lovebizzare said:

She was made a star due to her positioning in the PR film and tour ..I believe that was before Prnce started dating her sister.



Well of course there is going to be bad blood etc but lets see..Wendy had no problem with her sister going out with Prince knowing his track record etc. And yes maybe things did not work out betwen them and he was somewhat cruel lets say..aren't you a professional? Everything is peaches n cream as long as you got you firm positioon in Princes thing, got your sister even fronting a group by Prince (the family) but heaven friggin forebid things go wrong relationship wise..cool. Begone..SOTT and Lovesexy are brewing on the backburner.

lovebizzare said:

he didnt exactly let them go they were steadfast in a "fuck this" situation..dont put it all on Prince. And Lisa had no trouble before Wendy came ..P even let her girlfriend as part of the band..sheesh. Plus it is not hard to tell who wears the pants in the relationship (no offense to anyone) lol. But you know Wendy is all about "come on lets go". As long as Lisa gets her cigarettes ...

rdhull said:

1st- He started dating Susanna somewhere in '83
2nd- Wendy DID have a problem with her sister dating Prince
3rd- I'm not putting it all on Prince, I just think there are other factors in the breakup of The Revolution besides Wendy's supposed "big head". Matt Finnk and Bobby Z. also had a problem with Wally & Greg, I suppose they had a big head too.

rdhull said:

So you're saying lisa was the favoured one before Wendy came into the picture?

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

Complete co-signage

fairmoan said:

Those first four songs sound as if they're snippets of some more profound compositions he sliced from.

fairmoan said:

I hear where you are coming from because that's pretty much exactly what I thought of this record once.

But there is ultimately something unexplainably magical happening with this record that defies anything Prince or any other artist has control over. Much like with "Lovesexy", it's simply a work where the whole is vastly superior to the sum of its parts. There are tracks on this record that if presented on another album would be utterly forgettable, but here they are endlessly playable. "Kiss" even sounds at home to me know that many years have passed and I’ve recovered from its overplaying on the radio.

Once I stopped trying to analyze and make sense out of this record, I tripped over it and haven't been able to wear it out since.

And to answer the original question, Prince is the ultimate perfectionist, so him not being completely satisfied and wanting to go back and tweak something endlessly is expected. But sometimes the artist isn’t always the greatest judge of their own work.

I agree with Supernova. Aside from the four singles (Kiss, Mountains, Another Lover, Girls And Boys), the rest of the album doesn't seem as fully realized as it could have been.

It works as a soundtrack, but as a fully conceived Prince album, some of the tracks are a bit too undeveloped or incidental. I agree with what the All Music Guide says:

Even with all of its attributes, Parade is a little off-balance, stopping too quickly to give the haunting closer, "Sometimes It Snows in April," the resonance it needs... If it had been expanded to a double album, Parade would have equaled the subsequent Sign O' the Times, but as it stands, it's an astonishingly rewarding near-miss.

End.

Jimmy Jam called those Tracks aside from "Kiss" MOR type of tracks. in the Musician Magazine Cover of Prince from 88.I think that He was too caught up in the Flower Power&didn't know what to Balance&tried to rush the Material&it felt Half-Baked IMHO.I think Part of Him wanted to Distance Himself from the "Purple Rain" Era but when He had the Same Situation coming again with Soundtrack&Film&Looked back on it this was not gonna be a Strong 1-2 Punch as Purple Rain was for Him.I think Prince also must have been listening to what Andre Cymone had said when He quoated around that time saying that Prince could put out anything&Go Platinum.put it like this: the 86 Boots&Tour were far better than this Album easily IMHO.

PeterJL121 said:

That review is revisionary, but what the heck, so is mine. I respect critics/publications that will change their mind. In the first few volumes of the AMG book the reviewer said it contained "some strong singles and some dreary neo-psychedelic filler" and basically passed it off as not worth your time. Now years later it’s a near miss masterpiece.

One of my biggest complaints about a lot of Prince’s work of the 90s is that all of his tracks are pretty much “fully conceived”. In the 90s Prince wrote a hell of a lot of great songs, but not a lot of great albums. There is definitely something to be said for spontaneity and not bringing every single work to its so-called full potential. A few more “off-the-cuff” tracks like “Tambourine” or “Christopher Tracy’s Parade” might have fleshed out some of his albums and made them more listenable as a result.

Now don’t get me wrong, I realize there is a whole lot more to a great album than some spontaneity and underdeveloped tracks, but I think it is one small part of what was missing in some of his lessor works.

And on “TRC” with “Wedding Feast” and on “One Nite Alone” with “Here on Earth”, “Have a Heart” and “Objects in the Mirror,” we have examples of these oddball underdeveloped songs that to me add to the listening experience. Would I want to listen to those songs by themselves? Hell no. But they can add to the whole in ways that far exceed their worth as stand-alone tracks. And ultimately I think it’s the album that matters, not the worth of the individual tracks.

lovebizzare said:

No that is not what Im saying. I said Wendy got a bighead and an attitude and I stand by what I said.


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[This message was edited Sat Feb 8 19:18:38 PST 2003 by rdhull]

lovebizzare said:[quote]

rdhull said:

And then Im sure most knew she would not be exclusive for the most part at that beginning




when..at thebeginning? Only thing I know of is that she had a problem having her be so involved together in what she did...never showed at the beginning when she was being made a star



I know others had issues as Matt said so...but it was Wendy who made a pressing issue of it and in her manner. And Im not putting it all on Prince either..Im putting it heavily on Wendy.

mistermaxxx said:

Or you could flip that and say "Purple Rain" gave him enough momentum to become a true artist who was able to follow any muse for four strong years. Then when that momentum was almost completely gone he felt the need to try and become popular again (See: "Batman," "Grafitti Bridge", "Diamonds and Pearls") with very patchy results.

Brendan said:

Do you really consider "Wedding Feast" to be an attempt at a real song? It's obviously supposed to be a humorous sort of segue. It's practically Zappa-like in spirit.

Supernova said:

No, that's just what I'm saying, it's not a fully-developed song at all, but a silly piece of eccentricity that almost all concept albums have.

Went right over most people's heads, as they thought this was supposed to be read as a real, finished song.

Supernova said:

nah...i'd say monty python-like...zappa is a stretch...

i agree with the notion that Parade is an "astonishingly rewarding near-miss". It would have been nice for some of the tracks to have been a bit longer, especially New Position. Imagine a 4-minute version of New Position as the 2nd single??

Like so many Prince albums, Parade wasn't served well by the choice of singles. Kiss was a natural, but Mountains was a poor choice. I assume that the obvious choice for 2nd single, Girls and Boys, was passed over in the US because at the time it would have been too steamy for US radio (the cutest ass...). But I've always felt that Anotherlover.. would have been a top 10 hit had it followed Kiss, if it had a cool video.

rdhull said:[quote]

lovebizzare said:

how did she make a pressing issue of it? I'm guessing you're not very fond of Wendy, are you? And with the whole Susanna thing, yes, she had a problem since the begining, she just didn't make a big issue out of it, but she did complain about it a lot (mainly to lisa-of course).
I'm not saying Wendy was the perfect angel, I'm sure she did & said many things that pissed Prince off, but I don't think she's the cause of the break up. Maybe she did like being the star, she was very young then and not used to hving a lot of attention, so I imagine she liked it very much, wouldn't you? Keep in mind this girl was only 19 then, if you were in Wendy's position what would you do? And she didn't make herself the star, Prince did. Don't you think he's to blame a little? Also as you would know twords the end of his relationship with Susanna, he wasn't treating her very well, so I'm sur Wendy starting shooting her mouth off then. I Susanna had not been in the picture at all, I doubt Prince would've made Wendy the "star", he favoured her only because of Susanna.

Brendan said:

Yeah but "1999" opened all those doors for Me.a Two Record Set Selling like that at the time gave Him Freedom to doing a Standard Soundtrack&Film."1999
through "Lovesexy" gave him that Cushion but came "Batman"&Graffti Bridge" He went back to a Film&Soundtrack Formula.the thing with Parade versus Purple Rain is that aside from "Kiss" He just didn't have the Cuts to Match&I think that while certain songs work for Album Tracks Every Hit Artist&Songwriter wants to have there Best stuff going on with any project they are involved with&He came up very short with Parade overall IMHO.but alot of that Material that was So-so on that Album still blew much of His 90's Output Away IMHO.

Eye can see why Parade lacked songs with radio play, but the quality of this joint is top notch.. Eye wanna consider this his best work, but the fact that its a movie soundtrack makes that feeling decrease...

but if eye had to choose, eye guess eye Parade would be my all time favorite...

mistermaxxx said:

Yeah, and "Dirty Mind" turned the spotlight on the whole sorted affair.

But what you and I think doesn't much matter, I was talking about what the masses were thinking. Most of the 14 million (or whatever it sold) "Purple Rain" people are what kept Prince's experimentation platinum.

Cuts smuts. I listen to an album the same way I read a novel or watch a film. I allow for quirky side journeys and explorations and don't judge each chapter as if it had to be a stand-alone short story ready for publication. It's the whole that matters to me. Except for in rare cases I'm not someone who pops in a CD to listen to one track. If you judge albums purely by how strong each individual track is, albums such as "Lovesexy" would be among his weakest works ever. I think "Rave" might even have more strong cuts, but "Lovesexy" as a cohesive listening experience is a masterpiece, while "Rave" sounds like a greatest hits compilation. I'll take the artistic statement every time.

---

In an earlier post on this thread I said that "most people didn't get 'Wedding Feast'", and that was TOTALLY unfair of me. I should have said "a lot of people", as I've seen plenty of people here make jokes about it like it was one of the worst songs ever written and an embarrassment, when in reality it was not to be taken as a finished song at all, more of humorous segue and quirky underdeveloped song idea that most concept albums have one or more of.

Brendan said:

Exactly.

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

Key phrase, Dansa, "in spirit."

JonSnow said:

I tend to doubt it; "Little Red Corvette" had the lyrics "girl got an ass like I've never seen" and it was one of his biggest singles in the US.

JonSnow said:

I can't imagine a 4-minute single of "New Position", as it is far too challenging and quirky for the mainstream.

This is kind of my problem with how "Parade" is being judged here. People, and I'm not referring to you or anyone in particular, seem to want to make order out of the chaos. Nothing wrong with that, that's how our brains are wired, but an album isn't necessarily better when you make all the tracks 4 minutes long, in fact it might be a good deal worse, unless of course you only listen to songs and not albums.

And besides, if you were born 20 or 30 years earlier, your brain would be looking at full songs as being 2 to 2 and half minutes long at tops. So our concept in society of what constitutes a full song certainly has evolved, at least in terms of pop music on the radio in the Western world.

“New Position” is perfectly fine as it is, not that I wouldn’t mind hearing an extended take, just that I wouldn’t necessarily like it potentially mucking up the album.

Take for example the extended take of “I Would Die For You”. I love it much better than the album take, but do I want it on the album? Hell no, it would be completely out of place and self indulgent on “Purple Rain”.

It’s all about the work as a whole, except for of course singles which obviously have to work as stand-alone experiences.

Supernova said:

ahh...

Brendan said:

About that specific song I tend to agree with you, but at the same time many people at WB thought the same thing about "When Doves Cry" when they first heard it...actually so did I. That song was just something I couldn't put a finger on as to WHY I found it odd at the time.

Supernova said:

The single edit of LRC did not include that section. The version on The Hits V.2 is the album version.

JonSnow said:

I know, but more times than not the album version is what I used to hear on the radio. Even today.

Maybe he had Dream Factory in mind at the time? "All My Dreams" definitely feels like it belongs in the midst of most of the Parade songs, among other things.