Prince Strips Down: Parade
Davitt Sigerson, Rolling Stone, 24 April 1986




Prince Strips Down

Who but Prince fills us today with the kind of anticipation we once reserved for new work by Bob Dylan, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones? Happily, following the commercial and creative letdown of Around the World in a Day (cleverly presented as his Personal Statement record), Parade: Music from “Under the Cherry Moon” bears the weight of intense hope and scrutiny as lightly as its maker wears the satin capes he favours.

Prince has made it his task to shock us: his work sounds so inevitable we can no longer identify what it was that first surprised us. He did this on ‘When Doves Cry.’ Was it simply the omission of bass guitar or the retention of a single line of melody for verse and chorus? The answer lies in the way it was assembled; the result is that most of us can remember where we were and what we were doing the first time we heard it.

‘When Doves Cry’ and Purple Rain, the blockbuster it introduced, weren’t even Prince’s best work. That had been achieved one record before — on 1999. A febrile double album of extended dance pieces, it featured his best song, ‘Little Red Corvette,’ and an example of his musical wit, ‘1999.’ A lover of ‘60s pop, he built ‘1999’ around the central riff of the Mamas and the Papas’ ‘Monday, Monday.’ To complete this tribute-by-triangulation, Prince has now written for the Bangles ‘Manic Monday’, which bears a melody almost identical to ‘1999’ but omits the founding riff that would link it to its original source.

This is the degree of energy and intelligence we have come to expect from Prince. This is the promise he has once again kept — on Parade. Like Purple Rain, the new album is a soundtrack (for the forthcoming Under the Cherry Moon) and is preceded by the stunning ‘Kiss.’ The single has been mistaken as a return to the music of his Dirty Mind period. In fact, it is made with a sparseness and — most surprising to the ear — an absence of reverb that bespeak years of learning. Rhythmically, ‘Kiss’ is funk; harmonically, it is rhythm & blues; lyrically, it proves Prince is crossing yet another frontier, into emotional maturity.

The petulant baby — first trumpeting a purported sexuality and then expecting us to care about a so-called spiritual rejuvenation — is no more. Not that Prince wasn’t intelligent enough to say interesting things all along, between the nonsense. Usually, though, sex was his code word for a kind of achievement in which the gratification of voyeur and audience defined success. This explains the curious the curious lack of love, or even motivation, in Prince’s sex songs. Dirty Mind’s ‘Sister,’ for example, isn’t a song about making love to one’s sister; it’s a song about making love in which the female seducer is cast as the protagonist’s sister, much as a pornographer might create a fantasy to titillate his audience. ‘Sister’ is not about what it claims to be about, and neither incites nor shocks.

What really shocks, of course, is the aural landscape of records like ‘When Doves Cry’ and ‘Kiss.’ We all may have dirty minds, but few of us are visionaries. In the arrangements on Parade, it is Prince’s vision to that is paraded: a simple Weillen waltz like ‘Under the Cherry Moon’ proves an excuse for all manner of orchestral invention; when Prince says on ‘New Position,’ “You’ve got to try my new funk,” believe him. In ‘New Position,’ on ‘Kiss’ and above all in the sensational ‘Girls & Boys,’ Prince conceives a clean, diamond-hard style that could spawn years of imitations.

Far from the funk of Dirty Mind, this style springs from an understanding f orchestration, rather than the innate ability to jam on rhythm instruments. On Parade, all sounds — snippets of guitar, horn, percussion, voice — are treated equally, erasing the line between ‘basic track’ and “sweetening”. Prince has achieved the effect of a full groove using only the elements essential to a listener’s understanding — and so has devised a funk completed only by the listener’s response.

Thanks to Under the Cherry Moon, we get the title song, ‘Sometimes It Snows in April’ and ‘Christopher Tracy’s Parade’; thanks to shooting in France, we get the French touches in ‘Girls & Boys’ and ‘Do U Lie?’ But the growth in Prince’s lyrics isn’t because maturity is written into the film script. On Parade, sex and love sound real, and perhaps for the first time, they sound related. He’s made the adult discovery — or is it an admission? — that the people you care about can be the people who turn you on the most. ‘Kiss’ even offers something of a manifesto: in lines like “Women not girls rule my world”, “U don’t have 2 watch Dynasty 2 have an attitude” and “U can’t be 2 flirty mama I know how 2 undress me”, Prince smiles at his old ways. On another track, he serves notice that he’s “got 2 try a new position”.

If Parade harks back to Dirty Mind, it is less in the surface similarities of the falsetto funk style than in its freedom from thematic pretensions. Prince has given us three successive concept albums — first the unintended masterpiece 1999; next the Cinerama extravaganza Purple Rain, where his exertions occasionally drowned out his intentions; and finally the con job Around the World in a Day, when he summoned craft and packaging to bridge the creative chasm he faced. Having gathered enough laurels on which to rest comfortably forevermore, Prince wants to have some fun with music, or as he puts it, to “go fishing in the river, the river of life.” What better time for a new baptism?



Davitt Sigerson

Neon Telephone
This is Prince's version he later gave to Three O'Clock (after The Jets turned it down) for their 1988 Vermillion album. Recorded during the Parade sessions, the song inspired the neon telephone in Under The Cherry Moon, used by Mary to speak with Christopher. The lyrics are about a woman who refuses to call Prince on account of her pride.

Neon Telephone

Maybe she'll call me (Neon telephone)
Maybe she won't (Maybe she won't)
And if she don't (Neon telephone)
I'm gonna lose my mind (This time I'm gonna lose my mind)

It's kinda dark in here (Neon telephone)
I need a light (It's 2 bright)
I could use a sexy situation that would do my body just right
2night I'm gonna lose my mind

Sometimes her pride is like a big tall building
It hides the street that leads 2 a sweet mystery
(Sometimes) Sometimes we blow the chance 2 be so happy (Happy)
If we could only make up our minds
We could have such a good time

I know she wants me (Neon telephone)
I know she cares (I don't care)
Tell me what's stoppin' me (I don't care 2 know)
From runnin' right over there and runnin' my fingers through your hair

I'm goin' crazy, yes I am (Neon telephone)
Why can't U understand? (He needs 2 change)
I can't stop (can't stop) thinkin' about U, baby
This time I'm gonna lose my mind (This time I'm gonna lose it)

Why can't U call me, baby? Pick up the phone
U know your little Prince can't be alone
I need some of your sweet, sweet... oooh!

(Neon telephone)
(I don't care)
(Neon telephone)

Hello
How come U didn't call?
What, U think U're 2 good or something?
Can I talk 2 U?
Are U alone?
Good God

LIFE CAN BE SO NICE

This morning there was joy in my heart for I know that I love you so
Scrambled eggs are so boring, for you're all, all that I want to know
Kisses never lie when delivered with milk from your lips
Morning glories never cry
My love for you, baby, drips

Oh, life can be so nice
It's a wonderful world, sweet paradise (paradise)
Kiss me once, kiss me twice
Life can be so nice, so nice

Life can be so nice

No one plays the clarinet the way you play my heart
I come a thousand different ways before I even start
You're so nice

shivering madly
(Is it better than a trip?) your embrace
(Morning glories never cry) better than a trip
(My love is just a drippin')
(Scrambled eggs are boring) morning glories crying
(Mama, you're all I want to know) embrace
(This morning there was joy in my heart) I do love you baby
('Cause you know I loved you so, yeah) drips (Drips)

Alright, you go!

so nice
(Life can be so nice)
(It's a wonderful world, paradise)
(Kiss me once, kiss me twice)
(Life can be so nice)
(So nice)
(So nice)

Initial tracking in the studio only took place on 21 April 1985 at Sunset Sound, Hollywood, CA, USA (the day after Old Friends 4 Sale, Others Here With Us and Tibet, the same day as Sometimes It Snows In April, the day before the release of Around The World In A Day and two days before recording Evolsidog). Clare Fischer arranged and recorded orchestration for the song at some point in mid-late 1985 at Monterey Sound Studios, Glendale, CA, USA, but Prince preferred the track without orchestration, and chose to use the track without orchestration for the final release.

Sheila E. - cowbells

-PrinceVault

This thread has become one of My Happy places here on the org.

Lots of UNLOVE going down around,

NOT HERE Though...Thanks so much Old Friend

Lovejunky said:

This thread has become one of My Happy places here on the org.

Lots of UNLOVE going down around,

NOT HERE Though...Thanks so much Old Friend

U R very Welcome

the Question of U - 12 Keys

So what is the answer to the question of you
What do I look for, what shall I do?
Which way do I turn when I'm feeling lost?
If I sell my soul, now what will it cost?
Must I become naked? No image at all?
Shall I remain upright? Or get down and crawl?

All of the questions in my life will be answered
When I decide which road to choose
What is the answer to the question of you?

You

While specific recording dates are not known, initial tracking took place in mid-late July 1985 at the Crosstown Circle Warehouse, Eden Prairie, MN, USA (during the same set of sessions that produced Girls & Boys, ♥ Or $, Neon Telephone, Do U Lie?, Venus De Milo and (U Got The) Good Drawers, but was not included on any known configurations of Parade, or any other projects during 1985-6.

An instrumental version was recorded on 28 December 1985 at Sunset Sound, Hollywood, CA, USA with Sheila E., Levi Seacer, Jr. and Eric Leeds during the so-called "Paisley Jam" session ...

Eric Leeds named the track 12 Keys, unaware (as were Sheila E. and Levi Seacer, Jr.) that it was an instrumental version of a track Prince had recorded previously. It is unknown if this version was intended for The Flesh album or any other project.

-PrinceVault

Once upon a time in a land called Fantasy

17 mountains stood so high

The sea surrounded them and 2gether they would be

The only thing that ever made U cry

U said the devil told U that another mountain would appear

Every time somebody broke your heart

He said the sea would one day overflow with all your tears

And love will always leave U lonely

CHORUS:

But I say it's only mountains and the sea

Love will conquer if U just believe (Oh yeah!)

It's only mountains and the sea

There's nothing greater (oh), U and me

Once upon a time in a haystack of despair

Happiness is sometime hard 2 find there

Africa divided, hijack in the air

It's enough 2 make U wanna lose your mind

CHORUS

Guitars and drums on the 1, huh

(Bobby on the drum-ah)

Yeah!

It's only mountains (oh yeah) and the sea

(And the girls say)

There's nothing greater (oh), U and me

(Starvation)

Ow!

Mountains , uh

MOUNTAINS

Initial tracking taking place on 30 November, 1985 (on the same day as An Honest Man), almost seven months after a first sequence of the Parade album was compiled. Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman composed the music, and brought it to Prince. He composed the lyrics, but claimed sole credit for the song upon its release. Clare Fischer arranged and recorded orchestration for the song at some point in mid-late 1985 at Monterey Sound Studios, Glendale, CA, USA, but Princepreferred the track without orchestration, and chose to use the track without orchestration for the final release. -PrinceVault

7"

(US/NZ: 7-28711, UK: W8711, JAP: P-2121, DEU/CAN: 928 711-7, AUS: MX211603-4)
A. Mountains (3:58)
B. Alexa De Paris (3:20)

Life...can be so nice

Great Thread from my favourite era..

check this jacket out

Robbajobba said:

30 years on I still cannot believe he got to "Parade" within eight years of signing his deal. The kind of creative growth and energy most artists don't manage in a lifetime compressed into less than a decade

It was just astonishing - everything about this period was so unbelievably rich and imaginative.

How was he ever going to top it?

Oh, I don't know.... How about:

Did U mean 2 post that ? ^^

Whos face is that..on the bottom of the left hand sleeve ?

OldFriends4Sale said:

check this jacket out

Lovejunky said:

Whos face is that..on the bottom of the left hand sleeve ?

OldFriends4Sale said:

check this jacket out

Booby Z