3232 said:

SquirrelMeat said:

The longer prince sits on materal, the more he tinkers and over produces it, Endorphine Machine being the worst example.

agree!

i miss the raw, edgy, simplicity of earlier work like kiss, something in the water, WDC, Alphabet street, erotic city 1999, not too many complicated instuments crammed into these songs... yet infectious and heavy on beat...grows on you...now a days i can do without

over produced stuff that just blends in with the regular crap on the radio right now.. gone are the days when u hear a beat & know its Prince without even hearing the vocals : )))

[Edited 7/26/11 7:26am]

that's the stuff i love too. guitar way down in the mix, not too overbearing, almost subliminal. simple drum patterns, alot of the time even stripped of hihats, and a groovy bass underpinning it all.

3232 said:

RealMusician said:

Sure, that's a good comparison, from your point of view.

The difference, however, is that the dope dealer's main agenda is simply to sell his product. If people buys it, he's successful. If they don't, he has failed.

An artist's agenda is, primarily, to express him-/herself. Selling units is secondary. An artist has no obligation to meet our demands or expectations - in fact, that would rather be the opposite of art.

Many people enjoyed the "Rocky" series. Still, they don't demand that Sylvester Stallone play a boxer in every movie he makes.

Yep! Artist's launches website, stick u with a considerable fee for joining, promise goodies(t-shirts) but never delivers...

with Prince, the almighty $$$ is his main agenda.. always bitching about being ripped off but at the same time ripping off his fans.`

I'm sure that money has been an important factor in certain decisions that Prince has made, especially ones where it should be (matters concerning PR, marketing, tours, etc). And I'm sure that a lot of those decisions could be questioned, from a fan's point of view as well as from a corporate standpoint.

However, I truly believe that money was NOT the reason why he started making music in the first place, nor the reason he is still doing it today.

Sometimes it's hard to comprehend for people who are not working with arts themselves, but to me, Prince is a perfect example of someone who makes music simply because he has to. Noone is telling him to do it, or how to do it.

He has recorded a large number of songs over the years, many of those not even being intended for release. That, to me, proves that he's not doing it for the money. Even if he didn't make a single dime, I'm sure he would still play guitar, write and record songs. And I respect that.

SquirrelMeat said:

RealMusician said:

Exactly.

Still, everyone seems to claim that they know exactly what's "wrong", "missing", "flawed", etc. in Prince's music, and that if he would just let someone else be his producer, all of those things would be "corrected".

As if there was some kind of general consensus about how the music should sound - that everybody knows about, expect Prince himself...

No, everyone else is having an opinion. No one is claiming what is right or wrong.

Exactly.These are just opinions,nothing more,nothing less.Art will always be judged by those who buy and listen to it.

SoulAlive said:

SquirrelMeat said:

No, everyone else is having an opinion. No one is claiming what is right or wrong.

Exactly.These are just opinions,nothing more,nothing less.Art will always be judged by those who buy and listen to it.

I never could understand the smug "if you don't like it, why don't you do it yourself?" attitude. Its naive to think that artists only release art to be fully and passively embraced, its bound to be critiqued and analyzed no matter how good it is.

Harlepolis said:

SoulAlive said:

Exactly.These are just opinions,nothing more,nothing less.Art will always be judged by those who buy and listen to it.

I never could understand the smug "if you don't like it, why don't you do it yourself?" attitude. Its naive to think that artists only release art to be fully and passively embraced, its bound to be critiqued and analyzed no matter how good it is.

Yep I don't like that snobby "I'm a real musician so therefore you can't criticize my music" mentality.My feeling is,if you don't want something to be judged/critiqued or analyzed,then don't release it! Keep it for your own personal pleasure.

SoulAlive said:

Harlepolis said:

I never could understand the smug "if you don't like it, why don't you do it yourself?" attitude. Its naive to think that artists only release art to be fully and passively embraced, its bound to be critiqued and analyzed no matter how good it is.

Yep I don't like that snobby "I'm a real musician so therefore you can't criticize my music" mentality.My feeling is,if you don't want something to be judged/critiqued or analyzed,then don't release it! Keep it for your own personal pleasure.

That's that type of snobbery I can't stand. It don't matter if you play instruments or not, if your music's off, it deserves a critical opinion. Things would suck if people were told to "accept it as it is".

Timmy84 said:

SoulAlive said:

Yep I don't like that snobby "I'm a real musician so therefore you can't criticize my music" mentality.My feeling is,if you don't want something to be judged/critiqued or analyzed,then don't release it! Keep it for your own personal pleasure.

That's that type of snobbery I can't stand. It don't matter if you play instruments or not, if your music's off, it deserves a critical opinion. Things would suck if people were told to "accept it as it is".

Of course we must accept it as it is. What's the alternative? No artist is going to change or re-do their work, just because we complain about it. Again: artists don't cater, they create.

We don't have to buy it, or listen to it, or like it, though. But accept it, yes, we must.

RealMusician said:

Timmy84 said:

That's that type of snobbery I can't stand. It don't matter if you play instruments or not, if your music's off, it deserves a critical opinion. Things would suck if people were told to "accept it as it is".

Of course we must accept it as it is. What's the alternative? No artist is going to change or re-do their work, just because we complain about it. Again: artists don't cater, they create.

We don't have to buy it, or listen to it, or like it, though. But accept it, yes, we must.

True,but that still doesn't mean people can't critique it or give their honest opinion of it.No one is telling the artist to change or re-do their work.But if you release a crap album,folks have every right to say it's crap

...

[Edited 7/28/11 3:51am]

SquirrelMeat said:

The longer prince sits on materal, the more he tinkers and over produces it, Endorphine Machine being the worst example.

I agree.

You might have heard of this:

Philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once established three questions as the basis for criticism of any work of art, which has been frequently used since.

1. What was the artist trying to accomplish?

2. How well did he accomplish it?

3. Was it worth doing?

When discussing Prince, it seems that most people tend to answer question #1 with either:

"to repeat the success of his best-selling work, with something that will sound just about the same, only better"

or: "to please ME specifically, with exactly the kind of music that he knows I like".

In either case, the answer to question #2 will then usually be negative.

SoulAlive said:

RealMusician said:

Of course we must accept it as it is. What's the alternative? No artist is going to change or re-do their work, just because we complain about it. Again: artists don't cater, they create.

We don't have to buy it, or listen to it, or like it, though. But accept it, yes, we must.

True,but that still doesn't mean people can't critique it or give their honest opinion of it.No one is telling the artist to change or re-do their work.But if you release a crap album,folks have every right to say it's crap

...

[Edited 7/28/11 3:51am]

Right and why is classical music being brought up? As if that hasn't been criticized? I mean I get what RealMusician is getting at but come on lol

I wish "Little Red Corvette" didn't have that high pitch synth in it.