Author | Message |
Prince & the noituloveR 1999 era 1982-1983
Jamie Starr & The Starr ★ Company
Don't need no reefer, don't need cocaine
Prince, Bobby Z, Dr Fink, Dez Dickerson, Lisa Coleman, BrownMark, JJ, Wendy Melvoin, Alan Leeds, Big Chick(Huntsbury)
I was dreamin' when I wrote this, forgive me if it goes astray Drive it, baby, drive it, drive this demon out of me Purple love-amour is all U're in it 4
In general, the music made by Prince, The Time and Vanity 6 is a new sort of funk music - expansive, open to new rhythms and off-beat ideas. Best of all, it's a radical sound that's commercially successful, something adventurous music rarely achieves these days.By Ken Tucker Sunday, November 21, 1982 Warner Bros. Records, Minneapolis and Sex. What do these three items have in common? by Ken Tucker
http://prince.org/msg/7/419842 the Controversy era 1981 - 1982 *
| |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
BrownMark(bass) Dr Fink(keyboards/synth) Dez Dickerson(guitar) Prince Lisa Coleman(synth/keyboards) Bobby Z (drums/linn) | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
Released October 27, 1982 Automatic – 9:28 Lady Cab Driver – 8:19 B Sides Horny Toad Irresistable Bitch
| |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
Prince Builds His KingdomBy Frank Schwartz
Right On!, Winter 1983 As the mystery in Minneapolis grows wider, more and more wonder who's really doing what to earn those gold records which are accumulating among Prince's entourage.
He wears his sexuality just above the knees, where his uni-sex leg-warmers end and his fleshy thighs begin. His multi-racial politics dart in and out of darkens and light between religious doom-saying and party-hearty platitudes. Born with a dirty mind, he's learned the music au natural, with no guidance, no lessons, no waiting.
Genious, prodigy, boy wonder, those kind of words used to be the expressions to describe a phenomenon like Prince, now it's just called Killer Crossover Potential. And even though it might get booed off the stage at Rolling Stones concerts in L.A. and is unwisely deemed too steamy for the nations pale-faced airwaves, Prince's powers are undeniably responsible for some of the hardest-hitting music ever aimed below the belt at the feet and above the bedroom eyes at the brain.
Prince's five albums tell only part of his story. But on all of them, he's engineered, produced, arranged written all the songs and played all the instruments by himself. Usually skeptical and jaded critics both here and abroad have jumped on his funk-wagon. Fans, "Black, White, Puerto Rican"- have marched to his drum and bit on his beat. Outraged parents have scroffed at his lusty calls to freedom through "dance, music, sex, romance." Those keeping score count on Prince to fill the holes left by such '60s casualties as Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone. Meantime, his brilliant synthesizer lines continue to replace the worn horn charts of R&B's old school. And his live performance-somewhere between a claddy strip tease act and a space age show of new wave tricks-readily recalls all that was ever raw, risqué or just plain 'ol exciting about rock-n-roll, from Godfather Brown to Pelvic Presley, from Millie Jackson's mouth to Mick Jaggers sass.
Self described as "his mother's favorite freak," Prince has a grand chance at becoming a King. But to those who first plucked him from obscurity in north Minneapolis at age 17, he's a "very thorny rose," a five-foot-two Napoleon in drag. He's also super secret. And at 23 years, the handsome kid in his Frederics of Hollywood underwear and Humphery Bogart's (studded) trenchcoat is quickly becoming the most talked about, least understood mystery musicmaker on the block. Here in Minneapolis-St. Paul (America's Twin Cities located in the quiet, and often cold, north country), we simply call him "His Royal Badness," founding father of The Time, master designer behind Vanity 6. The man-child behind the curtain. Sometimes he plays unannounced with his band in our bars. There're a couple million stories in the naked cities and a bunch of them are about Prince. The area is small enough so that tall tales are about him, true or false, eventually rise to the top of the rumor mill. Someday even the demo tapes that he wrote, produced and played on for Sue Ann Carwell (another of Minnesota's soul siblings who had a minor hit last year with "Let Me Let You Rock Me") will surface and add to his royal mystique. At the moment, Prince is the baddest northern brother on the street, and anyone hungry for a piece of musical action knows the kid in high heels can provide it. Those in the power positions here, however, seem less interested. Radio in his own hometown has steadfastly refused to spin his records until the release of latest single, "1999."
Ironic as it is, that sad situation may prove to be the ideal environment for the one-man sex and music machine. Prince still makes his home here, out of one of Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes, 20 minutes from the cities. His family, including his divorced father, who leads a musical life of his own, and one of his sisters, who sings in a local Black gospel choir is scattered across the Twin Cities. One of nine children, Prince Rogers Nelson can go about his business, recording in his private studio, the one located "somewhere in uptown." Or he can hang out at the First Avenue club where he has often tested out his latest jams on an unsuspecting dance crowd. Nobody bothers him much, even when he's in the cool company of his good pal Morris Day from The Time, or Vanity from Vanity 6. If he feels claustrophobic, he can commute to Los Angeles or New York. Being famous insures a smooth getaway.
In the beginning, prior to his first record, For You, in 1978, Prince kept quiet, out of sight. He played in teenage bands with André Cymone who later became his bass player and subsequently the first Prince sideman to leave the crimson court for his own solo career. The split was not amicable, even though Prince lived with the Cymone family prior to his precedent-setting Warner Brothers record contract, "the biggest record deal of 1977," claims his former manager Owen Husney. Upon the release of Cymone's album, Living In The New Wave, Prince sent one of his gold records to his old friend, but he didn't deliver it in person.
Since his Royal Badness has yet to come out and met the press, his personal and professional life continue to be colored by the kind of gossip you hear at record shops and gas stations (the best one I've heard lately is that Prince stole "Controversy" from Cymone and that's why relations broke off). But no one's talking. Not about life with Prince, not about his ribald jams or the album credits that consistently and literally thank God. So far, mum has been the first and last word about his lyrics that bulge with double-talk all about "the second coming." Musically, Prince has already gone beyond being "the next big thing" in Black funk and White rock. He's blasted the color line with more credible street sense than a dozen Rick James come-ons. He warns parents not to let their children watch TV until they know how to read, but in the next minute, he can be singing praises of blow jobs in the bedroom or inciting everybody to party up "cuz "everybody's got the bomb" and the selective service has got your number.
One thing, though is certain - Prince is busy building his Kingdom. In 1980, he took a floundering local R&B band called Flyte Tyme (one of its former lead singers was Cynthia Johnson of Lipps, Inc. "Funkytown" fame), redressed its players, realigned its musical grooves and some of its members and created The Time. Depending on whom you talk to, The Time is either a bad-assed brainchild of Morris Day, a former drummer turned slick Romeo, a Little Richard look-alike and the group's lead singer and showman. Or The Time is a complete front for Prince, the workaholic wonderkid, who some say wrote, produced, played and arranged everything on The Time's first album. Son Of A Dirty Mind cried privileged insiders here in the Twin Cities when the band turned out its first flag-raising anthem, "Get It Up," or dancefloor showpiece and anthem called "Cool," By the time The Time got around to album number two, What Time Is It?, few local critic and record moguls believed that the baggy-trousered funksters weren't just spewing back a Princely script complete with smooth moves and a more accessible Black pop sound than his own.
Ask Alexander O'Neil about the royal court, another Flyte Tyme singer who didn't make the team or didn't want to keep Time under Prince's decrees, and he'd all but tell you, Morris and the fellas are being kept by you know who. Jamie Starr, a name that's appeared on Prince's albums as well The Time's, could settle the controversy surrounding the Prince connection. But finding Jamie Starr is like trying to cop a dip from the invisible man. He doesn't exist. Jamie Starr is Prince's nowhere man. O'Neil would no doubt love to see that Starr name at the bottom of his own current recording project. It's magical; it moves records, it opens big doors at major record labels, especially Warner Brothers.
Enter Vanity 6, stage left. Vanity 6 is Prince's female alter ego, three pinup peculiar princesses in lingerie who peddle excessive street eroticism that borders on soft-core porn. On their debut record (another Warner Bros. product, by the way), the nasty girls work through a blue testament series of sex scenarios that covers the familiar turf of "Wet Dreams" and dull boyfriends. Unlike The Time, these daughters of controversy aren't from Minnesota's backwoods or alleys. Susan's from the Caribbean, Brenda's from Boston and the beautiful Vanity is a Canadian export from Toronto. How all three came to be Prince's V- girls is a case Kojak might consider.
The babes in lingerie share neither The Time's hit-hopping party funk or their home addresses. Instead, His Royal Badness has hung a more British brand of syntho-pop behind the album's best cuts, while snatching a JB lick for workouts like "Nasty Girls." In a live setting, The Time backs Vanity, with you know who looking over their shoulders. You see, it's family affair. And it's becoming so solidified that even Prince has begun dropping joke lines about Jamie Starr and his too wild and loose offspring. "Jamie Starr's a thief," he says on the new 1999 album. "The Time will fix your clock," and "Vanity 6 is so sweet" he mugs during "Dance,Music,Sex,Romance." So what if Prince is indeed the mystery man pulling the wool over our eyes? He's pitting people to work and giving the rest of the general population a proven formula for outrageousness in this year's unending depression. And so far, Prince's potent prescriptions have proven to be the most satisfying lethal doses of fun any listener on the rock or soul front lines, could ask for. Besides, his low profile, high octane output and pet projects give people here in the Twin Cities bars something to talk about all winter other than the cold. Did you think Prince wore those leg-warmers just for show?
| |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
1999
B-side Original: How Come U Don't Call Me Anymore?
As I recall Prince came upstairs and got me out of bed at about 3 am ish. I went down to the studio in my pj's and he had called Lisa Coleman in , who was on her way from Mpls to his house in Chanhassen on Kiowa. When she got there he had us sing together the opening lines and the mommy why does everybody have a bomb etc. yes this was a special session all done in my pajamas!!👍🏿😄❤️😭💘💔 glad he was happy. -Jill Jones FB | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
| |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
I keep your picture beside my bed What I wanna know baby Listen, I still light the fire on a rainy night I always did think we looked kind of cute together myself All I wanna know baby Sometimes it feels like I'm gonna die Just one lousy dime, baby
| |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
OldFriends4Sale said: This is in my top 5 favorite pictures from this era. Are there outtakes of this? What was the idea, anyway? you can do anything | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
OldFriends4Sale said:
I keep your picture beside my bed What I wanna know baby Listen, I still light the fire on a rainy night I always did think we looked kind of cute together myself All I wanna know baby Sometimes it feels like I'm gonna die Just one lousy dime, baby
P.S. The revolution backward reminds me of not ur lover lol you can do anything | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
9 1999 (3:36)
Having survived the media and still managing to accumulate an increasingly diverse audience, Prince was selling more tickets near the end of the tour than at the beginning. It was a bull market and he poised himself for the next step. Vaulting back and forth between Los Angeles and home, he produced an incomprehensible amount of first-rate material during the first half of 1982. By summer, the second Time album and a debut package by Vanity 6 were on the market. Astonishingly, he had also amassed enough songs of his own to warrant a double album. | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
16 HOW COME U DON’T CALL ME ANYMORE (3:50)
Of equal notice to many was the amazing ballad lurking on the flip side, HOW COME U DON’T CALL ME ANYMORE?. Prince’s own daring vocals, his treacherously percussive piano and a stomping heartbeat for drums equals one of the most popular of his “killer B’s” – one that frequently brought down the house on several tours. -Alan Leeds | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
lol I was seeing the same thing not ur loveR
| |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
1999 video Directed by: Bruce Gowers
| |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
| |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
New Musical Express Flasher in the Pan
Prince
DEAR Mixed-Up of Minnesota.
Well - don't you have problems!
Being the sole son and heir of Barry White and Jimi Hendrix is no easy burden for a young boy to bear, but when the only people who like you are the people who get their records free... Well, then comes the hour when the record company, in one last mad gasp of magpie marketing, puts out the "Specially-Priced Two Record Set" and almost audibly screams "Come and buy it, you bastards! It may stink, but at least it's free!"
You saw, you conquered, you came; that used to be your preoccupation, Prince, you pup! You were the Reeperbahn of rock; but now as you and your countrymen sit and contemplate your cold stores in the U.S.A.H (After Herpes) I detect a more chaste worldview, full of partying and vague romantic sadness rather than blow by blow cornporn. Yet even this can have its complications; you use partying, like many of your nasty nationality, as a carwash for the brain, having fun to hide from fear, most graphically in the title track. The end of the world, don't worry your pretty little head about it, Prince, leave the social comment to Grandmaster Flash and revel in your role of pretty boy's pin-up!
I also notice that you have one song, "Little Red Corvette", which implies that you want the world to know that you are a regular guy and not just a sex freak, a regular guy pace Noble, New Jersey, who always fall back on singing love songs to lumps of metal when he wants to show that he is as capable of having fun as the next guy; though falling in love with a lump of metal is a rather recherche way of having fun, I would venture, and far from normal!
I still remember your first communique, "I Wanna Be Your Lover", with som affection. You were the carnal castrati incarnate, there was a gurgling, glorious exuberance about you, all those sweet soaring runs and that nifty backcombed backchat, you were out of the closet and in your element, being just what you always wanted to be..... a girl group! But now your songs sound like an interminable string of Fame B-sides, and considering how Fame A-sides sound, that's some insult.
There is an ancient Leninist dictum heeded in the early days of the Russian Revolution and kept alive by many Third World freedom fighters; the One Glass of Water theory, which young revolutionaries applied to S.E.X., your very own cottage industry, in deciding that sex is of no more importance than one glass of water to a thirsty man. Well, I'm sure these baby Spartans enjoy their sparkling sustenance when they get it more than you and your countrymen have enjoyed the rather joyless orgies in which you have been partaking for the last couple of decades and albums. Your problem, Prince, is commercial post-coital triste on a cosmic scale.
The antidote? Get thee to a nunnery, or at least to Donna Summer's songwriter. Few things are such bets chartwise as a Bible-bashing black, Born Again. Sex is no manifesto, no saviour and certainly no shock. As my colleague Confucius likes to say, "Nothing sadder than a flasher who no one notices."
| |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
OldFriends4Sale said:
New Musical Express Flasher in the Pan
Prince
DEAR Mixed-Up of Minnesota.
Well - don't you have problems!
Being the sole son and heir of Barry White and Jimi Hendrix is no easy burden for a young boy to bear, but when the only people who like you are the people who get their records free... Well, then comes the hour when the record company, in one last mad gasp of magpie marketing, puts out the "Specially-Priced Two Record Set" and almost audibly screams "Come and buy it, you bastards! It may stink, but at least it's free!"
You saw, you conquered, you came; that used to be your preoccupation, Prince, you pup! You were the Reeperbahn of rock; but now as you and your countrymen sit and contemplate your cold stores in the U.S.A.H (After Herpes) I detect a more chaste worldview, full of partying and vague romantic sadness rather than blow by blow cornporn. Yet even this can have its complications; you use partying, like many of your nasty nationality, as a carwash for the brain, having fun to hide from fear, most graphically in the title track. The end of the world, don't worry your pretty little head about it, Prince, leave the social comment to Grandmaster Flash and revel in your role of pretty boy's pin-up!
I also notice that you have one song, "Little Red Corvette", which implies that you want the world to know that you are a regular guy and not just a sex freak, a regular guy pace Noble, New Jersey, who always fall back on singing love songs to lumps of metal when he wants to show that he is as capable of having fun as the next guy; though falling in love with a lump of metal is a rather recherche way of having fun, I would venture, and far from normal!
I still remember your first communique, "I Wanna Be Your Lover", with som affection. You were the carnal castrati incarnate, there was a gurgling, glorious exuberance about you, all those sweet soaring runs and that nifty backcombed backchat, you were out of the closet and in your element, being just what you always wanted to be..... a girl group! But now your songs sound like an interminable string of Fame B-sides, and considering how Fame A-sides sound, that's some insult.
There is an ancient Leninist dictum heeded in the early days of the Russian Revolution and kept alive by many Third World freedom fighters; the One Glass of Water theory, which young revolutionaries applied to S.E.X., your very own cottage industry, in deciding that sex is of no more importance than one glass of water to a thirsty man. Well, I'm sure these baby Spartans enjoy their sparkling sustenance when they get it more than you and your countrymen have enjoyed the rather joyless orgies in which you have been partaking for the last couple of decades and albums. Your problem, Prince, is commercial post-coital triste on a cosmic scale.
The antidote? Get thee to a nunnery, or at least to Donna Summer's songwriter. Few things are such bets chartwise as a Bible-bashing black, Born Again. Sex is no manifesto, no saviour and certainly no shock. As my colleague Confucius likes to say, "Nothing sadder than a flasher who no one notices."
Wow The wooh is on the one! | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
I said the same thing | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
OldFriends4Sale said:
New Musical Express Flasher in the Pan
Prince
DEAR Mixed-Up of Minnesota.
Well - don't you have problems!
Being the sole son and heir of Barry White and Jimi Hendrix is no easy burden for a young boy to bear, but when the only people who like you are the people who get their records free... Well, then comes the hour when the record company, in one last mad gasp of magpie marketing, puts out the "Specially-Priced Two Record Set" and almost audibly screams "Come and buy it, you bastards! It may stink, but at least it's free!"
You saw, you conquered, you came; that used to be your preoccupation, Prince, you pup! You were the Reeperbahn of rock; but now as you and your countrymen sit and contemplate your cold stores in the U.S.A.H (After Herpes) I detect a more chaste worldview, full of partying and vague romantic sadness rather than blow by blow cornporn. Yet even this can have its complications; you use partying, like many of your nasty nationality, as a carwash for the brain, having fun to hide from fear, most graphically in the title track. The end of the world, don't worry your pretty little head about it, Prince, leave the social comment to Grandmaster Flash and revel in your role of pretty boy's pin-up!
I also notice that you have one song, "Little Red Corvette", which implies that you want the world to know that you are a regular guy and not just a sex freak, a regular guy pace Noble, New Jersey, who always fall back on singing love songs to lumps of metal when he wants to show that he is as capable of having fun as the next guy; though falling in love with a lump of metal is a rather recherche way of having fun, I would venture, and far from normal!
I still remember your first communique, "I Wanna Be Your Lover", with som affection. You were the carnal castrati incarnate, there was a gurgling, glorious exuberance about you, all those sweet soaring runs and that nifty backcombed backchat, you were out of the closet and in your element, being just what you always wanted to be..... a girl group! But now your songs sound like an interminable string of Fame B-sides, and considering how Fame A-sides sound, that's some insult.
There is an ancient Leninist dictum heeded in the early days of the Russian Revolution and kept alive by many Third World freedom fighters; the One Glass of Water theory, which young revolutionaries applied to S.E.X., your very own cottage industry, in deciding that sex is of no more importance than one glass of water to a thirsty man. Well, I'm sure these baby Spartans enjoy their sparkling sustenance when they get it more than you and your countrymen have enjoyed the rather joyless orgies in which you have been partaking for the last couple of decades and albums. Your problem, Prince, is commercial post-coital triste on a cosmic scale.
The antidote? Get thee to a nunnery, or at least to Donna Summer's songwriter. Few things are such bets chartwise as a Bible-bashing black, Born Again. Sex is no manifesto, no saviour and certainly no shock. As my colleague Confucius likes to say, "Nothing sadder than a flasher who no one notices."
What an artistic way to say that 1999 sucks and his old music was better. *shrugs so hard my shoulders touch my jaw* I wonder if this person always poetically wrote about the things they dislike, or if they snuck in some favorites. you can do anything | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
these history threads are my reason for checking out the org these days. HNR 1 and 2=the first P albums I didnt buy. | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
This review sucks. | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
Weird angle coming from New Musical Express, as if the writer had never heard any profane material before. | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
Does the reviewer honestly think "Little Red Corvette" is a song about a car?! | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
| |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
This video was shot during the last week of rehearsals for the 1999 Tour together with videos for Automatic and Let's Pretend We're Married. Of note the video features the first appearance of Jill Jones in a Prince video. PrinceVault
| |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
12.9.1982 @ the Auditorium Theater in Chicago
Vanity 6 the Time
1. Controversy 2. Let's Work 3. Do Me Baby 4. D.M.S.R. 5. Lisa's keyboard solo 6. Still Waiting 7. When We R Dancing Close and Slow 8. I Wanna Be Your Lover 9. With U 10. Lady Cab Driver 11. Automatic 12. International Lover 13. 1999 14. How Come U Don't Call Me Anymore?
| |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
| |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |