album, right? Nothing wrong with that in my book. | |
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No music videos for 8 but 2 for 16 that were sent to TV channels but I doubt MTV played them much. Big surprise for me to learn that Madhouse received any promotion at all: WB and . As for success there are of course a few exceptions: some movies, songs or albums bombed despite heavy promotion and some others were successes despite low key promotion but those are exceptions. We may disagree on this but I totally believe that the success of music and movies has little to do with what they are and a lot to do with how promoted they are. Honestly if good music sold one would know by now, and if poor music bombed one would know as well. Sure sometimes a good piece of work gets heavy promotion (much less often today than back in the 80's when daring artists were often supported by majors) but IDK, usually people are being fed with crap and they buy it because they don't have a clue. I mean just look at what's on mainstream TV channels and radio channels! And at the same time u have hundreds of talented artists who're gonna be happy with selling 50,000 copies of their albums. For one [Edited 7/22/14 0:03am] A COMPREHENSIVE PRINCE DISCOGRAPHY (work in progress ^^): https://sites.google.com/...scography/ | |
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Great thread! | |
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Wow! This statement blows my mind. I would think as a prince fan you would be a fan of "prince music". U don't have to love everything he does but I would think you would be interested to hear what he does with the genre.
This reminds me of fans who have never bothered to listen to the protogee albums. Its a incomplete picture of who prince is to bypass those albums or albums aimed at specific genres. Open your minds lol! | |
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Prince has a few #1 pop hits that are highly dubious artistically and musically: Gett Off, 7, Batdance, Thieves In The Temple and possibly Alphabet St and Kiss. Are any of those songs really any better, as art, than sample happy fluff tracks like Ariana Grande's "Problem" or Kanye West's "Golddigger"? How does "Pussy Control" stack up against Kesha's "Tik Tok", from a songwriting perspective? Pretty much the same shock value tricks and very little else for your ear to cling to, right? Only Kesha's track did enough correctly that it better matched up to her target demographics tastes and therefore sold better. In 1995, P Control was the very definition of bad rap. It's still bad today. I don't have a lot of sympathy for artist's who fail to capture the listener's imagination. At the end of the day the audiences expectations trump everything else an act is doing. And that's where Prince's "jazz albums" have problems. If they don't meet the expectations of jazz audiences they aren't good as "jazz albums". However as Prince albums, they are mostly pretty good. Madhouse got some marketing, afterall it was a bit of a hit on the black charts at the time, but no amount of marketing was going to sell that record to it's intended jazz audience. | |
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I mean, really! A COMPREHENSIVE PRINCE DISCOGRAPHY (work in progress ^^): https://sites.google.com/...scography/ | |
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Of course they are. | |
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I love how some posters talk to the point that you can no longer even take their views seriously.
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thieves in the temple (TITT?) is brilliant!
put ur foot on the rock! | |
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Xpectation and N.E.W.S. are very high on my list of favorite Prince albums. I love his instrumental music and his forays into Jazz. I would pay serious money if he would release another CD like those two. I'm not trying to be a ridiculous fanboy. I just listened to both of those CD's SO many times, it would be worth a stash of cash to have some more like it. I know I would get my moneys worth. | |
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Also two of my favorites. Too bad Xpectation is not available on CD...
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Not the point. The point is Prince played the pop tracks game. Kiss, is a very simple song from a musical perspective. It's not impressive music. It's just good music. David Z said it himself and he made the track. Not knocking it, And the guitar lick hook, I mean ok Prince played the guitar, but in the end, in terms of what the composition of the song is, you can get the same effect from a sample. I can teach anybody to play that part with two fingers in like a minute. There are no great innovations to the songs I mentioned. They are run of the mill pop tunes. They are is some cases, less musicaly innovative than what was on Paula Abdul records at the time. In fact you can break them down to their core components in much the same way you can a thousand other pop tracks, that are not 'real music by real musicians', and find samples and all types of shit that Prince fans look down upon when other acts do, but pretend not to notice when Prince himself does it. Prince, at his best is not any great writer or has any insight into jazz or anything else. Dude is a funky pop star, jazz his beyond his capabilities, for the most part. The only reason why he even dabbles in jazz, is his ego is beyond his own understanding of his personal limitations. | |
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I so totally disagree with every word your write. I don't know what is "real music by real musician", I don't make a hierarchy based on sophistication and I respect electronic music. Kiss and Alpbabet St. were very innovative songs, as was When Doves Cry precisely because of their sheer simplicty and minimalism (as you say yourself it was good music but it was impressive too, impressive doesn't have to mean "complex", Aphex Twin and Alva Noto make extremely impressive music with just computer clicks and bleeps). If you start dismissing music because it's simple then you better dismiss everything except for classical music because the best pop or even jazz track won't stand a chance by comparison to Wagner. Batdance was quite innovative too, there were precedents for sure (M/A/R/R/S, S'Express and other house acts) but it was done is a much different way with a typical "Prince" touch and was still daring for 1989. I remember people's reactions back then, it was a big "WTF???!" on the first listen and I suspect it was only that successful because of heavy promotion, for it was waaay too experimental for the usual taste of mainstream audiences (which also proves that they could like sophisticated music if the marketing effort was there). Gett Off was also something quite unique at the time and there's a reason why it became quite a cult song even though it wasn't that successful from a commercial point of view. It was weird, sexy, different from what was on the radio at the time. P. Control is not bad rap because it's not even rap at all in the first place, by this I mean it's not and it was never intended to be hip-hop and compete with what hip-hop was at the time the way Jughead was for example. P Control is future funk, listen to what labels such as Tokyo Dawn are doing now, everything was there 20 years ago in P Control. The mere notion of judging it as a rap song is absurd, if it belongs to any genre it's "Prince", it's him doing his thing at its best and it's a little musical world of its own. Thieves and 7 while not unforgetable were solid pop songs with an oriental vibe, I suspect the fact that you specifically mentioned those 2 songs out of dozens may just mean u don't like the oriental vibe? My point is that somehow you named some of As for Peace DB A COMPREHENSIVE PRINCE DISCOGRAPHY (work in progress ^^): https://sites.google.com/...scography/ | |
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I reAlly need to listen to it again. It must have been 5 years since I last listened to it. | |
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You misunderstood my point completely. I only mentioned those songs as examples of Prince hits, that required no great music knowledge for Prince to write. In some cases he sampled or co-opted other artist's work and contributed very simple music ideas to finish them out, which is fine. Just don't go calling the guy a jazz sensation. He is a pop star. For the record I LOVE the songs I mentioned, but I can rationally analyze the musical ideas behind them and admit they are not the work of a jazz genius or even close to it. I never said that they are not enjoyable, just that they are in the class with other typical pop horndog-music-for-freaky-teens and not jazz, ok?
I read the rest of what you wrote and, while I agree with much of it, I just think that, in general, you are projecting. P Control is Prince trying to do a rap song and failing... hard. It's "Warm It Up Kriss", by Kriss Kross. You can, today, say well that sounds like this genre called future funk, but that's streching the truth. By that standard, you can claim everything falls into an obscure genre and was therefore actually not awful, but good. BTW, does anyone know a genre by which Tony M is not a poor man's Chuck D, but equal to Tupac? Too many Prince fans are doing this. I've been around long enough to remeber when Prince fell off, and this trend in the fanbase started. Fans, forced into a state of denial, because Prince is releasing one bad album after the next..
I appreciate your POV, though. | |
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Sorry for the misunderstanding Yeah your ideas are interesting too even though we don't agree on everything it's nice to have constructive convos and exchanging POV's . Hip hop or not, P. Control always have and will always lift me up, though . I wouldn't call my appreciation of . Also, I think I understand where A COMPREHENSIVE PRINCE DISCOGRAPHY (work in progress ^^): https://sites.google.com/...scography/ | |
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Okay, thanks for explaining your point, but I don't think you're really getting "Kiss" if that's how you feel about it. It's a very innovative and even "avant-gardist" take on the poppier end of 80s funk stuff. It is very impressive music. It's not even among my favourite Prince tracks, but c'mon, that track is widely recognized as an example on a pop artist being innovative. With the Paula Abdul comment above I think you're just trying too hard to justify some statements that you've made earlier. | |
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