purplefingers said:

I've stated on here SEVERAL times through out the years that the song Controversy is by far my all time favorite song by Prince. When P first came out, I was hip to him from his single Soft and Wet. I liked it well enough when it first started getting airplay but I didn't have the album yet. So without knowing who P was, I first thought just from hearing Soft and Wet on the radio, as a little kid, that it was a white girl singing and the name of the band was Prince! It wasn't untill my older cousin who had the album, did I see that P was a brutha. I bought the album and the only song besides Soft and Wet that I liked was "I'm Yours". I dug the hell out of his second album. I played that to death. Then When Dirty Mind hit, I liked it a lot. I actually had a chance to see P in concert at a club called Flippers in Hollywood but the tickets were all gone by the time I found out about the show. When the song Controversy started getting airplay, I flipped. I was already a fan of P's BUT when I heard THIS song, it was all over for me. It was, to me, the BADDEST and most different song I had ever heard. I was entranced by it. It sounded like nothing else on the radio to me. It had that raw guitar like Zapp's More Bounce To The Ounce, but it had that weird almost gospel like vibe crossed up with new wave....I thought the cat was the shit. Then when I saw the video to Controversy,...P and Dez looked beyond cool with that stain glass window behind them and the two angel statues on each side of the stage...they were throwin' down hard in a church...I knew P was on another level entirely. And yeah, Let's Work was no joke. Especially the 12'. Gotta Stop Messin About, a left over from the Dirty Mind sessions, sounded like a cross between The Cars and My Sharona from The Knack. Nobody could fuck with Prince during that period. From 81 to 83, P was simply somewhere else.

Man...one of the first threads I ever wrote on here was asking the folks that were blessed to be around during that period was did P ever influence the way u dressed? On there, I mentioned how when I was in Jr. high and high school, P DEFINATELY influenced how I dressed. Moreso than P, Hendrix was my biggest influence on how I dressed and wore my hair. Then around early 82, I started wearing bandannas, the trench coats with the studs, and 12 Rude Boy buttons lined up in a row going straight down on one side of my Rude Boy shirt or whatever else I was wearing. Then I started blending Hendrix and Prince's look into Dez and Jesse's.

I took the LP to the hairdressers, handed it over and said "that's what I want!"
Unfortunately for me now, P has aged better and I ain't got much hair left.

Jeffiner said:

Just pics showing that I was "Under the Influence".

I took the LP to the hairdressers, handed it over and said "that's what I want!"
Unfortunately for me now, P has aged better and I ain't got much hair left.

andymacfunky said:

I'm trying to pull it off now

my hair is a bit shorter than P's, but its almost there! The guitar playing, however, is no where near

blackguitaristz said:

Yep, just a tad... very cute though ...

blackguitaristz said:

Crikey - My Sharona!! COOL! I LOVE these stories....

Controversy was absolutely necessary.....This album is important if for no other reason than his masterpiece 1999 simply would not have been what it was if it were not for this album.

skywalker said:

Same here.

Those that say Controversy is anything short of a great album are if you ask me! Personally, I think it's a brilliant album.

I love the punk vibe on both Dirty Mind and Controversy... I love the space on those albums... You can hear that bass pretty clearly... The synths didn't take up that much room...

And the guitar sounds sweet... tracks like Uptown or Annie Christian... I love those guitar chords that sound rough... but not overblown rough...

thebanishedone's power trio thread made me think... I'd love to hear these songs live in a power trio format...
[Edited 4/29/09 18:16pm]

coolcat said:

You know, I've always thought of that, and imo i think the bass would have to make up a lot for the loss of the synths.

blackguitaristz said:

What I mean by this is I believe P felt now that he had unleashed The Time, who were seen as more masculine and cool, I think P felt he had to bring it with his own material. Since The Time's material (or bulk of it) was Prince's anyways, once he saw that it was well received (The Time's debut album sold better than Dirty Mind and Controversy) that opened it up even more for the type of material he chose to keep for himself. Thus, that got him off of the "sweet feminine girly" vibe and brought out more of his street raw side. And almost violent side. He's always "pimped" in his lyrics. Mentally pimping is when you're controlling someone even when they aren't aware of it. P did this to death in his lyrics from his second album. On the front, it appears that he's very sensitive and vulnerable when all along, it's designed to lure the woman in so he then can control her. After the emergence of The Time, P felt it was perfect time to drop his full time usage of his falsetto and be the crazed cat that he really is. That's the 1999 album. The whole "U think I'm crazy, you're probably right" motto. He was much more aggressive in his lyrics, much more dominant. So that echoed in his singing. He sounded a lot rougher and a lot of his themes on that album was sado sexually agressive. He definately had that "I'm not playing around with u, bitch!...U think I'm little?...Slap!" He was doing a Bob George on the 1999 album long BEFORE the Black Album. Essentially, I think P wanted to showcase that and I think one of the things that brought it out was The Time. He was already going in that direction on cuts like Ronnie Talk To Russia and Annie Christian. He was showing that he could get "weird". And he embraced that fully on the 1999 album. The Time's emergence I think dictated what he chose to keep musically. Tracks like "D.M.S.R.", "1999", "Lady Cab Driver" musically, are more darker in tone. More emphasis on a certain type of funk. He even took back "International Lover" that he intially wrote for The Time and decided to keep for himself. He was basically competting with himself through The Time and it manifested itself in different ways. For the better, I believe.

blackguitaristz said:

Absolutely. Well said.

This thread is back?

Controversy rules, although 1999 is better.