The Parade album turns 20 today! Break it out! Listen to it! Analyze and reminisce here:

First!

ooh, next year i'll be able to take it out for its first drink!

I'll be breaking this out this weekend. I needed for it to be slightly warm out first!!

the best?

dunno about that but its the album i love the most-i just adore this album and it embodies everything to me that i love about ps music.

im going to go a get a glass of strawberry lemonade to toast the birthday!

REALLY?! I just brought a vinyl copy of Parade last week to celebrate 20 years since my mom brought the album for me.

Happy Birthday to my favorite album!

Cheers...Great fucking album...still as fresh as it was yesterday...

my all time FAV prince album !!!

one of my mom's co-workers saw me walking home from the wrecka stow with parade under my arm the day it came out, and she said "it's like he was a man on a mission!"

it blew my mind on the first listen, and it's still one of my favorites.

i withdrew £5 from my barclays supersaver account and went straight to WHsmiths and bought me a new shiny cassette!

im sure it came out in april as i remeber it snowed in april and i said to my mum thats ironic!

mind u its often snows in april in the NE

I was 16 when Parade came out. I remember being in Hilton Head Island on a family vacation and they were leaking Girls & Boys and Anotherloverholeinyohead on the radio. The songs that were big at that time were Janet Jackson's new breakaway hit "What Have You Done For Me Lately?", Madonna's "Live To Tell" and Miami Sound Machines "Bad Boy". Too funny. Ahhhh those were the days. Parade was to be released the very day our station wagon was to roll into town(Indianapolis) coming back from our vacation. I rode my bike to the mall and spent $9.99 that I stole from my fathers coin bottle. In retrospect Parade is one of my all time favorite Prince albums. When it first came out though it was a little too experimental for my tastes and it took some getting used to, but it definately opened me up to different sounds and I was hooked. The man could do no wrong im my book back then. It really scares me that it was 20 years ago...Yikes! Oh and on that vacation I made a mix tape for the trip with The Family, Sheila E's "Romance 1600" and Vanity's "Under The Influence".
[Edited 3/31/06 8:46am]

A gorgeous beautiful album and 20 years on still sounds brilliant.
Definitely one of the best he ever did. PURE CLASS.

it's actually my favorite prince album. not his best (SOTT,PR) but my favorite, still.

20 years...WOW! I remember going to tower records and buying this on cassette. I locked myself in my room for hours just listening to it over and over. 20 years...WOW!

SexualSuicide said:

Wow, I totally misread that. I thought you said you locked yourseld in your room and listened to it over and over for 20 years! Now that sounds like sexual suicide!
[Edited 3/31/06 9:02am]

This album sums up what Prince is all about.

A TRULY DEFINING MOMENT in the Musical Career of Prince Rogers Nelson.

this is my favorite album....like someone else said...not his best by still my fave!
happy 20th! parade!

I'm not getting younger... 20 years... time runs.

Shorty said:

cborgman said:

I thought it was you!

Didnt it smell like lavender?!

Awesome!!!

I was 16 when this album was released. I fell in love with it the first time i heard it and 20( ) years on it is still my favourite P album.

One of my top 3 favorite Prince albums. I love this album to death, even though it has my least favorite Prince song ever, New Position. Other than that it's pretty much a perfect album.

Plus it came out the same year I was born

My word..20 years!

I was 10 going on 11 and I begged my mom to take me to Tower Records to buy the cassette. I had enough allowance so I bought the tape and the vinyl. I was so excited. 'Kiss' was already imbeaded in my head and I made my family sick cuz I played it so much.

Speaking of Tower Records...when I was young and on Saturdays my mom would do her shopping...if I was good she'd drop me off and I'd hang out at Tower for the day and I'd always organize the Prince sections. The vinyl, then cassettes, then the singles (at that time all the singles had their own backing cards so I'd make sure every single had a card)...the staff always chuckled when I was there...they called me 'Prince boy'...they loved me...they even hooked me up with posters and cardboard stand up from 'Diamonds & Pearls'.

ahhh....now for a living I go to Tower stores almost every day as a label rep (I work for EMI)

peace

booyah said:

This album holds my all time fave Prince song - anotherloverholenyohead - Fecking classic!!! this album - the way he looks - dresses - dances - That is Prince..... I loved him when he looked like this - I think even men found him sexy!!

My favourite Prince album and the FIRST album I'd ever bought - not just Prince, but anybody...

I was 13 when I bought this - I hadn't yet turned 14. I bought it from HMV on cassette. In later years, when I'd buy records, I'd carefully unwrap the cellophone and read the liner notes on the bus home but I remember that I was more interested in reading comic books on that day. I'm pretty sure that I was reading an issue of Crisis On Infinite Earths, on the bus back home.

I'd bought a few Prince singles in the past - but only ever a few. The Double A-Side reissue of '1999'/'Little Red Corvette' being one of them. He'd been on my radar but I hadn't really paid much attention until I saw and heard 'Kiss'.

I remember the stereo I'd placed the cassette into. It was given to me by my Great Uncle Stanley. It seemed to have a weird electro-magnetic field around it, even when switched off. It smelled of electricity and the dusty speakers always seemed to exude an inaudible hum.

Pressing play and trying to guage the volume by listening to the tape-hiss, I lay down on my bed, ready to listen. Then it started... It was the sound of a madman throwing an orchestra off the top of the Eiffel Tower. I jumped up with a start; stopped the tape; rewound and ejected it. I figured the tape must have been loose, so I tightened it by spinning a pencil in one of the spools.

The tape went back into the stereo and this time I sat up and listened... The exact same cacophony, followed by a scream and then... cinemascope. I'd never heard anything like it before in my life. Sure, I was aware of orchestral psychedelia, because my Uncle Kevan had copied me his Beatles vinyl onto numerous cassettes. But this was different. It wasn't psychedelic rock - it was psychedlic jazz-funk-bubblegum-pop. The feeling was like drinking a cold glass of cola on a boiling-hot day. I cranked up the volume and lay back again...

'Christopher Tracy's Parade' gave way to 'New Position' with it's clanging steel drums and elastic bass. It was during this song that I noticed the female voices cooing softly but just as loudly. The song seemed to come from no fixed point of gender: "Do U, Do U like a good man should" trilled the ladies' voices. A new position indeed.

'I Wonder U' floated by like a half-remembered lullaby; 'Under The Cherry Moon' rattled along, evoking memories in me of times and places I'd never even experienced. It sounded like one of Marlene Dietrich's chansons but sung by a man.

Then came 'Girls & Boys'. It was dense and multilayered yet spartan. Instrumentation drifted in and out, constantly morphing. What I thought was a french horn became a gurgling analogue synth. Prince noted that although the "girl" in his story had "the cutest ass", so did the "boy" - and he managed to deliver this line without any loss to his masculinity. The song sounded like sex - not dirty or smutty - but sexy.

'Life Can Be So Nice' screeched onto the speakers - a joyous hymn to nothing else than falling in love. Clattering and rolling like a broke-down car, cruising down a hill on an empty tank. I couldn't believe that this music had actually been thought-out in advance - it all sounded so spotaneous and alive.

'Venus De Milo' fluttered like the morning sunlight on my face, when waking on a sunny day. After the cassette clicked to a stop, the colour in my room faded, back to black and white.

Turning the tape over, 'Mountains' pounded away like a huge machine designed for no other purpose but to funk you up. I didn't really take to the song until I heard the full-length version on the 12" single. Still, it rolled along pleasantly enough at the time. I knew that 'Kiss; would be on soon and I couldn't contain my excitement.

When 'Do U Lie' came on, I didn't know what to think. I'll forever associate this song with Inspector Clouseau's theme from the Pink Panther cartoon show. It's the accordion. My first experience of Prince in cheezey-mode.

Then it came - 'Kiss'. I turned the volume up louder. The bass from the speakers seemed to be moving the hairs on my arms to stand up. I will never grow tired of this song. Ever. Prince hollering like he was desperate for sex with anybody, regardless of how beautiful or not they may be - just so long as they put out. From first encounter to sexual frustration in a split-second. Not so much as "this is what I think we should do" as "this is how I'd like to do you". The "Dynasty" name-check thrilled me - it was my favourite show at the time!!! It felt like coming up for air after drowning in the orchestral sea which preceded it.

'Anotherloverholenyohead' sounded like it should have been the final song on the album. A funky plea for acceptance after Kiss's cock-sure posturing. It was funky, poppy and tied-up all the other elements of the album into something inbetween The Four Tops and and Five Star. A perfect pop song.

The longest song on the album was also it's last. 'Sometimes It Snows In April' sounded funereal and folksy. Again, I didn't take to the song instantly but I listened all the same whilst dwelling on the 40-something minutes of genius I'd just absorbed. The song never moved me until I'd had my first crush, the next summer.

After that first listen, I taped a back-up copy for my walkman, on my brother's tape-to-tape deck and my life changed.

Some people think that losing your virginity is the most memorable thing you do in your life. Listening to this album was better than losing my virginity. The day I bought and listened to it, is the day my childhood ended and I properly became a teenager.

cborgman said:

Co sign