This appeared in Thursday's St.Paul Pioneer Press

(Another) open letter to Prince
BY JIM WALSH
St. Paul Pioneer Press

Dear Prince,

I owe you a letter. Been a while. Two years, almost exactly, since I wrote you on the eve of the first "Prince: A Celebration," and challenged you to make another great record. I asked, "What are we celebrating?"

I asked. Remember? I do.

I remember plenty of things these days, these crazy scary precious days, as you and your "fam" gear up for your latest summer celebration, "Xenophobia."

I remember the first time I saw you in concert — at Sam's, before it was First Avenue, the night before you went to Los Angeles and got booed off the stage opening for the Rolling Stones. It was 1981, nobody cared much about the Twin Cities, the concept of regional music scenes had faded, and then along you came with your garter belts and your Telecaster and your dirty mind and all your nude ambition.

I remember "Pink Cashmere." "Alone One Night." "When Doves Cry." "Sex in the Summer." "Take Me With U." "Manic Monday." "Don't Play Me." "Girls and Boys." I remember "Chloreen Bacon Skin," which everyone who thinks I write about you too much should hear, because if they haven't, then they haven't heard you, and they are lucky if they are an iota this free or funky.

I remember the summer of "Purple Rain." I remember what First Avenue's Chrissie Dunlap told me for an article I did for SPIN on the Twin Cities scene: "It just exploded. It was so alive. It was the center of everything. These bands started getting national attention, and all of a sudden we felt sort of important and like we mattered. It was a novel thing for Minneapolis, because the coasts had always been the cool places. I just felt terribly proud of my bands and my club and my city. It was almost a little magical."

I remember standing in front of your piano at Paisley Park when you played "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World" for the first time.

I remember standing in front of the stage in the old upper annex of Glam Slam while you lay on your back, lost in a 20-minute blues jam. I remember many mornings, walking out of Paisley Park with the birds chirping and the sun coming up over Chanhassen. I remember driving home and searching for adjectives to describe what I'd just witnessed.

Things I don't remember: The gossip columnists, most of the interviews I've read and/or conducted with you, almost all your arena shows.

I remember where I was and the Uptown Girl I was with and how our jaws dropped when we saw Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert thumbs-up your first movie. I remember standing in front of the stage at a gig by you and the "Sign o' the Times" band at First Avenue. I remember seeing you and the Revolution at First Avenue the week "Purple Rain" hit theaters and record stores, and, damn right, I am bragging.

Everybody who has stories like those brags, because Chrissie is right: Brother, you made us proud.

You blew our minds. You told the world about this beautiful place you still call Uptown. You raised our spirits when they were down, because the '80s were as much of a drag as the '00s are getting to be. Politicians were talkin' loud and saying nothing, and money was everything, and you couldn't believe in anything, and there you were, singing about what everyone was talking about. Love, race, community, spirituality, sex.

I remember last Friday, when I took the bus to Walker Art Center's "Rock the Garden" festival. It was an idyllic night, the sun was hanging low over the Cherry Spoon, which sprayed a mist over the Sculpture Garden's lush green everything and its multiculti citizens. The music was as delicious as the people watching.

I walked home afterward, and thought about how much you would have loved it. It reminded me of the utopia you've sung about so often. Black, white, Puerto Rican, African- and Irish-American, everybody all a-freakin'.

I remember early mornings in the early '80s, working at D.B. Kaplan's, a deli in Butler Square in downtown Minneapolis. Most of the kids who worked there were musicians, poets, actors, writers, students. We sliced meat and cheese and waited tables and survived manic lunch rushes and talked about our parents, politics, futures.

Everybody was basically sleeping with everybody else and listening to you. We remember "Controversy." "1999." "When You Were Mine." "Purple Rain."

I remember in those days how people from all over the world would flock to First Avenue and have their pictures taken in front of it, just as they will this week. Friday night, the lit-up red letters on the Orpheum Theatre marquee will scream "Prince," which is another way of screaming "possibility," which is why, at the moment, I've got a better question than the one I asked two years ago: How could I forget?

nice.

Pardon my ignorance, who is Jim Walsh?

I like his letter, regardless.

chookalana said:

Apparently not well enough.

Supernova said:

...that's great, well said.