Author | Message |
Prince Reveals His Sense Of Humor (New York Post)
Hello Orgers...Check out my Prince piece I did for the New York Post...A lot of the info us hardcore heads already know....But to the general public Prince being Prince is a revelation...lol
Great talking with Dez, Fink and Charlie Murphy....Enjoy....
---- Prince reveals his sense ...on Twitter
Last Updated: 12:49 PM, August 25, 2013
By Keith Murphy On Tuesday, Aug. 13, at about 5:47 p.m., Prince Rogers Nelson did the seemingly unthinkable: The notoriously private music icon, who once declared “The Internet’s completely over,” joined Twitter. Surely this master lyricist would drop some (diamonds and) pearls of wisdom. His opening missive? PRINCE’S 1ST TWEET... TESTING 1, 2. . .” The follow-up was just as tongue-in-cheek: “PRINCE’S 2ND TWEET.”
By the third tweet, Prince, using the handle of his female rock act 3rdeyegirl, had found his groove. “Did eye add too much pepper?” he asked, posting a shot of a salad shrouded in the seasoning. From there, he turned the selfie on its head (his portrait was literally a cloud of smoke) and displayed an irreverent sense of self-awareness, posting a popular meme: an image of himself, circa 1984, wearing a puffy shirt and holding a red flower, with the words “hi im Prince.” The Internet went wild. “I should probably stop tweeting:@3rdeye-girl,” tweeted one of thousands of fans who sent messages to Prince. “They’re probably annoyed.”
“Actually,” a playful Prince answered cryptically. “Actually what?” the follower chimed back. Prince: “Exactly.”
In just minutes, Prince had already mastered the Twitterverse.
“There are certain celebrities who you dream would join Twitter because you never get to see their day-to-day,” says Jermaine Hall, editor-in-chief of the music magazine Vibe. “Prince is one of them. Before Twitter, I don’t even know if we ever thought of Prince eating salad. It’s like, ‘Oh wow, you actually eat?’ ”
Just days after his Twitter debut, Prince revealed the likely impetus behind his sudden willingness to share, tweeting the cover art for his new single, “Breakfast Can Wait”: a photo of comedian Dave Chappelle, dressed as the musician in his “Purple Rain” days and holding a plate of pancakes.
That image represents one of the funniest sketches from Comedy Central’s now-defunct “Chappelle’s Show,” when comedian Charlie Murphy narrates the true story of the time he, his superstar brother Eddie and some pals faced off against Prince and his band the Revolution for a game of basketball. A 5-foot-2 Prince, dressed in full New Romantic gear, dunks, humps the ball, levitates in the air and even serves a pancake breakfast to his stunned foes. “Game, blouses,” Chappelle-as-Prince deadpans.
“I think it’s brilliant,” Charlie Murphy tells The Post of the new record art. “People have been asking me, ‘Is it a joke?’ It’s not. The story was true, and the pancakes were off-the-hook. If Prince came out with a pancake line, he could compete with IHOP.”
With friends, Prince has always operated in the world of the absurd. “Prince can be hilarious,” says former Revolution keyboardist Matt Fink (better known as Doctor Fink), who currently plays in the tribute band the Purple Xperience. “If anybody should have their own reality show, it’s him. It would be so funny.”
Fink remembers how the whole band used to go out on the town in silk pajamas, at Prince’s behest. And the time in 1983 when Prince staged a fight to prank a music writer at a concert. “The guy was backstage witnessing a knock-down, drag-out fight among the band,” Fink says. “We were throwing furniture and flipping over the tables. The writer was horrified. I think that fight lasted five minutes before Prince started laughing and broke it up.”
In the ’80s, when Prince wasn’t filming his own bizarre comedy sketches featuring his bandmates — Fink recalls one in which Prince playfully led his group through a satire of an over-the-top church service, complete with a wailing preacher man — he was pranking airport security.
“We would find an empty wheelchair and put Prince in it with sunglasses on, roll him into an area where there was a lot of traffic and leave him there,” says Dez Dickerson, former Prince guitarist and owner and founder of the Pavilion Group, which operates a social marketing agency. “Then Prince would fall out of the wheelchair, and people would scramble to help.”
However, one joke went awry when Prince decided to take a bullhorn from a plane’s emergency equipment.
“We were sitting out on the tarmac and they announced, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, someone has stolen a piece of airline equipment,’ ” Dickerson says. He and Prince were
taken off the plane and locked up, “but it ended up being funny anyway,” Dickerson explains, “because Prince was signing autographs at the jail.”
And then there was the time Prince invited Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson roller skating a few years ago. In his recently released book “Mo’ Meta Blues: The World According to Questlove,” the Roots drummer and “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” bandleader details the crazy experience.
“Prince was carrying a briefcase in his hand, and he was acting all myserious, like it contained the glowing substance from ‘Pulp Fiction’ or something,” Thompson writes. After confiscating Thompson’s cellphone, Prince proceeded to reveal the contents of the case. “He took out the strangest, most singular pair of roller skates I had ever seen. They were clear skates that lit up, and the wheels sent a multicolored spark trail into your path. Man. He could skate like he could sing.”
Flash-forward to last Friday. It’s 2 a.m. and a 55-year-old Prince, flaunting a shiny throwback afro, is putting on a surprise performance at New York’s City Winery (one of several rumored appearances). His New Power Generation band is locked in a nasty groove. Then it happens. Someone in the audience yells out, “Game, blouses!” Prince shakes his head and laughs. He’s in on the joke.
http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/music/his_royal_weirdness_bJjrMqIOe9EqSiiiBAF8YI [Edited 8/25/13 22:37pm] | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
Call me crazy, but wasn't the rollerskating piece satirical? That's how I read it. | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
I'm calling u crazy...lol
But on the real, there's nothing tongue and cheek about that Questlove story... | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
Hilarious! I read it and thought it was a spoof on waiting for a secret aftershow. Forreal. | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
This article should serve as a commentary as just how sad the average person's daily life must be that they are hanging on any cele's twitter activity.......and the fact that actual space in a news paper is covering that activity is even worse. | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
Why would that be more sad than spending almost every day on this site discussing Prince...? The writer of the article gets at least some money for his time.
. [Edited 8/26/13 3:46am] | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
By St. Boogar and all the saints at the backside door of Purgatory! | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
90% of this site has NOTHING 2 do with Prince. | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
Yes...yes he did.... | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
Sweet, comprehensive and humorous. Well written, murphdrag.
| |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
What up Murph. | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
What up doe......*tips hat.... | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
Thanks for posting this. Loved the read | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
Nice read . Thanks for sharing. Is everybody wet? | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
Would you rather every news article center around the tragedies and terrors of daily life for most people? Personally, imho, a news article like this is enjoyable from time to time. News, in general, is way to focused on the negative, on pain, on strife, on struggles, and is just plan depressing. Yes, we need to know what is going on in the world, because we can't change it, if we don't know about it. But something like this, something positive about an artist, rather than something tearing an artist down, is fun and positive and is a nice read at times. It's a reminder that not everyone in the world is miserable in their lives and their living situations. I would love a news section (on any news outlet) that focused strictly on positive, light-hearted, and moving stories that inspire someone. The entire premise of the article was Prince revealing his sense of humor, and was not just centered on his tweeting. It only used Prince tweeting as a set-up to discuss his sense of humor. For an artist that has remained "mysterious" most of his career, very private, this is something that is just fun.
I would prefer an article like this that umpteen thousand artlces that have been posted recently about Miley and her choice of dress and antics on-stage at the VMAs this year. Or the umpteen thousand articles talking about Paris Hilton or the Kardashian's or Lohan's misdeeds. | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
Nice read. 99% of my posts are ironic. Maybe this post sides with the other 1%. | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
I understand all of your comments but they don't really relate 2 my comment. People really need 2 spend more TIME getting 2 know themselves and their families than consuming more entertainment which takes them away from themselves.
That is all I am saying. There is nothing wrong with the article itself. | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |
Graycap23 said: This article should serve as a commentary as just how sad the average person's daily life must be that they are hanging on any cele's twitter activity.....and the fact that actual space in a news paper is covering that activity is even worse. Don't worry. It's the New York Post. Calling it a newspaper is a bit of a stretch. Also, I have a feeling this probably didn't even appear in the print edition. Even a rag like the Post isn't going to devote this many column inches to a story like this. I'm thinking this was a web-only piece. Can we get some confirmation on that? | |
- E-mail - orgNote - Report post to moderator |