Life's A Parade!!! OR IS it a Charade 4 U?

IF So...climb the mountains and lie under the cherry moon!

I'm feeling pretty good, and this is due 2 the re-discovery of 'Under The Cherry Moon / Parade'

It really uplifted and inspired me in ways 2 make this video! I hope it does 4 u as well!

Last year it celebrated it's 25 year anniversary, and it's been 26 years now, BUT Life is still nice, and it's never 2 late 4 appreciation of this remarkable album!

Please share with me some of your favorite moments from this album? Also details I may have overlooked in the discussion of this album! Most likely U have many, & I am curious 2 hear them!

Thanks a lot in advance!

Nice opening

Parade era is one that just always get's good response and feel good conversation

OldFriends4Sale said:

Nice opening

Parade era is one that just always get's good response and feel good conversation

Thanks a lot OldFriends!

It does; right? Never realized how inspiring and how good it makes me feel.

I learned so much from this album by reading through old threads usually moderated by you giving some awesome details! Thanks for all the info and for watching!

My favorite part of the album is the last twenty seconds of the end of Mountains where Eric and Atlanta have their horn breakdown, PURE 100% bliss, if I could clip that part and make it a ringtone, Life would be so nice.

UncleGrandpa said:

My favorite part of the album is the last twenty seconds of the end of Mountains where Eric and Atlanta have their horn breakdown, PURE 100% bliss, if I could clip that part and make it a ringtone, Life would be so nice.

Fading that song juuuuuust when they were about to raise hell was a pure fuck up. How in the pits of hell could somebody edit that song?

Loved it when I thought it was complete, was blown away when I finally stumbled upon the 12 inch two years ago.

Another thing, I just hope the COMPLETE Clare Fischer score gets released one day.

Everyone come behold little girl Wendy's parade
The show will proceed unless it should rain strawberry lemonade

It's strange how your mind works when Love is in power
One learns 2 care and appreciate a flower
What makes others want 2 change your mind?
All the things I've seen, life is so sublime

The sun set in my heart this afternoon
4 2 friends of mine got stuck in the snow
In Uptown when winter's alarmin'

Old Friends 4 Sale
Get em while their still hot
Watch out they'll kiss U till they get what U got
And they'll show U the friends that their not
Old Friends 4 Sale

Welcome, this is where I live
This is where I dream my dreams

Nothing comes 4 free now
If U want 2 be with me now
What's it gonna be now

Heaven will be here on earth
If we just try 2 love

Everybody makes suggestions but the words don't rhyme
Decisions they don't have 2 live by are easy ones 2 make
Why can't they love me 4 what I am

Definitely one of my favourite Prince albums.

The feeling is very unique, very European and earthily quirky. You just feel the warm Cote d'Azur spring and summer breeze when you listen to this album. I've been to Nice several times (I love that city) and the album fits it perfectly. He captured that feel so bloody well and it fits so well with the movie, too. I just can't describe this warm feeling of South France the album evokes in me. It was a brilliant period, fashion-wise, music-wise, image-wise etc. He knew what he was doing and he did it so well.

It's the album that cemented my fandom back when I was a teen. I remember buying this with my pocket money about a week after it was released in the UK, and I have loved it ever since.

Great album, great extended versions and b-sides, great tour. Just fucking great.

My friends gave me a hard time (affectionately) about this album and liking Prince, but I stood my ground and i'm glad I did. Parade brings many rewards.

Not one of my favourites, I do really like Mountains, Girls & Boys, Anotherlover, Under The Cherry Moon and Sometimes It Snows. But really not fussed about the rest. Kiss is OK but the others I can do without. It's not that they're horrible, they just don't move me in any way and it's not an album I often reach for.

For me it is a big blip in the middle of the amazing period from Purple Rain to Lovesexy.

Parade is a masterpiece.

TheEnglishGent said:

Not one of my favourites, I do really like Mountains, Girls & Boys, Anotherlover, Under The Cherry Moon and Sometimes It Snows. But really not fussed about the rest. Kiss is OK but the others I can do without. It's not that they're horrible, they just don't move me in any way and it's not an album I often reach for.

For me it is a big blip in the middle of the amazing period from Purple Rain to Lovesexy.

it's the album that i always say is my fave prince album (with dirty mind)... it's amazing, original, clever, soulful, honest and it sounds beautiful too, throw in one of the finest 7 inches of the 80's (kiss), the b sides, the tour, (the out-takes) and the whole look and you've got possibly Prince's most cohesive and well delivered thematic album... and his belly button is on the spine of the LP... what more do yu want? my one criticism... that leather jacket... euwww!

[Edited 7/10/12 14:25pm]

Ahh the French album, perhaps i need to go to France to appreciate this album more?. I feel i will like it more one day. I really love a lot of the outtakes, alexa de paris, love or $ (why weren't these included on "The b-sides"?), old friends for sale, nothing compares 2 u more than a lot of the album tracks.

Toofunkyinhere said:

Ahh the French album, perhaps i need to go to France to appreciate this album more?. I feel i will like it more one day. I really love a lot of the outtakes, alexa de paris, love or $ (why weren't these included on "The b-sides"?), old friends for sale, nothing compares 2 u more than a lot of the album tracks.

Prince's ego rushed it since a lot of the outtakes are in the movie too and even Mia Bocca which wasn't released until 1987-Jill Jones

Parade album outtakes B-sides should have been an album with a lot more music, the band and proteges should have been in the movie Sheila E Jill the Revolution the Family

Two random Parade stories:

1) This was the album that caused my Cousin Alice to abandon Prince. Alice and me are about a year apart and we went to the same school for a while. For a year, we both followed every move Prince made but, in a blink, she seemed to be cooling on him while I was becoming more devoted. When Parade came out, I ran out to the mall and got it and we had a listening party at my grandmothers. As each song played I could see her growing less and less interested. I quite enjoyed it but in the span of an hour I could tell her connection to Prince had completely broken.

2) While driving in the car from North Carolina to South Carolina, I had the Parade cassette jamming in the car stereo. When Do U Lie came on, the slowness of the song caused my mom to slow down the car so much that we almost got in a wreck on the Interstate.

Good times, good times.

Everybody loves a good parade

As for the album, still a great album today.

^

I very recently upgraded from dinky earbuds to better headphones, and they made a HUGE difference with this album. HUGE! I enjoyed Parade before, but now I'm really loving it (except for maybe the freaking cow bell in Life Can Be So Nice, but at least it's crisper sounding now... Haha...)

It's definitely a sunny, breezy album! The raining strawberry lemonade line in Christopher Tracy's Parade always makes me smile, and I LOVE what sounds like an accordion (?) in the background of Do U Lie?. It adds to the album's whole "French" feel, aside from the obvious, i.e. the girl speaking French at the song's beginning. Also, as much as I enjoy guitar heavy Prince albums, Parade leaves me wishing for more piano playing. (I wonder if the piano helps make this album sound "European"? or maybe it's Clare Fischer's orchestration?)

EyeJester7, I was thinking about what you almost called Prince's "identity crisis." It could be related to him being so prolific during this period, like, how do you deal with/make sense of all these ideas and try to create a cohesive vision or identity as an artist? I'm probably going to sound like a tool for repeating myself, but I mentioned the movie 8 1/2 in another thread (in reference to the Mia Bocca video) and it kind of works here with Parade too, or really just the movie's last scene. Not as cute as those geese, but if you have 9 minutes to kill, check this video out:

.

[Edited 7/11/12 18:04pm]

The best parts of Parade:

The transitional drumming from New Position to I Wonder U to UTCM. He did all the drumming for three songs in one take.

The bass on New Position...sweet

The slow groove of I Wonder U..and the ending of it with that heaviness...and that muted horn throughout..and the girls laid back vocal...and the geetar picking at the very end

In UTCM where Prince goes "thats alright" in the breakdown bridge..and you can hear the horns having a field day with headphones

How Girls and Boys has that push me pull you rubbery bottom like Bowie's Fame. When the girls sing I Love U Baby, I Love U so Much--damn!The kazoo keyboard and the linn drum "kuhh!" sound at the end

How Life Can Be So Nice starts up real fast and has that "kah" linn sound at the beginning with the keyboard lines..then it stops when Prince starts to sing...when he says "Kisses never lie" it all starts up again--this is Roadhouse Garden material--really. Then near the end it all comes crashing together with the vocals going wild! the drums live being played furiosly, then it ends abruptly. I see where D did with Untitled.

How Venus just pops up giving the sense of having just reached climax and now your laying there letting it happen....and the mournful horns polaying near the end--I picture an overcast dock when they play..and that last piano key played

Then the very best part is the opening of Mountains..that linn drum making it like rubber and the "puh puck' sounds interlaces throughout the fake heavy drums...the falsetto--nice and "dry"...the part that says "the sea would one day overflow with all your tears, and love will always leave ya lonely"..the ethereal choir (or is it synth) that gets higher in register...the horn blasts like staccato keyoard synths..the break fucking down...the part where he says "guitar and drums on the one, huh!"..then the guitar strumming..slurp..then part where he goes "and the girls say/sing"...

the bass seprated in Do U Lie...when he says "mama mama" or something like that..and when he comes back for the bridge and says "when I lie..."

the JB geetar lick that opens Kiss..almost like a reverse of when Venus starts, inside out..the push push sound like moving furniture...the denseness of the production..sounds like its "air tight"...the drum sound and that synth tha spounds like nothing else...the wah wah geetar part..saying Dynasty, one of the only few pop culture references hes ever used..the ending geetar licks like its being strangled

the droning strains of Anotherlover..and the drums beating like they're waitng for something..then the boom of the piano and sludge...the bottomness of the whole song..his lackadaisical singing..(this song is POP Life inside out btw)...how the girls etc sing with Prince a few beats behind then it all comes together for the chrous after the second verse...the geetar strains in th e bridge..and when he says "baaad"...thers gonna be a riot and when they say that thers that piano key rise real quick


Sometimes Snows In April..The "ahs ahs oh ohhhs", the tuba sounding Prince singing with that first ones..then the real horn blwoing...the strumming of the acoustic...the chorus voices mixed on the title part and when they sing "sometinmes I feel so bad"...when he says "now looking at his picture I realize"...

rdhull said:

Thanks everyone for ALL you have said So far!

I am glad so many of you share the same experience as me on this 'Masterpiece' of an album!

It makes my heart glad that you all can appreciate this with me, so many have yet to discover Parade, and when they do..I am sure they will love it as much as many of us do here!!!

kewlschool said:

Everybody loves a good parade

As for the album, still a great album today.

Hahahahahaha..Well you are right about that!

EyeJester7 said:

Thanks everyone for ALL you have said So far!

I am glad so many of you share the same experience as me on this 'Masterpiece' of an album!

It makes my heart glad that you all can appreciate this with me, so many have yet to discover Parade, and when they do..I am sure they will love it as much as many of us do here!!!

I didn't think it was very good upon release. Trust, save for Kiss, the record was underwhelming after 1999, Rain, and Day overall back then. It has since been romanticized and for good reason though. Hell, Prince wasn't even feeling it that much if one is to believe what was written in DMSR. But isnt that how many great works are: 'discovered' as great later?

LittleBear said:

^

I very recently upgraded from dinky earbuds to better headphones, and they made a HUGE difference with this album. HUGE! I enjoyed Parade before, but now I'm really loving it (except for maybe the freaking cow bell in Life Can Be So Nice, but at least it's crisper sounding now... Haha...)

It's definitely a sunny, breezy album! The raining strawberry lemonade line in Christopher Tracy's Parade always makes me smile, and I LOVE what sounds like an accordion (?) in the background of Do U Lie?. It adds to the album's whole "French" feel, aside from the obvious, i.e. the girl speaking French at the song's beginning. Also, as much as I enjoy guitar heavy Prince albums, Parade leaves me wishing for more piano playing. (I wonder if the piano helps make this album sound "European"? or maybe it's Clare Fischer's orchestration?)

EyeJester7, I was thinking about what you almost called Prince's "identity crisis." It could be related to him being so prolific during this period, like, how do you deal with/make sense of all these ideas and try to create a cohesive vision or identity as an artist? I'm probably going to sound like a tool for repeating myself, but I mentioned the movie 8 1/2 in another thread (in reference to the Mia Bocca video) and it kind of works here with Parade too, or really just the movie's last scene. Not as cute as those geese, but if you have 9 minutes to kill, check this video out:

I just have to personally thank you for your comment LittleBear!

I am now encouraged to watch this whole move! I love French movies! Movies like these always inspire and excite me!

Also as to everything you said, it really had me smiling and laughing! I totally agree with what you have said! Much love and respect to you!

Love the open cut Christopher Tracey's Parade, it introduced us to color and new sounds and diversity, I would listen to it over and over because it had so many layers and sounds swirling & racing around

EyeJester7 said:

I just have to personally thank you for your comment LittleBear!

I am now encouraged to watch this whole move! I love French movies! Movies like these always inspire and excite me!

Also as to everything you said, it really had me smiling and laughing! I totally agree with what you have said! Much love and respect to you!

Aww... Thank YOU for the thread! Also, Italian movies are pretty cool too...

Did you notice the music in the 8 1/2 clip? Nino Rota composed a lot of movie scores, and there are elements of his music that have the Parade vibe. (Or I guess since Prince came later, there are elements of Parade that have the Nino Rota vibe... Haha...) Here's one example:

Btw, the gif OldFriends4Sale posted above reminded me. I meant to say in my 1st reply that I love Prince's look during this era. So dapper! The black and white movie and photos really made his eyeliner pop! (Haven't noticed the cuff links before, but I'll pay attention now. )