Rainbow Children gets just 1 star! WTF!!!??? It is his only album with such a low rating. Musicology gets 3-and-a-half. How can they dismiss the inventiveness, courage and freshness of TRC? I think most of their ratings are fair, but they really missed it on this one.

HardcoreJollies said:

no i think they were being generous

HardcoreJollies said:

Didn't they give it 2 or 2.5 stars when they reviewed it in the actual magazine?

Yes, that's especially infuriating. They did originally give it 2 or 2 1/2 stars. That was bad enough, but I could deal with it because it is an opinion. But 1 star is just a senseless slam and a failure to appreciate or comprehend ambitious music by a one-of-a-kind talent.

Peace,
Scott

.

It suffers in execution.

The music is top notch.
The concept is wierd--but that's o.k.

But when you have to rely on Darth Vader to narrate the damned thing for you--it's simply too much to overlook.

If Pink Floyd had pulled that shit with "The Wall", it would certainly have NEVER gotten the acclaim it had and still continues to.

COuld U imagine Darth Vader narrating "And then his mother proceeds to explain that they will indeed drop the bomb, and break his balls, while the bloke builds his wall..."


.
[Edited 12/14/04 17:23pm]

As an amusing side note, my wife's mother and sister were recently visiting from Florida and as I was showing them the sites around Los Angeles, I was playing TRC. Although they do like some Prince songs, they did not dig it at all! They were repelled by it. There is little question that appreciation of TRC requires a cultured musical pallette.

AsianBomb777 said:

Excellent analogy, man.

Didn't Rolling Stone also give Joni's The Hissing Of Summer Lawns 2 stars when it was released>?

After the staleness of Rave, Prince released a record that was the exact opposite and basically pushed it to the other extreme. Where Rave was excessively controlled and calculated, TRC was overly loose and improvised. It was as if Prince had had a conversation with himself : "So... they say I've become too predictable and formulaic. I'll show them unpredictable and unformulaic.Instead of trying to please the masses, I'll make the record I want to hear." The result is... let's call it a weirdly beautiful monster. Beautiful because this features some of Prince best's playing ever (not to mention the NPG, especially Blackwell). A monster because the lyrics are explicitely fundamentalist, and are connected by an overdone narration that distracts from the music (though it works briefly here and there if you can block out the words).