Just opened up Pince's "One Nite Alone" live 3 CD set and heard it for the first time! Can't say anything other than: Immaculate, Smooth, Awesome! It has to be one of his best CDs of all time, in my opinion! What a great jazz/funk artist! Wish he would do more like this one--would love to hear him do an entire jazz album. I'm in musical heaven today! What albums do you think are his best and/or your favs and why?

That's One Nite Alone LIVE. One Nite Alone is a separate and different album, mainly Prince on the piano, talking about whatever, including calling Abraham Lincoln a racist.

I Love "One Nite Alone," Live...and tonight I came across my concert ticket from that show of March, 2002.

I really do love all Prince...From "For You," through "LotusFlow3r." Following Prince's career through owning his released records has been a pleasurable experience. Life would be really boring without music.

oh goodness this is an endless question i like most of his songs on all of his albums hes a very underrated artist for sure

but if a had to choose it would be

For You-pure love
Controversary-umm i just like it
1999-partyyyyy!!!!!
Purple Rain-defines princes legacy
Planet Earth-the songs on this album are really cute and fun
The Gold Experiance-sexy album indeed
LotusFlower-some songs on here arent half bad
Diamonds and Pearls-just a pure fun 90s album

gosh all of his albums are just so thanks prince for sharing your wonderful talent with us!

In regard to the statement made about Prince conferring racism on Abe Lincoln in his songs: Actually, Abe Lincoln wanted to pay Black slaves to leave America, the home of their birth, and immigrate to Liberia in Africa... This is a not so well known fact of history, which I didn't know until I went to college... They didn't teach that in my history classes! LOL Abe Lincoln was only portrayed as the great slave emancipator--watch the PBS documentary on him and you will see that his "emancipation" was as much due to economic and political pressures more than for any concern about the rights of people born on this soil and deserved citizenship like any other person born here! Maybe you should listen closer...

ernestsewell said:

Racist? I've been singing along to the song wrong for years then. Thought it was "rapist". I totally don't like Avalanche now.

squirrelgrease said:

Wow! You think "rapist" is better than "racist"! There is some historical documentation to support a view of Lincoln as a "racist" but as a "rapist"?! Now that makes you dislike the song?! Don't get it at all!

squirrelgrease said:

poetcorner61 said:

It's called a sense of humor.

ONA... Live is a horrible live album.

Strange Relationship
The Everlasting Now
Joy In Repetition

these are cool,

the rest of the songs are very bad

imo...

ernestsewell said:

Yeah, I get Prince's ironic sense of humor, similar to mine, but the point was that the listener thought "rapist" was more acceptable than "racist," and that that changed her viewpoint of the song. I question that--why would one be acceptable and not the other? Yeah, Prince's lyrics can be gamey and controvesial--but why would one be considered more acceptable than the other--even taking "irony" into consideration? Maybe he was referring to old Abe as a "rapist!" LOL

poetcorner61 said:

There's a lot of good and bad things about Lincoln, the emancipation, and what he said.

People also have to remember that the general head set, and idealism, was different in the middle of the 19th century. He wasn't as we are today, carrying the thought that ALL men are truly created equal and deserve freedom. It's all about perspective. He didn't have MLK. He didn't have Malcolm X. He didn't have Medgar Evars. He didn't have marches to Alabama. He didn't have a Million Man March. And he didn't live long enough to see Barack H. Obama become #44. Prince can sit on his bony ass and call Lincoln a racist, but he didn't live back then. He wasn't alive. Hell, he might have even had a direct lineage present in the US at that point. Who knows!

It's not the idea of forgiving a racist history, or cherry picking the good parts or even the bad parts. Yet when we say we need to know where we came from to know where we're going, it's situations like this that are enlightening. We can see, even at that point, how things had progressed beyond what they were 50 or 100 years before. And hopefully we've progressed beyond the point of Lincoln's administration. We have to just understand the idealism of the time, and that even Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was controversial, still limiting, rebelled against, and embraced, by any particular segment of the Americas. We can look back and say "that was racist", but at the time, it was as normal as typing on a computer is today.

poetcorner61 said:

Let me bring you back into the point. My statement was in reference to Squirrelgrease's comment, not Prince's lyrics. SG was being silly, making a funny about the song.

There's nothing funny about Prince calling Lincoln a racist. It's stupid, and uneducated, actually. SG's comment was pure sarcasm and humor, which I can totally appreciate.

ernestsewell said:

Very well said. I wasn't implying that Abe Lincoln wasn't a conscientious man who felt and cared deeply about what was happening in his time. He thought that slavery was wrong but his solution about sending slaves back to Africa might have been viewed as a beneficial solution to the "problem" in his day--but slaves born in the U.S. didn't think so and neither did Frederick Douglas or subsequent people who were born as or descended from slaves. So, you have to accept the fact that, to some people, Lincoln was racist although he freed the slaves legally... Really depends on your perspective and what you consider "racist." It really isn't looking back--Lincoln's policies of shipping native-born slaves back to Africa was challenged in his day! But I get your point!

Just heard "Anna Stacia" made my spirit and feet move at the same time

poetcorner61 said:

Forgot to add that Prince understands the inherent tension between the sacred and secular, the sacred v. profane; in his new music I find a fine tension--just like the R/B artist of the 60s and early 70s understood it--that fine link between sex and spirituality and how both feed into each other! It is here and present on this live album and I hope to hear more!

[b] i likE thAt 0NE S0NG CAllEd (18 ANd 0VER]hAS
ANY0NE ElSE hEARd it??

poetcorner61 said:

Have you heard 'The Rainbow Children'? The One Nite Alone tour focused a lot opn material from that album. Equally loathed and loved on the org. I'm a lover. There's also an instrumental album N.E.W.S. you might like (I think it's dull, but it's jazzy). He also did a download album some years back called Xpectation (instrumental jazz with the violinist Vanessa Mae), which you can probably track down - I loved it. Going back further, get the Madhouse albums from the 80s - again, instrumental jazz,funk fusion stuff - lots of fun.

As to my faves... predictable, but everything between 1980 - 1988. After that, TRC, The Truth and One Nite Alone (not live, dead?).

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[Edited 11/25/09 13:36pm]

poetcorner61 said:

thedance said:

-----
I am really starting to wonder about people on this board. I have played this live set for numerous people who are not big P fans and everybody I played it for loves it. The whole set is good.

squirrelgrease said:

Nah, Abraham Lincoln wasn't a rapist. That was Thomas Jefferson.

Se7en said:

I thought that Jefferson at least bought his slaves dinner and a movie before doing the preamble on their 'ginas.

Too soon?

It is great-I it

squirrelgrease said:

So true--that! LOL

Se7en said:

Nah, he just had the jungle fever.

Never heard it still to this day

paisleypark4 said:

Which one? One Nite Alone-Piano or the ONA Live set?

4MORE !

Haven't heard it all only a few tracks, but the Free track & One night alone sounds wonderful! Right up my alley, "untarnished memories" lyrics, and music very special imo. Piano is just gorgeous. Prince I presume at his very best...with the crowd singing along. Magic!