I think it's been at least a month since I started
a new thread in dedication of this very cool song
so here it is



How can you not love this song? It features some
of his most beautiful piano playing and his vocals
on this track are supreme.

By far supreme. In fact, I think "Avalanche" is the
best vocal moment from Prince on record since, I
think, uhm about a decade or so.

Absolutely sublime delivery.

Furthermore, the song's structure is sublime with
the chorus "rolling" -like an avalanche- over the
last bits of the verses.

By far the best song on the One Nite Alone piano
album.

Ok, some might be offended by the lyrics, but it's
no use denying that this is an amazing song.

I totally agree. The first time I heard Avalanche was live at the ONA show - and about a month later when I got the ONA piano album, I popped it in and cued up Avalanche...

And I swear, those vocals are like fucking snow coming down the mountain. Just GORGEOUS.

My favorite part is: "Who's that lurking in the shadows? (Who is it?) Mr. John Hammond, with his pen in hand, pen in hand, oh he's sayin' sign yer name over to me yeah, and be known throughout the land - oh, but you ain't got no money, and you ain't got no cash. So you sign yer name, and he claims innocence, just like a snowflake in an avalanche."

Oh man, that's hilarious. I actually just got chills THINKING about that part of the song and hearing it in my head. That's hott.

The melody, the vocal delivery, and the lyrics are among his finest, certainly in the last 15 years (and if you ask me, it stands up with anything from his long career). I know the lyrics are controversial, and I can understand that - although I can't see how anyone could possibly have a problem with Prince calling Abraham Lincoln a racist, and not have a problem with the questionably anti-Semitic lyrics in "Muse" and "Family Name." I mean, first of all, obviously Abraham Lincoln was a racist, at least by today's standards. I think that was kind of the point.

But even without the (in my opinion, hard-hitting) lyrics, the song itself is so beautiful that it would bring tears to my eyes if I wasn't such a cynical bastard.

theblueangel said:

Mine too. The whole second verse is just too darn cool for words
but those lines you cite and the vocals on those are giving me
the bumps too just thinking about it again



Indeed, it is one of my all time favorite Prince songs and like
JackFlash said, it's a shame it got burried in the ONA piano cd
like that.

It should have been given a better, more prominent place, like
oh I don't know perhaps it could have gone on Musicology stead
of "On The Couch".

But then again, I don't know if I'd want it anywhere else but on
the ONA piano album. The album is a nice companyon for the
song

I'm missing the point here. To me, this song makes no sense.

"Like the snow comin' down the mountain
That landed on Wounded Knee
Nobody wants 2 take the weight
The responsibility"

What does that even mean? Nobody wanted to take responsibility for snow at Wounded Knee, and that somehow relates to the 13th Amendment? Bah. Weak.

billymeade said:

maybe this helps to explain:




it's a picture of the bodies of countless indian men woman and children lying in the
snow after they've been shot by the american army.

read up a bit on the history of the battle at Wounded Knee and you'll understand
what Prince is trying to say.

here's an excerpt from one of the reports:


Many women and children standing by their tipis under a white flag of truce were cut down by deadly shrapnel from the Hotchkiss guns. The rest fled under withering fire from all sides. Pursuing soldiers shot most of them down in flight, some with babes on their backs. One survivor recalled that she was wounded but was so scared she did not feet it. She lost her husband, her little girl, and a baby boy. One shot passed through the baby's body before it broke her elbow, causing her to drop his body. Two more shots ripped through the muscles of her back before she fell.

The warrior Iron Hail, shot four times himself but still able to move, saw the soldiers shooting women and children. One young woman, crying out for her mother, had been wounded close to her throat, and the bullet had taken some of her braid into the wound. A gaping hole six inches across opened the belly of a man near him, shot through by an unexploded shell from the guns. Others told of women, heavy with child, shot down by the soldiers. Bodies of women and children were found scattered for three miles from the camp.

On New Year's Day, a pit was dug on the hill that the Hotchkiss guns had been on, and the frozen bodies of 146 men, women, and children were thrown into the pit like cordwood until it was full. The whites stripped many of the bodies, keeping as souvenirs the Ghost Shirts and other clothing and equipment the people had owned in life, or selling them later in the thriving trade over Ghost Dance relics that ensued. One member of the burial party remarked that it was "a thing to melt the heart of a man, if it was of stone, to see those little children, with their bodies shot to pieces, thrown naked into the pit." Besides the 146 buried that day, others who had been wounded died soon afterward, and relatives removed many of the bodies before the government burial party arrived. Estimates of the number of Lakotas slain vary, but many authorities believe that the figure is around three hundred men, women, and children. Not many escaped.

billymeade said:

No. It's actually one of Prince's stronger and more profound political songs. Rather than whine and/or pose faux-Zen like questions, he connects slavery, US gov't sanctioned genocide, economic exploitation and public apathy with an economy of words in a beautiful song.

I wish he would release a whole album of similar themed and well-executed songs (if he has both the cojones and the chops to do it).

No no no no - I know about wounded knee - it happened on my birthday (well, not the same year, ha)

And I know what he's TRYING to say - that nobody wants to take responsibility for slavery, just like wounded knee (right?). I just don't see how those lines SAY it. Is he saying the snow doesn't want to take responsibility? YES - he is. NO - that doesn't makes sense. Or does it?

I know I'm probably digging too hard into this. It's like trying to make sense out of "Animal Kingdom".
[Edited 10/11/04 14:20pm]

billymeade said:

I believe he's says like what happens in an avalanche, snow piles up until it triggers the effect.

Such as these situation over history, where no one really addresses the past mistakes, or glosses over what happened (i.e. not telling history the way it really happened, all the time) you get an avalanche effect where people either get angry or the truth gets burried.

BEAUTIFUL SONG, vocal is amazing...

CalhounSq said:

co-sign.

snow is snowing because that's what it does. it's not snowing in order to create an avalanche.

so...

all these things happening as a result of people's actions - - what was the intent?

Possibly one of his worst songs, lyrically and otherwise.

IstenSzek said:

To me lyrics are DEFINATELY a huge part of the deliverance of a song. And this one just does not cut it.

I understand WHY he wrote the lyrics and up to a CERTAIN point (if you put a historical situation and try to squeeze it into today's standards) I understand it.
It must be a hard thing to watch back and see people systematically oppressed from the get go. I think that is where the song comes from, but still, to hear it so bluntly spoken might be an eye opener to SOME, bit to others it just sounds a bit PARTIAL. Like many religious persons or organisations do...

As a person stemming from a country that made slavery a big trade, I have been very aware of these roots. So I might be somewhat more aware of some facts than someone from the US where they still systematically oppress or ignore some parts of their history.

To me, songs as beautifully instrumentated and so harshly felt by Prince but handling issues that irk me or anger me are hard to listen to. The same with alot of the The Rainbow Children album tracks. I refuse to bop my head to a man telling me there is a new theocratic order (one that still oppresses women, no matter how many times he calls them 'muse') or that I should 'leave that blood alone', meaning the Jehova's Witness's view on blood transfusions (and needful vaccinations).

I mean, I might be stubbornly anti-religious (but pro-spiritual) for NOT raising my hand whenever Prince used to call out "If U Believe raise your hand" during songs like Purple Rain back in the day. Even though many around me wished to see this invitation as generic, I could not set it apart from Prince's views on religion. I do not believe, so I do not raise my hand to the man above. There ain't no man above, imo.

Above us is just the vast emptiness that humanity could not/can not grasp and which has tried to fill in with superstition. If I wanna wave my hands at the stars I'll go outside and do so, but up til now all I do is stare.

GooeyTheHamster said:

Gooey,

I get what you're saying. And that's all cool. To a certain extent I share the same view.
And eventho I had a (huge) problem with The Rainbow Children at first for it's lyrical
content I have loved Avalanche from the very beginning.

I can't help it. It's like I know that he's a bit too flat out in the first verse, but then I
hear those vocals and he gets to the second verse and I'm just floating away.

And ehm, as far as the reference to "dead blood" in "Slaughterhouse" is concerned, I don't
think that's religiously meant at all.

It's more of the Prince anti-establishment whole-world-conspiracy babble. In fact, it is true
that dead blood can cause breakdown of interferons or at least cause a drop in the making
of new interferon, which you need to keep your immune system strong.

So that's just a biological fact. I think it was something more to do with him being at that
point a vegetarian than anything else.

How about the "snow" being the individuals whose actions led to the displacement and slaughter of Native Americans. Most of those people, acting as individuals, were not directly responsible for the genocide as they were largely looking to improve their lot in life. (An exception, of course, is the missionary movement who set out to save souls by destroying lives - happy "columbus day", BTW.) Nonetheless, people are responsible for not only their individual acts, but also acts in their name, taken on their behalf by the societal groups to which they belong.

As an example, aren't the voters who support the Iraq war as responsible for the death of innocent people there as the soldiers and politicians?

self-preservation is a sad thing, it can only lead to a nasty avalanche.

give it away, give it away, give it away now.

I suppose another more obvious point about the imagery of snow and avalanches is that a characteristic of snow is its whiteness. And in an avalanche everything else is unable to avoid becoming engulfed or overpowered by this whiteness. That was my take on it anyway.....

I think of it more as a sketch of a song, that would be interesting if it was developed further. But, for me the verses are a bit simplistic, and the leap from Abraham Lincoln to John Hammond is a bit arbitrary. Or, if the theme is, say, race and exploitation then why stop after two verses? Personally, I think that one of the challenges for artists is to find the little story that tells the big story, and then really do justice to telling it, rather than to jump around from point to point, not really engaging with anything.

And, I don't know, I just can't help getting annoyed that Prince always seems to want to shock us, lyrically - even when he's covering more serious subject matter like this. Like the way that the whole first verse builds and builds up to him dropping his "Abraham Lincoln was a racist" line. I find it cheapens the point a little bit.....