jtfolden said:

I agree with you.

I think people tend to criticise what they don't understand and feel threatened by.

It's a bit like racism. It's like a form of ignorance.

All anyone can really speak on here is their experience. Can any of us sit up here and convince someone else that Parade or any other Prince album is no good based on airplay, sales, or our own subjective, sometimes narrow-minded view? "My neighborhood was dissin it, kid". "Well, my neighborhood was bumpin' it, son!" All that is is a reflection of us and our tastes. No reflection upon the artist at all. He already did his thing, and was well on his way to the next thing. Even if Prince doesn't like it, so what. It's already out there and his opinion is useless against the principal of subjectivity.

Regardless if anyone here agrees, music is art. Art doesn't care whether you like it or not. It just is.

DiamondGirl said:

No, you said "not many people were feeling it". You have nothing to stand on in regards to what percentage of Parade buyers liked the music. To say not every one liked Parade is meaningless. You can insert any album name in there and have nothing to show for it. Not everyone liked Dirty Mind. See how easy and truthful that is.



See this is where you just sound completely paranoid and "crazyyyyy" to use your own words. Doubt all you want but it was the truth. Your limited scope won't change the past..but keep wishing.



"clowning in"? What does that mean? That people are lying? "crazyyyyy"

pepper7 said:

Music can communicate ideas, have a moral, or a message, yes. But music and art are mostly about pleasure.

We listen to music and watch movies and read books because they give us pleasure.

Now, if your pleasure is to read meanings and interpret symbols and what the artist is trying to communicate, then that's your pleasure. Other people simply want to dance and bug out and screw to the music.

Whether it's your mind or your body that is stimulated, it's whatever is fun for you.

Me, I like to think and break things down as much as anyone. I also like to move and groove, ya know? I mean, I could sit here and analyze "It" till I'm blue in the face, but eventually I'll just get horny.

padawan said:

So why does THINKING about things have to be unsexy?

Pleasure is a word like "nice". What does it mean?

Is it pleasurable to have sex? Is it pleasurable to eat ?

Of course it is, but it's also a basic primitive desire that we have no control of.

Would you not get "horny" without music?

We analyze everything we see and hear every second of the day. That's HOW we form an opinion on it.

If you could switch your brain OFF then you'ed be DEAD.

I still doubt he said this. This is a man who said he has over 500 songs in the vault, and that was back in the nineties

vainandy said:

I'm not just limiting my view to R&B stations and fans but that's not really the experience I saw in my area at all, though there's no doubt that the Revolution days turned off some traditional R&B listeners but for every core follower that left, another obviously joined the ranks during that period because sales didn't fall off until LoveSexy. The same sales that 1999 generated during it's original release are consistent with sales of Parade and SOTT. Only the PR hype affected numbers for an extremely short while (and I think it's safe to say that Prince had successfully gained and lost 7+ million buyers within the course of 12 months).



That's about par for the course in my area, as well, minus the one station dj infatuated with CT's Parade.



I didn't see this in my area, either, especially with SOTT. My friends who were Prince fans in school loved that period. UTCM was roundly criticized and pretty much killed anyone taking his movie efforts seriously but I saw a lot of enthusiasm for SOTT. Radio stations here played the singles like crazy (plus several album cuts like Adore and Housequake) - (minus IIWYG) and I had kids borrowing my SOTT tape to play in the schoolyard during breaks. Heck, I remember carrying a Billboard magazine into school one day that had the big fold out "Peace Sign" advertisement for SOTT on the back and a group of black kids shouting "SIGN" and calling me over to see it. it wasn't until LoveSexy that I started hearing a lot of negative comments and lack of support.

I love music and take it very seriously but I could care less where someone is lyrically because I'm into music because of the way it sounds (particular instruments, etc.). I wouldn't care if they sang the ABCs if they had funky music behind it. I've heard some of the funkiest music before that doesn't even have lyrics. When I ask some of these younger people "just what the hell attracts you to that rap/hip hop you are listening to", most of them will tell me "listen to the words". I'm like "the hell with the words, the stripped down music behind it sounds horrible".

I'm about sound and could care less about "beautiful" "that song changed my life" type music. Yeah, music like Beethoven or Bach is also considered "art" but that still doesn't change the fact that it sounds boring as hell to me.....art or no art. I want something that moves my ass, not something to just sit around and say "oh what a beautiful song".

vainandy said:

It's just funny because you're on the website of one of the greatest song writers in history.

Prince is almost a word obsessive!!
[Edited 4/11/06 15:03pm]

Main Entry: nar·row-mind·ed
Pronunciation: "nar-O-'mIn-d&d, "nar-&-
Function: adjective
: lacking in tolerance or breadth of vision : PETTY
- nar·row-mind·ed·ly adverb
- nar·row-mind·ed·ness noun

jtfolden said:

Tomato , toe-mott-toe

Still relevant and right.

pepper7 said:

Oh, thinking can be very sexy. No doubt about it. But so is imagination.

Prince music is very imaginative. Lots of visuals, lots of colors and imagery. Raspberry beret, starfish and coffee, blue light, tangerine...

It makes you see things, imagine things, taste and feel things. It's sensuous. It appeals to the the body, as much as the mind.

Prince music, quite simply, is a turn on. That's what's so great. It makes you want to dance, it makes you want to get close to someone, it makes you romantic, it puts you in the mood. It celebrates our human desires and urges without judging them or cutting them down.

vainandy said:

I don't quite get what you're saying - that R&B fans were turned off by Parade? Surely they must have been turned off far earlier by 1999 which was electrofunk, or Purple Rain which was rock, or ATWIAD which was psychodelicfunk. In fact, I would say Parade harkens back to his earlier R&B albums far more than any of those 3 albums. So I don't know why they wouldn't have a problem with those albums and suddenly have a problem with Parade?

As for 'pop' stations, I know the US has very limited definitions for genres of music, but to me 'pop' is inclusive of any genre of popular music, rock, funk, R&B or whatever. So they play any song which is 'in' or infectious.

Prince may have started to lose his popularity somewhat in the US with Parade, but in Europe it was around that time that people were really starting to get into Prince, which continued all the way through to the Symbol album and arguably Come. Perhaps it was just a far more cosmopolitan, eurocentric album, what with the film being set in France and all the French spoken parts on it. I mean, the US really hate the French, don't they?!

DiamondGirl said:

Ok, so you took a poll of every Parade buyer to come to this conclusion?


"crazyyyyy"

Dream Factory woulda been the bomb. Folks just weren't ready/appreciative(?) at that time. Only die-hards.

metalorange said:

Yeah, I still don't get the attempt to single out Parade for this... The Revolution era as a whole was less R&B/Funk and more Pop/Rock oriented but Parade is, by far, the most R&B oriented work of the period. Sure, there's a lot of more high brow stuff on there, as well, that may not appeal to the mindless-shake-your-ass favoring crowd but things like Girls & Boys, Kiss, Anotherloverhonlenyohead, etc were closer to his roots than anything on the previous two albums.




Yup, and Prince had a respectable number of Top 40 hits on US pop and R&B radio during 86 and 87.



I'd agree that Prince's hype among the mainstream diminished greatly with ATWIAD but Parade and SOTT had sales figures in the same ballpark, both in the US and world-wide, so there was no real visible slide there in the base numbers. He looked to be simply returning to his Pre-PR level in the US. It wasn't until '88 when he suddenly was doing disastrous numbers.

vainandy said:

well you should love 3121, it was made with people like you in mind.

jtfolden said:[quote]

metalorange said:

There may be some truth to this. Considering the fact that Revolution members Wendy and Lisa were less than thrilled with the addition of Sax player Eric Leeds. They felt that they were going from being the beatles to just another R&B band.

origmnd said:

Parade is good enough by 2days stanards compared 2 the utter crap being forced on2 the listening public. There R alway gonna B dubious trax on any album by any artist. It's hard 2 reproduce a "Purple Rain" or a "Dark Sideof the Moon" anytime soon after they're released.

Hey! But then I think For You is Princes' 2nd best Album after Purple Rain!

jtfolden said:

yeah, and a rnb dj was pushin Christoper Tracys Parade...righhhhht!

DiamondGirl said:

Wow, that little fact really threatens your whole idea of Parade, like some people having an opinion of their own, doesn't it?

"Crazyyyyy"

...and still waiting for that poll.

vainandy said:

I know that is right. I don't care about the lyrics if the music makes me move or if the slow jam is at the right beat, then I will dig it . Hell I been listening to some songs that I like forever yet I still don't know the lyrics to most of them. fuck the lyrics and analyzing the words, just give me the beat to dance.

everyone come and dig...christopher tracys pianooooo...come on get down nah!

It's easy to sit here in 2006 and look back and call particular songs on "Parade" funk but you have to keep in mind what the R&B music scene was like in the 1980s.

Prince's earlier funk, songs like...."Head", "Let's Work", "Lady Cab Driver", "Erotic City", "D.M.S.R.", "Controversy", "1999", etc.....were totally different sounding funk songs than stuff like "Girls And Boys", "New Position", etc. His early funk was very 1980s sounding and futuristic sounding. The funk on "Parade" was going back to the 1970s. People of the 1980s did not want a trip back to the 1970s, the 1970s were over. Nobody started looking back to the 1970s until the 1990s when the funk scene was totally over with. While the scene was still going on, people were still looking towards the future, not the past.

The funk on the album got airplay because, yes, it was Prince that made it and people were a little tolerable of it because of who he was.....but when people heard the classical music on the album, they were like...."oh HELL naw!".
.
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[Edited 4/12/06 0:19am]

There are some songs I've listened to for 30 years and still don't know the lyrics to them. All I know is the music and the groove sounds good. Hell, look at Booker T and The MG's "Green Onions".....there ain't one word in that song and it is funky as hell....or Manu Dibango's "Soul Makossa".

vainandy said:

I can't understand your logic. His early work like Head, Let's Work, etc was totally different from the Parade songs? Well, all of Prince's albums were totallly different from each other, singling out Parade as being 'particularly' different is ludicrous. For You and Prince were disco/R&B, Dirty Mind was New Wave, Controversy was, I don't know, electro-newwave,1999 was electrofunk, Purple Rain was rock, ATWIAD was psychodelicfunk, as I said before and which you brushed over. They can all be loosely held together under the moniker of 'funk' but just barely, and certainly not consistently R&B of this or any other decade. Your argument only holds water if all of Prince's albums were listened to by R&B lovers as R&B albums, and then suddenly Parade comes along and is 'retro' and that puts them off - which is simply not the case.

Prince wasn't really futuristic with his funk until '1999', but then you could argue that Purple Rain harkened back to the rock of the 70s, such as, inevitably, Hendrix. ATWIAD was purposely designed to evoke the era of the Beatles. Your argument that Parade was the 'first' Prince album to look backwards to the 70s just isn't so - most of Prince's sound before and since was based on the funk of the 70s, Sly Stone etc.

And your argument about funk lovers (I thought we were talking about R&B lovers? But your argument seems to have shifted...) being turned off by hearing classical music on the album, to me, is nonsensical - Prince used classical music previously (remember the end of Purple Rain? The Ladder?) and Parade was a continuation of that, simply a few classical flourishes beneath the funk to add a touch of class.

PurpleRein said:

Musician Interview, 1988

He really was mostly just referring to his declining sales and some of the harsher critical response in that interview. He picked out "Kiss" as just something that he thought was a "good song", because it was the only track off the album that delivered any real commercial response. I doubt he really hated Parade, though he seemed to have forgotten he ever did something like it altogether in the nineties.

metalorange said:

I don't know about how things work out in UK but here in the States, I listen to hundreds of R&B and funk stations via online and offline, whether they are corporate or locally owned, and I have to say that those stations played more songs from 1999 and Purple Rain than Parade. Also some of those stations are based in UK too so that pretty much doesn't mean that people overseas were feeling for Parade. On those stations you'd rarely heard any song play from Parade except for Kiss. Hell most of those stations won't play Prince other single releases like Why You Wanna Treated Me So Bad and IF I Was Your Girlfriend yet they would played Prince's never released R&B and funk friendly singles like Sexy Dancer, Head, Housequake, International Lover, and Lady Cab Driver. And most of these stations regularly play songs that never hit the Top 40 or Top 20. Outside the Prince community, a typical R&B funk or a pop fan wouldn't give a damn about Parade.

vainandy said:

Don't be fooled by them. "Art" as we call it nowdays didn't exist during those times, Bach and Beethoven were mere entertainers.