I've read that the drumming on lady cab is live. However,my ears lead me to believe that the only percussion being played live is the snare and maybe the cymbals(not the high hat ). The way this was done reminds me of "play in the sunshine".

this trick was done differently on "dark". on that track,the drummer plays to mimick a drum machine.

On a separate note,i had a dream that i went to a magical music store and bought a linn drum.i was so excited and feverishly played with the knobs and buttons. I was able to record many princely tracks.

I was sorry to have awakened from that dream. Listening to so much neon rendezvous seems to have gotten deeply into me.

rockwilder said:

I've read that the drumming on lady cab is live. However,my ears lead me to believe that the only percussion being played live is the snare and maybe the cymbals(not the high hat ). The way this was done reminds me of "play in the sunshine". this trick was done differently on "dark". on that track,the drummer plays to mimick a drum machine. On a separate note,i had a dream that i went to a magical music store and bought a linn drum.i was so excited and feverishly played with the knobs and buttons. I was able to record many princely tracks. I was sorry to have awakened from that dream. Listening to so much neon rendezvous seems to have gotten deeply into me.

The snare is the only live druming I can think of on that song, but he is hitting it in different ways, getting a real nice dynamic feel. The drums are pretty easy to nail with a linn drum machine, or with the drum samples. He is mostley using a heavy gated reverb on his drums, making it less important with alot of bass to fill in the "blank" space in between the kick and other hits. But this is done with alot of creative, disciplined and impulsive thinking, and sometimes good mistakes, leading to a sound that is very live in its feel, even though the actual dynamics is rather small. Prince is in my honest opinion a genuis when it comes to early 80s production and composing minimalistic, yet interesting music and sounds I never get tired of.