Short answer - 2010 until now, with me about to turn 33, seems to be when my Prince obsession is at its peak (at least, that's no doubt what my family and friends are hoping )

As for my story, though I'm sure I heard his earlier work on the radio and just hadn't yet put it all together, I first discovered Prince during his D&P era, but it wasn't until I was a little bit older and understood a bit more that I fell in love with the Symbol album.

Even so, I was content to wear out my tapes of D&P, and eventually The Black Album, without any strong desire to discover his other music (prior or after). It wasn't long before I got dragged into the world of Top 40 commercial radio and that was that. For a while.

Then, midway through 2002, I discovered Amazon for the first time and was keen to try it out. On a fairly random whim, I searched for Prince and found The Rainbow Children, which ended up being the first album I had bought since The Black Album (small difference!). From there I bought N.E.W.S. and then every commercially available album after that, but dragged my feet for too long online and missed out on a lot of the digital purchases.

Around the time he was last in Australia, I started to backtrack. Initially I had discovered torrents and thought I had a great moral code going, being that I would download music, listen to it, and if I liked more than a couple of songs I would buy the album. Unfortunately that fell apart when I downloaded way too many Prince albums, listened to them, fell in love with them and discovered I had downloaded "beyond my means" - so slowly I needed to go about filling in the blanks

Really, it was not until just before 20ten came out that I suddenly got really serious about it all. That's when I all but completed my album collection, started visiting here regularly, and was paying more attention to what Prince was up to, where he was touring, etc...

Then last year I made the last minute decision to fly to L.A. in May and saw 5 concerts in 10 days (including following him up to Fresno and San Jose via multiple busses and trains), talked my way into an afterparty and generally started to become a Prince groupie/nerd, good and proper.

By now, it's just a light-hearted joke with my friends, because his name is just coming up all over the place these days.

That said, I was recently explaining to a friend of a friend that I used to be more of a casual fan, but was now a lot more serious, when my friend said, "I'm sorry? At what point were you a 'casual' Prince fan??" so perhaps I've always been more into him than I thought

Even she would no doubt agree though that, with the possible exception of an overseas trip on 3 days notice (including a mad rush to get my passport renewed in time and buying the concert tickets minutes before the airport bus arrived because they'd only just been released), right now would have to be my purple peak

IstenSzek said:

i was a fan, a big big fan, since early 1988. but my fandom reached an absolute fever pitch

in 1994 when the whole come/gold era rolled into town and new tracks were being shipped

to radiostations without anyone knowing if they would ever end up on an official release or

what prince's next move would be. all you knew was that he had these incredible new cuts,

a whole new 'don't fuck with me' attitude and was playing incredible live shows chuck full of

new and vibrant material.

when i watched the video premiere of dolphin, i think that was the exact moment that my

fandom reached it's apex. i spent the entire afternoon rewinding that tape over and over

and over and over again.

then radio 3FM played 4 or 5 tracks off the "million dollar dat tape" and i listend to them on

my walkman, on my way to school, at school, during dinner at home, during homework, in

bed at night, heck even in the bath.

spent a lot of my pocketmoney on cassette tape bootlegs of his glam slam shows from '94

and was just in utter bliss the whole time.

i wouldn't say it's my favorit era tho it's one of my favorits but there was just something

about prince and his music at that time that swept a lot of fans into a frenzy. me included.

It would have been interesting to see how the "slave" years would have been if the internet was then what it is now. Would he have leaked any material? Would there have been live streamed concerts? He would have had a lot more ways to reach out to the fans and go around the record company.

rialb said:

IstenSzek said:

i was a fan, a big big fan, since early 1988. but my fandom reached an absolute fever pitch

in 1994 when the whole come/gold era rolled into town and new tracks were being shipped

to radiostations without anyone knowing if they would ever end up on an official release or

what prince's next move would be. all you knew was that he had these incredible new cuts,

a whole new 'don't fuck with me' attitude and was playing incredible live shows chuck full of

new and vibrant material.

when i watched the video premiere of dolphin, i think that was the exact moment that my

fandom reached it's apex. i spent the entire afternoon rewinding that tape over and over

and over and over again.

then radio 3FM played 4 or 5 tracks off the "million dollar dat tape" and i listend to them on

my walkman, on my way to school, at school, during dinner at home, during homework, in

bed at night, heck even in the bath.

spent a lot of my pocketmoney on cassette tape bootlegs of his glam slam shows from '94

and was just in utter bliss the whole time.

i wouldn't say it's my favorit era tho it's one of my favorits but there was just something

about prince and his music at that time that swept a lot of fans into a frenzy. me included.

It would have been interesting to see how the "slave" years would have been if the internet was then what it is now. Would he have leaked any material? Would there have been live streamed concerts? He would have had a lot more ways to reach out to the fans and go around the record company.

that would have been very interesting indeed. altho it would have taken away some of

the mysterie and vagueness of that era, i think.

but i'm certain he would have streamed the glam slam gigs back then

+

[Edited 7/5/12 0:47am]