1st Avenue 7th St Entry 10.6.1981

Controversy Era reminds me of when I was coming into my own with music. I considered myself a Hardcore B*Boy, into Hip Hop from the mid 80's to 1994. I can take every album P has an album and I remember back to what I was doing, who I was so-called dating and what music I was into. To be a fan back when Prince [the album] dropped would have been "it" for me.

PurpleLove7 said:

Yeah it's interesting how you can feel and connect certain albums and songs with particular events or times of the year

Like I always remember Purple Rain ATWIAD Parade & SOTT the time of the year, time of day etc etc that I bought it or certain songs that are connected with events of my teen life

1981 Outtakes continued

Broken
This song was an early attempt by Prince to write a 1950s-style blues-based rock number, predating "Jack U Off" on Controversy and later "rockabilly" efforts. Even though the song sounds like a spontaneous live recording with his band, probably recorded by Prince on his own. A bluesy piano opening is followed by Prince's a cappella vocal intro before the song gets underway. The arrangement emphasizes an electric piano and a fast, fluid bassline. Sometimes called "Broken, Lonely And Crying," it was occasionally played on the Dirty Mind club tour the spring of 1981.

Broken
Till U come back 2 me
There'll be nothing left 2 say, no

Broken
My heart is broken, yeah Broken, oh baby
My heart's just broken in 2
Until U bring your sweet love, bring it on home 2 me
I'll be your broken-hearted man alone in misery

Broken, Lord
My heart is broken, Lord
Broken, yeah
My heart's just broken in 2
If U think that I'll beg 4 your sweet love, bring it on home 2 me
I'll be your broken-hearted man alone in misery

Lonely
I'm so lonely
Lonely
I don't know what do 2
Until U bring your sweet pussy, bring it on home 2 me
I'll be your broken-hearted man alone in misery

Cryin'
I'm just a-cryin'
I'm just a-cryin', baby, all night
I don't know what 2 do
Until U bring your sweet honey, bring it on home 2 me
I'll be your broken-hearted man alone in misery

Oh oh, baby
Until U, baby
Until U, baby, Lord
Until U, baby
Until U bring your sweet love, bring it on home 2 me
I'll be your broken-hearted man alone
I'll be your broken-hearted man alone
I'll be your broken-hearted man alone in misery

Cymbals!

Until U bring your sweet love, bring it on home 2 me
I'll be your broken-hearted man alone, baby
Broken-hearted man alone, baby
Broken-hearted man alone in misery
[Edited 3/18/10 11:14am]

continued 1981 Outtakes

She's Just A Baby
She's just a baby, a baby
But she's my lady
My lover, my only friend

She's just a baby
But maybe she'll understand
That I am made of a true love
That will never end (Hey, hey)

People don't understand what she sees in an older man
They never stop 2 think that maybe I'm what she's lookin' 4
They never take the time 2 look into her mind
They just keep on sayin' she's just a baby
But maybe one day they will see
She's not such a baby, no baby is she
She's just in love with me

She's just a baby, a baby
But she's my lady
I know there are some things she'll never see

She's just a baby
But maybe one day she'll see
Although she's young
She's the only one that can bring out the man in me
Can't U see? Yeah

People don't understand what she sees in this lonely man
Don't they know that everybody needs somebody sometime? Oh
I give her all I can
But the people don't give a damn
They just keep on sayin' that she's just a baby
But maybe one day they will see
She's not such a baby, no baby is she
She's just in love with me
Oh no, no, no, yeah

She's Just A Baby
From early 1981, this slightly blues-flavored number features Prince singing in falsetto about his love of a young girl. It's a more subdued expression of the "Uptown" concept of doing what you feel is right and not prejudging people - in this case, age.

CHRISLUV92 said:

that book had so many great pictures I have not been able to find any place else. too bad I owned it at a time when I would plaster my room with posters, should have held on to it.

OldFriends4Sale said:

She sure does - I liked her alot in this era

OldFriends4Sale said:

What great stills fromt he video. Prince was goth/new wave/funk/punk rock all at the same time - in 1981! Always ahead of his time.

Backstage at The Roxy Theater in Los Angeles - 1981. Prince came out on stage with The Time to perform - "Dance To The Beat."


[Edited 3/19/10 18:04pm]
[Edited 3/19/10 18:09pm]

Brofie said:

This defines me, being a mulatto myself and not being much of a "guys" guy.

Freakin great pictures! That was a sexy, sexy era!!!!

b right back
[Edited 4/6/10 7:41am]

Prince backstage on the Controversy tour with Lenny Waronker, and Big Chick

OldFriends4Sale said:

Yeah, that show is where he previewed most of the 'Controversy' album and it was also Brown Mark's debut in Prince's band. This was one of the early classic "dress rehearsal"/one-off shows at First Avenue, which was sold out just by word of mouth alone. The 45 minute nine-song set show was performed under the stage name Controversy.

Nice thread!! Thanks.

OldFriends4Sale said:

oh my goodness! still my favorite prince era of all time and still sexy!

Great thread.

NEW MUSICAL EXPRESS
November 14, 1981
Some Day My Prince Will Come...

Prince
Controversy

Prince has an urge in him which sometimes comes out as a nightingale, sometimes a vulgar pierrot and then occasionally just a babyish gurgle. Here is a minstrel who sings of his bedtime succour - a modern prince, mark you, and may have the captives seduced, only to dash the accomplishment away; straddled o'er an earthquake of rocky showtime guff and peacock proud of Mr Reagan to boot.

I'm still frightened of Prince allured by the promise, alarmed by the chintzy crud of his live routine, partially assuaged by this new "Controversy". Prince's value continues to lie in the merger he affects, implicit rather than explicit, of categories usually taken for granted as token dualities (love/sex, rock/soul) or as irreconcilable opposites (pleasure/politic, gaiety/acuity). We will get nowhere quickly searching Prince's practice for principles of judgement: he is not uniformly lovable or loyal.

A Christian God. A God-fearing Country. The Original "funk" - Sex. Triplets which Prince plays with during the course of Controversy-inconsistently, with an often absured nobility of purpose. Prince obviously does not regard Sex, Politics and Popular Music as perverse bed (wherever) mates: they are alignable aspects of Being. The screwiest thin about "Controversy" is the dispersed division between rosy-cheeked humanist and slutty confessional; the Moral Majority will nog know whether to fete or castrate this hammy spritualist.

Prince refuses the Outlaw part offered him, detects nothing unnatural in his private or public affairs: his sex, his singing, are accomplices of Law and Order (in a symbolic sense) rather than crimes against it. To regard himseld as indecent, a kink, devious - this would render the pleasure of his deeds a cerebral rather than sensual one, the vicarous intellectual pleasure of the away-day Outsider (a popular pose amongst rock'n'rollers both nimble and thick) thinking he is engaged in forbidden activities. Prince beleives - in some kind of God, in the onslaught of a universal love. Or is there a gag in his mouth?

To put it bluntly: Prince's prick is the source of his pride, the guarantee of his love. The fissures of the flesh intrude upon even his more visionary Political plateaux. There can be no knowledge, Prince avers, without bodies set free from the bondage of repressive persuasions. Or, as the irresistibly titled "Sexuality" puts it: "Sexuality is all I ever need? Sexuality I'm gonna let my body be free."

Of course it is not wise to take this sort of stuff too literally; does a "freed" body come that simply? Perhaps by necessity of the (word) processes of his chosen medium, any transference of his political views into reord will condense the heterogeneity of Prince into an easy entertainment, a potted provocation, little more than a glib fib. Thus transcribed he conspires or compares with Reagan and the Moral majority not insofar as anyone is "left" of "right" of the impossible centre, but because their politics are all somewhere over a rainbow..... "People call me rude/I wish we all were rude/ I wish there was no black and white/ I wish there were no rules". ("Controversy").

When Prince gets "explicit" about earthly as opposed to earthy powers, it's no less ambiguous: a kind of polymorphous perversion of policital life. In "Ronnie, Talk To Russia" he seems to be putting the blame squarely on those nasty Reds and urging Ronnie to play a conciliatory Audie Murphy type, pipe of peace 'n' all that, complete with the sort of advice the barrom whore with a heart of gold (sic) might give here avenging sheriff: "Ronnie, if you're dead before I get to meet you/Don't say I didn't warn you."

Prince' work ethic ("Let's Work") has got more to do with the subject viewed exclusively as sex machine than with the New Protestantism and in "Annie Christian" he seems to be (that phrase again) shifting the blame back to the harbingers of New Amerika; whatever, the track in question is eerie, incorrigibly subjectieve and very funny (the punchlines have a lot in common with Defunkt: "Everybody say 'electric chair' - ELECTRIC CHAIR!!!!!"

Maybe Prince is as utterly wet and naive as it all seems to unfortunately hint. He simply can't understand what all the fuss is about! Prince himself doetn't appear to be in any pain over his manifold contradictions. He doesn't even present them as such: they are present. His polemic comes in pouts rather than shouts, spouts or spurts.... and perhaps he secretly realises that, of course, contradiction is ultimately more intensely "thought provoking" than bald, blank policy statement can ever be. So, so. 'Controversy' is packaged as a collection of quibbles and queries unified under a vagueley 'conceptual' sign. And I like it. I obsessively like two of the eight inclusions ('Do Me, Baby' and 'Annie Christian') and all in all it's a more elaborately and easily realised music than last year's 'Dirty Mind'. Prince can get geally expansive with his voice (how the abstract gospel intro shifts into a sexy smoky falsetto stutter in 'Private Joy') and his contructieve appliance of synth techniques assures that the sheer aesthetic and structural power of the music, thud and skim, shudder and tightening, has as much in common with Kraftwerk as with the more abvious Hendrix and harmony funk lineage.

Sex is his shrine, and that's where Prince's confusing charm works best. "Do me, Baby' recalls the likes of imagination in its slippery slipstream, but is so much better. Prince comes complete with a dischord, jettisoning the eleborate arrangement and shivering in a silent afterglow. It's Smokey Robinson singing aobscene moonbeams, lust imploring love, and the strains on the pillow aren't the tracks of our tears.

Does he want to do much more than put his tongue in our cheek? I'm not sure that I'd vote for him if he did. Prince is ultimately conservative, but temporarily valorous; that's funk?

OldFriends4Sale said:

We cannot review the album Controversy without talking about the 2nd Coming film projected that was sparked by an album Prince obviously thought worth it.

the words 2nd Coming are apart of the lyrics of the song Sexuality by Prince
both dealing with apocolyptic themes

Stand up, everybody, this is your life
Let me take U 2 another world, let me take U 2night
U don't need no money, U don't need no clothes
The second coming, anything goes


Prince - The second coming Live November 21st 1981 Warner
http://www.youtube.com/wa...0eDkCNDr6E

The Second Coming Film
The Second Coming was planned to be a documentary film and live album from Prince's Controversy tour in 1981. The tour was professionally filmed but the project was abandoned, likely due to Prince's schedule producing The Time and Vanity 6. The title comes from a prerecorded a cappella intro to the tour, immediately preceding the song "Uptown."

The Second Coming
This prerecorded a cappella track by Prince opened the Controversy tour set. It concerns the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and a warning to all His children to learn how to love, in addition to gun control (a similar topic in "Annie Christian"). A film concept of the same name was considered by Prince to document the Controversy Tour but was eventually canceled.

It won't be long
All of God's children must learn 2 love
It won't be long (I said it won't be long)
Before the Second Coming, yeah
It won't be long, no, it won't be long

How many more good men must die before there's gun control
U've got 2 love your brother if U want 2 free your soul (Soul, soul, soul)

It won't be long (It won't be long)
All of God's, all of God's children must learn 2 love



Chuck Statler's small film crew who worked on the pseudo-concert film 'The Second Coming' - the Prince documentary film that never saw the light of day...

9th December, 1981
The concert in Houston is filmed for a planned documentary, tentatively called 'The Second Coming'. Several concerts on the tour were filmed by rock video pioneer Chuck Statler, who had worked with Devo and Elvis Costello. His Minneapolis-based Location Services filmed Prince in concert and off-stage, but the resulting documentary was never released.
- Entry taken from Per Nilsen's 'Prince - A Documentary'


Part I]
Hey, thanks RC! Gee, I'm probably gonna use up all my good stories within a week, but here goes...

I didn't work on Purple Rain, but in 1982 I did work on the unreleased film that preceeded it. This was originally just going to be a simple concert film and Chuck Statler was hired as the director. I had worked as a grip/gopher on a few of Chuck's shoots so I got this gig too.

We were filming Prince at (I think) the St Paul Civic Center. They were using multiple cameras and real film, not video, so that meant that every 10-15 minutes a fresh film magazine was needed for each camera. My job was to ferry an exposed magazine from a camera on the floor in the middle of the crowd, all the way to backstage. There a couple of guys did nothing but remove the exposed film from the magazines inside black bags, and put fresh film in. Then I would bring a fresh magazine back to the camera in the crowd. Fortunately one of the bouncers kind of adopted me, and blazed a trail thru the crowd each time.

So, then the concert's over and we're done, right? Wrong! A few weeks later, I hear from Chuck that Prince has now decided to film some scenes to "frame" the concert sequences. For one scene, he wants a roomfull of dolls. So Chuck and I go to this nutty old doll collector's house to rent a roomfull of dolls. She's got a lot of 'em, all right, although she also has a wildly inflated idea of what they're worth. I don't collect dolls, but I do collect other stuff, and these were mostly pretty cheesy dolls. But anyway, Chuck worked out a deal with her and we scored the dolls.

Then a couple of days later, the film crew heads out to Prince's house in Chanhassen, where the filming was going to take place. The house wasn't purple yet, it was just a fairly ordinary large suburban house, kind of sparsely furnished really -- but there was a grand piano in the living room in front of a mirrored wall.

So we spend a few hours getting the props and equipment set up. The gaffer (electrician) decides to tap into Prince's power line ahead of the meter and get some free power. Then we took a break to eat before we started filming. In the early evening we're just getting started, about 8000 watts of lights get fired up, and then all of a sudden, pweeeenngg! All the lights go out. The power load was too much for Prince's transformer and completely fried it.

We're way out in the sticks and it takes forever just to figure out who to contact, and by now it's getting a little late. We finally get a hold of the right guy and he says he'll send somebody out.

So we've got time to kill, and for a while we sit around in the living room while Prince plays that grand piano. Finally the power guys get there, and luckily the gaffer remembered to remove his line tap so they didn't see what he was up to. They replace the transformer and leave. It's kind of late, but we decide to keep going and get at least something done.

So we get started again, get stuff set up again, get those 8000 watts of lights fired up again, and then all of a sudden, pweeeenngg! All the lights go out AGAIN! The new transformer was fried too! So we have to go thru the whole mess again, and of course this time it's even later and the power company guys are not at all happy -- especially when they get to the house. This time the gaffer forgot to remove his line tap so they realized what he was doing. Boy were they pissed! Everything finally gets straightened out without too much bloodshed, but this time it's so late that we decide to bag it for the night and pull an all-nighter the next evening instead.

Did we ever get any filming done? If so, why didn't the film ever come out? And how does Vanity 6 fit into the picture? These questions and more will be answered in my next post -- suspenseful, huh? Meanwhile, here's a Polaroid of Prince that I fished out of the trash at the shoot . It was just taken to check the light so you can only see his silhouette -- but it's him. Take my word for it!



[Part II]
OK, here's the second half of the story I'm calling "Purple Ruin."

After the disastrous first night of filming (or trying to), we all went home and slept thru the day and then regrouped again in the late afternoon and made another trek out to Prince's house in Chanhassen. This time the gaffer brought along a portable generator so we could avoid burning out Prince's transformer a 3rd time. Good idea!

And I should say that, although his patience was sorely tested by other people's screw-ups, director Chuck Statler never lost his cool. He was always totally professional, even under the most trying conditions. It was a privilege to work with him.

Anyway, we got out to the house and this time we actually did get some filming done! The main scene involved the aforementioned roomful of dolls and (surprise!) two women in lingerie. One of them, named Susan, shortly thereafter turned up in Vanity 6. I always thought this scene was the germ of Prince's whole Vanity 6 idea. I don't know who the other woman was -- as far as I know, she didn't show up in subsequent Prince projects, but I could be wrong about that.

Oddly enough, Prince never discussed his concept of the film with me, but here's what I was able to glean from working on the scene: two women clad in lingerie spend most of their time in a roomful of dolls, pining for their lover (Prince, duh!) and awaiting his return from his far-flung wanderings. When he does finally show, he's cloaked in fog and an aura of mystery. After that, I have no specific knowledge... but presumably there was sex.

So we're going to film the scene of Prince's return. Susan is supposed to crawl on her hands and knees over to the door, which then mysteriously opens as if by itself. An eerie fog wafts into the room and Prince is revealed standing in the doorway.

To create the effect, a wall of paper was put up about 2 or 3 feet back from the door. Then a huge bank of lights was set up on the other side of the paper. (The paper was to diffuse the light.) In effect, this created a small closet with one paper wall, which had the proverbial 8000 watts of light on the other side. The picture of Prince in my previous post shows him standing in the doorway, with light shining thru the paper wall behind him.

They wanted smoke drifting around when Prince walked in, and even curling out from under the closed door before it opened, so somebody had to get into that little closet and pump it full of smoke with a smoke machine. Now, even though it was supposed to be Prince on the other side of the door, for some reason he didn't care to get into this hot stuffy closet full of smoke. Guess what? I got the job.

So I'm standing in this blindingly bright and blazing hot little room, pumping it full of (cancer-causing, no doubt) smoke. And all I can think of is, "Wow! I'm really making movies now!"

I pump the closet full of smoke, Susan crawls over, the door slowly opens, and cut. We do that a half-dozen times or so, and finally Susan complains a little about having to crawl over to the door again and again. "Hey, baby, it's rock and roll," Prince says. I was really tempted to retort, "Well, why aren't YOU in here then?" -- but I restrained myself.

And really, that was one of the few times that Prince made any sort of audible comment. Usually, if he had anything to say he would just speak quietly to Chuck. And most of the time he just observed what was going on. Even when the whole electrical disaster of the first night was going on, I never heard him complain. (Not to say he never did, but if he did he was discreet about it.)
Prince was aloof, but not in an arrogant or mean-spirited way. He just seemed kind of self-involved and removed from the mundane details of what we were doing. He was no glad-hander, for sure, but I certainly didn't come away from the experience thinking he was a prick, either. (Unlike some others -- Steve Nieve comes immediately to mind).

We finally finished filming in the early morning, packed up, and headed home. Some time later, I was told that Warner Brothers had pulled the plug on the whole project -- supposedly because the concert footage wasn't that good. I heard that one problem was that Prince hadn't allowed the cameras out onstage, which limited the shots the camera operators could get. I also heard that supposedly one camera operator's footage was out of focus, but I don't know if that's true. In any case, the film was shelved.

But then, a year or two later, Prince gave the world "Purple Rain." And then he gave it "Under the Cherry Moon." Oh, well...

For your edification, I'm including a couple of Polaroids of Susan and the other lingerie-clad woman in the roomful of dolls. The pictures were taken just to check the lighting and they've deteriorated over the years, but I think you'll get the idea:

OldFriends4Sale said:

Wow thanks for sharing that with us! sounds like it would have been really cool had the concert footage been great. But yeah I can understand. If he didn't want close-ups it would have probably come off looking very bootleggish. Anyways thanks!

my little review of Controversy

Side one
1."Controversy" 7:14
I love the driving beat and grove, the sound has Princes perverse New Wave feel, the Our Father prayer just added a whole level of 'conflict' to the song which I love, More or less the prayer is added as his response to the controversy.

Listen...
People call me rude, I wish we were all nude
I wish there was no black and white, I wish there were no rules
List is the anthem chant of the Controversy album, and I loved hearing this during the Montreux Jazz Festival. Hearing the Our Father prayer would have realliy set it off.

2. "Sexuality" 4:20

The reproduction of the new breed - Leaders, stand up, organize
chanted in the song Rainbow Children.
This is my favorite track on the album actually, it's rebelious and wild and is crazy New Wave, Tick Tick Bang was actually a song to be included on this album and these 2 songs have the same NW feel. I heard/have the 1st Avenue 1982 performance of this and they played it the same with the speed turned up a bit. It really rocked. I love the part where he says "Momma are you listening?" and there is this crisp 1 second guitar scream. My favorite song. And one of those that present a type of Millenium Edenic Utopia...

3. "Do Me, Baby" 7:47

I 1st heard this song on the radio, I never heard the ending, until staying up late one night they played the whole song, I was like wwwhhhhaaatttt! with a smile on my face "I like Prince" He has a way of conveying the feeling of certain actions through the song. Ok we are all adults here. Masturbation is what he is doing at the end of the song. It felt desperate, lonely yet had the 'sex passion' drive. And the "I feel so cold" at the end of the song really completed this song.

In some songs Prince sings from a womans perspective. Do Me Baby is one of those songs in my opinion. The lyrics, the request is something a woman would say, it's the 'ravish' me expression of a woman. Men would say I wan't to do you, I want to give it to you etc etc (I'm not saying this is a negative way)


Side two
1."Private Joy" 4:25 A song about his (ex)girlfriend Susan Moonie
This song was written about Susan from Vanity 6, Princes high school/after school girlfiend, He was really into her, yet Susan wasn't manipulated by Princes affairs, and did her thing. The song suggests a man in love with a woman he wants all to himself almost possessive yet she is non-chalont about it all and sees other men (this is how Prince is as well)

2."Ronnie, Talk to Russia" 1:48
A 50's sounding rock n roll sound about political and social issues of the early 80's surround the cold war between Russia & the USA, with the ever present threat we faced of Nuclear War. It was a scary thing back then. Remember the movie "The Day After"? That was a scary time.

3. "Let's Work" 3:57
FUNK, pure Minneapolis funk, that sensual bass playing set the tone, I don't know how to describe the sound of the bass almost moaning. A song either about working the dance floor or working the bedroom. The dancefloor tends to proceed the bedroom.

4. "Annie Christian" 4:21
A spooky song about a woman of Soviet Union. Anne Christian represents the social/religious/political atmosphere of Communism. New Wave sound and sounds like a dark empty room or hallway. I think this song captures the essence of NW

5. "Jack U Off" 3:12
Another song from the same album about masturbation or making out and other things that go along with it, Men can't jack a woman off. Dez tried to explain to Prince that the term was not said to another man unless of course... And it's a masculine expression but is usually said "Jack Me/It Off" more like a command, and very dominate. When they opened for the Stone and did this song Dez expected the kind of reaction the strong male crowd gave them as Prince in his bekini breifs sing "I'll jack u off"

Also I believe this is the album with the 1st use of U in replace of You.

•Prince - vocals, guitar, bass, keyboards, drums
•Bobby Z - drums on "Jack U Off"
•Lisa Coleman - backing vocals, keyboards on "Jack U Off"
•Dr. Fink - keyboards on "Jack U Off"

song/playing credits are always weird because they probably played on more or less songs than indicated.


New Position" was a 1982 track pulled from Prince's vault and re-recorded from scratch for Parade.

PurplePartyman said:

I think that would have made it even more in demand. Something about underground stuff... something leaked or making its rounds in blackmarket

I always thought Private Joy was a song about Prince's man hood...not a girl. Remember he says, "I strangled Valintino, he's been mine ever since, if anybody ask u, u belong 2 Prince." and then he later says, "Come on honey baby GET UP!" I always thought the song was about masterbation...

Aaron6 said:

lol well of course it's about his manhood, but not masturbation. It's about Susan Moonsie, she's was his private joy

Thanks, all these years I was thinking something else...wow, my dirty mind...