dewalliz said:

I don't understand, are you talking about radio stations now or back then? Well, you couldn't have been listening to R&B and funk stations online back in 1986 surely, since that ability didn't come into being until much later, late 90s. If you listen to them now, surely they aren't going to be playing Prince album tracks from 20 years ago?! Also, I don't know how you were picking up UK radio station in the US, you must have had a massive aerial and there was only a few countrywide stations like Radio 1, Radio 2.

In the UK. now, you get a few stations that play mostly one genre, such as dance or classical, but mostly the mainstream radio stations play an assortment of every genre with occasional specific shows that may focus on one genre for a few hours. Personally, I like it that way, all jumbled up, although they mostly focus on current music, so again you're unlikely to be hearing a Prince hit from 20 years ago, let alone an album track.

In the UK, the main focus for radio has always been on the hits, not album tracks. In 1986 in the UK you heard the hits Kiss and Girls & Boys played often when they were released, just like previously you heard 1999, Purple Rain, When Doves Cry and Raspberry Beret and after you heard Sign O The Times and Alphabet Street. Prince didn't really make any kind of splash here until 1999 & Little Red Corvette, his first chart hits here, but like most places didn't become really big until Purple Rain & When Doves Cry. You simply can't have heard previous albums hits or album cuts being played on UK based stations before that because Prince was hardly known over here. I simply can't agree with your assessment of what was being played in the UK, it really doesn't add up.

metalorange said:

Dude I am talking about more recently as far as the ten years that I been listening to online radio stream (from 1996-present). Of course I know that there wasn't online radio stations back in 1986 you silly. Now of those ten years that I listening to online radio stations, R&B and funk oriented mostly, Parade doesn't get a lot of play plain and simple. Even when they do those Prince medley or megamixes, they barely included R&B/Funk friendly songs like Girls and Boys and Anotherlovenyouhead. The old school Prince songs that they played on those stations that I listened to are Soft and Wet, couple songs from Prince, Dirty Mind, Controversy, 1999, Purple Rain, and Pop Life from ATWIAD. They also played some of Prince's r&b/funk B sides like 17 days and Erotic City. And yes they also played songs by the Time and Vanity 6 a lot because they were both loved by typical R&B and funk fans of that time.

The stations that I listen to are old school that plays songs from the 70s and 80s and therefore they do play Prince's songs older than Parade, like hello, Dirty Mind, Controversy, and Prince. I am not talking about those newer R&B payola stations. I don't listen to those except when I wanted to listen to something that is current or from the 90s. The new stations I hear from time and time barely plays any Prince songs unless it is R&B oriented songs like Call My Name and Diamonds and Pearl. Even my local radio station, who was once a station that played all black music (pre-payola years), when they played old school Prince songs guess how many songs they played from Parade? One and that it is only Kiss. Hell they barely play songs from ATWIAD except Raspberry Beret and Pop Life.

Oh yes as long as you have the internet and ability to search, you can able to listen to stations from anywhere in the world as long as they are online. I love listened to stations that are based in UK or France because they played some rarest funk and R&B songs that I never heard of or that American old school R&B and funk stations doesn't play. Sometimes when the european djs announced the playlists, I have trouble understand because of their accents. Streamcast and 365 is a good start to finding many stations and there are countless more. The stations that I listened to based in your country are indie stations and they do have decent amount of listeners, or they wouldnt be on the air after many years I been listening to them.

I can't speak for the airplay back in the 80s because I was too young and I wasn't a Prince fan, but all I know is that when they do play Prince on old school stations that I listen to now they don't play anything from Parade except Kiss and no these stations don't play just hits. They play Prince songs that never made it to the charts like Sexy Dancer, Feel For You, Uptown, Let's Work, etc which get much love than many songs from Parade. Even the handful pop stations that I listen to only play Kiss as well. Like I said a TYPICAL r&b and pop fan wouldn't care about Parade, or the DJs would play the songs from that album, beside Kiss, on those type of stations.
[Edited 4/12/06 11:03am]

dewalliz said:

Fair enough, I thought you were talking about the far past because you dropped into past tense.

I still maintain that, whether R&B DJs like the album or not, Parade contains at least 4 really strong tracks, Kiss, Girls & Boys, Anotherlover, Mountains that are very radio friendly, plus some outstanding album cuts like Sometimes It Snows, which make it amongst Prince's strongest albums of any genre and I find it hard to believe any fan of pop would have a particular problem with those songs if they had previously embraced Prince's funk/rock/pop/rnb/soul offerings.

metalorange said:

I agree with everything you said. Parade is being singled out here in a way that was not true upon release. Parade wasn't a special case. It wasn't the first left turn in a world of forward looking releases. hardly.

Play Prince, Controversy, Purple Rain and Parade back to back and it's easy to see how many times Prince jumped from one direction to the next on every whim that took his fancy.



Indeed. If this conversation were concerning ATWIAD I could kind of understand it. It was a bit of a shock if you were a newbie Prince fan expecting PR Part 2, etc... ATWIAD got a lot of flack for being too 'white' and too "Beatles" at the time of release. Prince even had to go on Mtv in 85 and comment that ATWIAD "is a funky album, live it's even funkier."

Parade, on the other hand, seemed to elicit a sigh of relief from a lot of reviewers for it's turn away from Beatles-inspired Psychedelia and towards Prince's R&B roots. In fact, I can remember a sneak peak preview in Billboard magazine mentioning that very thing.

ThreadBare said:

i agree

origmnd said:

What situation with 3121?
Did I miss something?

I honestly don't see what's so hard to understand about it. You broke the earlier albums down yourself with words like "new wave", "electro", and "rock". The type of cold instruments Prince used on these and replacing traditional instruments like horns with synths, along with combining funk with rock, gave Prince a sound of his own that set him apart from all the other funk acts on R&B radio. This sound also continued in his protegees and became known as "The Minneapolis Sound". It was as ice cold as the city it was made in.

No I wasn't brushing off your comment about "Around The World In A Day" being different. I agree with you on that and was not singling out "Parade" as being the first with such a drastic change. I was talking about "Parade" because this thread is about that particular album. No "Parade" wasn't the first fuck up, "Around The World In A Day" was. Since "Parade" drifted even further from The Minneapolis Sound, it just confirmed to people that "Around The World In A Day" wasn't just temporary insanity. It let people know that Prince was totally gone and the people dropped him. When an artist is known for a particular sound..."if it ain't broke, don't fix it". People might have been cool with albums like these a few years later but don't change a style until it goes out of style. That's like the police raiding a really good party and sending everyone home.

As far as not understanding what the problem is with classical music, you need to be an American to understand that. Here in the US, especially with the younger crowd (which is what Prince's audience was during that time), classical music is thought of for the stuffy people, the geeks, the nerds and the "Waldos".....in other words, labels that no young person wanted put on them and still don't. Yeah, I remember the ending of "Purple Rain" but no one really thought about it. Most people just thought of it as the ending of the album rather than being part of a full fledged song. The DJs usually faded the song out as soon as "the rain" sounds started towards the end of the song.

Also, I'm not shifting anything over from R&B to funk. When I mention R&B, I'm talking about funk. Funk dominated R&B at the time so, in other words, funk was R&B. The weaker shit that people consider R&B today, didn't come along until later when Shitney Houston fucked everything up influencing people to make much weaker music.
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[Edited 4/13/06 4:26am]

So true. You may be young but you are so right. You can learn a lot about the era by going to parties with people my age (late 30s). The DJs at these parties are not going to play what some station that has probably researched sales figures (which would probably be worldwide) or some critic that likes a wide spectrum of music has told them. These DJs are playing what they remember the people liked during this era. Also, if you can find an old school R&B station that is not owned by a big corporation with businessmen telling them what to play, these stations reflect a lot of the jams of the era.

I can also tell you've been hanging out with an older crowd or relatives from time to time because some of your comments over in the "Music: Non-Prince" section are dead on it sometimes.

Novabreaker said:

That's wrong!

EmancipationLover said:

Nope, sorry. During Bach's days music wasn't even counted as one of the proper artforms - it was mostly categocrized as a mathematical phenomenon (), and Bach composed for the needs of the Church anyway. Beethoven lived during times when the concept of art had already started to shape towards self-expression rather than a communal form, but its self-referentiality and autonomy was nowhere near the levels of even the standards where Britney Spears operates these days.

Accept it!

Novabreaker said:

Well, I haven't read your initial statement closely enough (sorry), I somehow missed the "Art as we call it nowadays" part. You're actually right on this as the concept of music as a form of art to be seen as self-expression really is a child of the romantic movement and hence the mid-19th century. Funnily enough, Beethoven is the first real prototype for the independent artist ideal of romanticism as he refused to be just a servant for some Earl or Duke. Before that, musicians indeed were servants of either the church or some King or whatever.

You're still wrong though on the "mere entertainers" part. Bach as a church muscian (at least for the major part of his career, and, btw, there exists a quote of Bach that says something like "music isn't mathematics"!) wasn't allowed to write something entertaining - he was supposed to write something to accompany the service. It was his own stance though that the more artful and complex his music was, the better it can serve the glory of God - just look at the "St. Matthew Passion"! (He's based on the tradition of renaissance music with that attitude btw.)

"Entertainment" as we see it nowadays is a concept of our modern times mass culture. People (at least those from the upper class who Bach (in his non-Church times) and Beethoven wrote some of their music for) actually used to be entertained by art. The contradiction of "art" and "entertainment" is to a very large extent the product of the 20th century. In other words, Beethoven never was a Britney Spears-like figure.

Have we jacked this thread now?

vainandy said:


I think that's the communication problem we are having. You seem to put Prince entirely into a category labelled 'R&B funk' whereas I think Prince drifts from one category to the next, sometimes within an album. Pretty much all Prince's albums are an eclectic mix of different styles and genres so it is often difficult to completely put them in one category; most of what Prince does is 'funk' but when combined with rock, electro, whatever. it becomes a category unto itself. As such, I can see R&B funk lovers enjoying the first 2 albums and categorizing Prince as an R&B funk artist, but as soon as Dirty Mind hit, that category was left in tatters. Controversy/1999/Purple Rain/ATWIAD only re-inforce the notion that Prince was never going to sit comfortably into a single genre, so if you were a R&B funk purist, he wasn't the artist for you, and you'd have jumped ship well, well before Parade. If you had survived upto Parade, by that time you would have gone through many genre changes and Parade was no different than previous twists and turns.



Ermm, I thought your argument WAS that Parade was the first drastic change from an R&B funk ideal that caused R&B funk lovers to jump ship?



Well, from my above comments, from the perspective of pure R&B funk lovers, I reckon Dirty Mind was the first fuck up, actually, because it was more new wave rock than funk.



Basically, you're saying Prince drifted away from the sound he invented? The Minneapolis sound only really came into being around the time of 1999/Purple Rain when Prince and his associates hit it big and put Minneapolis on the map. By that time he had already drifted far away from his R&B origins on 'For You'. If anything, the Minneapolis sound is funk-rock, and Parade fits into that category better than ATWIAD. Besides, part of the reason for Prince's longevity is that he has moved on from a particular genre or sound before it had chance to get old and boring. Doing that he has had to take chances and make mistakes, but if he had never moved on like you suggest he should have, he would have turned out like The Time, doomed to regurgitate the same funk beats forever more. Don't you know, the coolest time to leave a party is when it is in full swing before it has a chance to wind down?!



Well, I can't speak for Americans response to classical music in pop music, but here in the UK and Europe we seem to be far more accepting of experimental music and mixed genres and as I think I've said before, Parade and after was where Prince began to be seen as a really interesting musician and not just a 'popstar', and he seems to have responded to that by focusing far more on Europe through the late 80s to late 90s than the USA. In fact, you could argue that his re-emergence in the USA is due to him simplifying his sound so that the Americans 'geddit'.

metalorange said:

jtfolden said:

I am sorry but typical R&B fans at the time didn't like Parade.
[Edited 4/13/06 11:07am]

thebige said:[quote]

metalorange said:

, I think I resent that.

That does seem to be a pretty prevalent attitude in British magazines, though.

u2prnce said:[quote]

thebige said:

Hey,it's a general stereotype - Americans like simple food, a simple life and simple music, whereas the British are stuck up, stuffy, condescending and have bad teeth. But it became a stereotype because more often than not IT'S TRUE!

I had a thought, perhaps Americans are so defensive of R&B and funk genres because it was a invented there - you know, slave songs turning into blues and soul, then into rythm and blues, etc. That would explain why they would hate classical music 'tainting' R&B pop - classical music was invented over in Europe. Goes without saying, Americans are very patriotic.

dewalliz said:

Well, these "typical R&B fans" that you speak of must have been a small enough segment that they didn't affect sales much one way or the other. As Parade and it's singles sold and performed in the same ballpark as 1999 and SOTT on the R&B charts. (which is to say better than anything 1978-1981, and virtually everything after 1987 minus D&P).

jtfolden said:

JTfolden, sales don't mean anything when it comes to liking songs. Just because people buy the album it doesn't mean they are going to like. When was the last time you bought an album but was disappointed with it or wasn't what you expected? It had happened to almost everyone one time or another.
Also, Parade may peaked higher on the R&B charts but it didn't stay on those charts as long as his other 80s albums other than Lovesexy. The albums that Prince did from 1978-85 plus SOTT and Batdance stayed on R&B charts longer than Parade. Go read DMSR, it tells you that the songs from Parade (minus Kiss) slipped off the charts as fast as a train. It tells you right there that the R&B community didn't like the singles following up to Kiss. Face it the r&b fanbase wanted another Kiss and when they didn't hear it, it had a detrimental affect on the charts. And also I been listening to countless online r&b and funk stations for years and Parade doesn't receive the love like Prince's other albums.
You keep talking about sales and chart position as a conclusion that R&B fanbase embraced Parade. If R&B fans liked the Parade songs then how come many old school R&B radio don't play them other than kiss? How come I be hearing even Prince's never released singles such as Erotic City, Let's work, and Feel For You being played over his released singles such Mountains and Anotherlovenholenyohead? DJ usually plays songs that people wanted to hear and apparantly Parade gets lack of play on the old R&b stations.
[Edited 4/13/06 12:29pm]

dewalliz said:

..and it's all conjecture on your part. You have nothing to back it up and the hard data doesn't show what you're saying. You can go off what your friends might have said but so can I. That doesn't prove anything one way or another about an album, only the tastes of the friends we hang out with at the time.





So again, even if those albums sold a 1/3 or a 1/2 of what Parade did then the length of time still matters? Dirty Mind took years to scrape past 500k and it took Parade all of 6 months to sell 1+ million.

I might as well just paste in what I put in the other thread:

dewalliz said:

Online radio is such a fragmented beast that you can find a DJ with any taste you like. In general I hear the same things I've always heard... the hits. A lot of Let's Go Crazy, Little Red Corvette, and Kiss. I don't hear Delirious any more than I hear Mountains these days... and I rarely hear deep album cuts unless it's a station that's in the habit of playing such.

However, the main thrust seems to be the reaction back in the day and even though the charts aren't the end-all-be-all barometer they are decent enough to gauge how something was performing compared to other items in the market during a given period.




So an album that finds it's target audience quickly (and even sells better) is penalized just for the number of weeks it was around? I think a lot of that has to do with marketing, don't you?

Let's see... Dirty Mind stayed on the charts for 32 weeks yet I don't think it even went Gold (selling 500k copies) until after PR was released. Parade sells 1 million+ in 26 weeks and that's deficient? 1999 was on the charts for ages but took almost twice as long to sell what Parade did before the PR hype carried it along, and this is supposed to reflect badly on Parade?




Somebody was obviously feeling them because they peaked fairly high on the R&B singles charts, as you admit. The singles from 1999 peaked at 4, 15, 18 & 55 and all of them were off the charts in 8-19 weeks. The 3 singles from Parade peaked at 1, 15 & 18 and lasted 12-17 weeks. SOTT had singles peaking at 1, 12, 11 & 15 and lasted 12-16 weeks each. Not a big difference here at all. They each had at least 3 top 20 hits and each album initially sold 1+ million copies. That's pretty consistent performance on the R&B charts.

Also, Parade fell off quickly in part due to a high profile marketing plan that ended abruptly as soon as it was clear the movie was tanking (and Prince was winding down the Revolution as a group). Kiss debuted in march of 86 and the final single debuted in July. It had an active marketing window of less than 6 months when it sold it's 1+ million.

Compare this to 1999 where you have 1999 debuting in October 1982 with the final single charting in January of 84!!! So here we have well over a years worth of marketing and yet 1999 didn't sell measurable better. It didn't get certified double platinum until Purple Rain's new rock/pop audience started picking up older albums in October of 84.

SOTT is a similar story. First single in March 87, last single in December 87. So, roughly 9 months plus the SOTT movie and the album still didn't go double platinum in the US.



Is Parade a 'typical R&B album'? No, of course not... I never said it was. Does it contain more R&B than ATWIAD or Purple Rain? Most certainly. If Parade wasn't another sharp turn away from the pop/rock audience of PR then I don't know what was.

dewalliz said:

I like how you start out saying sales and charts don't mean anything, then use chart info to back up your opinion!

I have to say, I think JTfolden's more in-depth assessment of the info, such as it is, that can be gleamed from the chart data is far more logical, and I agree with his conclusions.

vainandy said:

So you don't listen to a song like "Head", "Sexuality", "Dirty Mind" for the lyrics??

You listen to it purely for the "music value" ??
[Edited 4/13/06 14:39pm]

metalorange said:

WHAT?! What does that have to do with my personal feelings about sales and charts? Just because I dont go based on the charts to determine what music should I listen to (and yes people feel the same) that doesn't mean that I can't use chart examples when it comes to my arguement.
Please reread my posts before you reply because really I dont have time to elaborate another post to you.
[Edited 4/13/06 16:27pm]

jtfolden said:

It isn't about getting together with some old friends to hear some Parade-bashing like you making out to be. It was based on people who was there firsthand told me that the R&B community of where they was from didn't like Parade except maybe a couple of songs. I am hearing the similar comments from some of the R&B fan orgers who too was there firsthand and Parade wasn't well received from their communities. No one is saying that we are spokesperson for the R&B and funk fanbase, we are speaking from experiences, so chill with generalizing us that.
Whatever the reason why Parade tank off can be anyone's guess but the the fact remains that Parade was slipping from the charts very quickly shortly after Prince chosen his second single and also that dozen of old school radio stations refused to play the songs from that album except Kiss and occasionally Anotherlover.

dewalliz said:

I thought it was obvious what I was saying - that you will use chart info when it suits you and disregard it when it goes against your opinions. It's inconsistent.

As for getting your info from the R&B community who were around at the time, I say again, what was it particularly about Parade they disliked and what was it about the not-very-R&B albums such as 1999/Purple Rain/ATWIAD that they did?

dewalliz said:

Don't put words in my mouth I never said. However, your accounts simply don't jive with those of everyone else - so it comes down to the fact that your experience is not the truth for all 'communities'.



The point is that these claims can't be supported by the sales OR chart data. If your perceived opinion is that certain R&B communities (boy if that isn't a generalization) were turned off by Parade then either a) these "communities" were small enough that they made virtually no real negative impact on the singles or album performance, or b) other "R&B communities" liked it enough to offset the difference. The reality is that some didn't like it and some did, just as can be said for EVERY single previous Prince album. If you go by sales and chart performance data then 1999 and SOTT were no more supported by the "R&B communities" than Parade was... and certainly nothing prior to 1999 did as well as Parade in R&B sales/charts.



You are the one doing the generalizing and you are attempting to make claims that select opinions apply to all. I am speaking from experience, as well. I was there first hand, in my own 'community' back in the 82-88 period we have touched on. I had to go to the R&B oriented music stores in my town to get the albums/singles early, as well, and used to be good friends with the owners of these neighborhood stores. So, I speak from experience as to how these records were received here.




The chart facts that I listed previously still apply. All the singles did decently on the R&B singles chart and Parade did not do measurably worse or better than similar releases on the R&B charts or in sales performance during the time we are speaking of... it remained in the R&B album chart for 26 weeks. That's approximately 6 1/2 months and matches the length of time marketing was done for the release.

metalorange said:

I am not going to repeat myself. I had mention a dozen of times about which songs that the R&B community whom I spoken with like about Parade and which ones they didn't like. Reread my posts, you should find the answer to your question.

jtfolden said:

And dont put words in my mouth. I never said that my experience is true for all communities. Where in the hell did you got that conclusion from? When I speaking for R&B communities, I am speaking from people whom I know from all all over the country not just locally telling me how R&B fans from where they came from trashed Parade and even as far as calling Prince a sellout. But for me I have a diverse taste to music than them.
Like I said just because the singles peaked high on the charts that don't mean crap when it comes people liking the singles or not. So all about Parade did good on the charts doesn't mean squat.

It's very clear that he began focusing more on Europe in the 1980s because, not only was his music totally different, he was constantly touring over there. From what I've read in interviews, many artists have said it's easier to have a hit over there than here in the US. It's true, most of us are far less tolerant of different types of music than Europeans are.

As for "Dirty Mind" being a turnoff to the R&B crowd, there was funk on that album such as "Head" and "Partyup". I had one or two Prince 45s before that album but after hearing "Head" on the radio, that particular song is the one that prompted me to buy my first Prince album. "Uptown" and "Dirty Mind" was well loved also. R&B radio had no problem with Prince's rock tracks. In fact, I remember hearing "Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad" all over R&B radio and not even once on pop radio which was playing "I Wanna Be Your Lover" because the disco era was going on.

I never said I only like funk and hate rock. I love rock, I just like funk more. Prince's early music was definately kind of a genre of it's own. However, when you start adding things like horns, that weakens it. Yes, other funk groups were using them but Prince replaced his with synths and that's what set him apart from the others. People loved these other funk artists that were using horns but they didn't want Prince using them because it starts taking away from his sound. I love Roger & Zapp and they used horns but if Roger got rid of his talk box, the music would never be the same again....The synths and coldness were to Prince like the talk box was to Roger. And classical music....oh no!.....that was a definate no no that just totally weakened the sound. These things took away from the coldness of the music that Prince was known for. I still like Prince's music after the style change (I wouldn't be here if I didn't) but I definately don't consider the music half as strong.

Now for "The Minneapolis Sound". Actually that sound was there from the very beginning and just grew more and more until people named it when Prince got protegees. I hear it in "Just As Long As We're Together", "Sexy Dancer" (Especially the 12 Inch. There is a breakdown in there with the synths that was funky as hell that could definately have been given to The Time later), "Head", "Let's Work", "Controversy", even "Uptown".

There's a very simple explanation for that. By the time of "Parade", Prince had a much larger audience that included pop fans and a large growing European fan base. In earlier years, he only had mainly his R&B audience to depend on.

Also "Parade" had a very misleading lead single called "Kiss" that tricked people into buying the album because Prince knew they were pissed about "Around The World In A Day".

Also, with all these new fans aboard, how was anyone going to determine who's album purchase went to which chart? For all we know, those sales on the R&B chart could have been purchased by pop fans.

very cool thread!

I love Parade and think its idiosyncrasies are what makes it so great. It definitely has plenty of strong material.

I think the reason it wasn't as successful as it should have been had alot to do with 2 factors:

1 - the horrible movie, which flopped hideously and was ultimately an embarrassment. That really dampened the success of the album.

2 - the single choices. Kiss was brilliant, the obvious 1st single; but Girls and Boys was just as obvious a choice as 2nd single. It would have been a Top 10 hit, no question. Then follow with Anotherlover and Mountains.

I always wished New Position was longer; wouldn't a 12 inch version of that just rock?????

The extended remixes of the Parade singles are the best of his career, IMHO.

Parade is every bit as important as SOTT, Purple Rain, 1999 or Dirty Mind.