All Possibilities: The 'Purple Rain' Story

http://www.npr.org/2014/1...rain-story

Interesting--I finally got around to reading Alan Light's The Holy or the Broken--Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of "Hallelujah" over the Thanksgiving holiday. I did not know about this book, so I'm intrigued. I expect I'll give it a read. Thanks.

kenkamken said:

All Possibilities: The 'Purple Rain' Story

http://www.npr.org/2014/1...rain-story

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Rather flimsy and superficial, but then that's to be expected. I don't have high hopes for his book, but I still think it deserves a prominent place of the Org's homepage, certainly more so than stale links to concerts that happened months ago and non-events like the Facebook Q&A.

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But then Prince deleting his social media accounts is apparently also "not news enough" for this site.

I'm going on vacation next week - and this is one of the books I'm taking. Thanks for posting the interview!

This was a really good interview and so was the accompanying excerpt. Thanks for posting it. Anxious to read this book now.

BartVanHemelen said:

kenkamken said:

All Possibilities: The 'Purple Rain' Story

http://www.npr.org/2014/1...rain-story

.

Rather flimsy and superficial, but then that's to be expected. I don't have high hopes for his book, but I still think it deserves a prominent place of the Org's homepage, certainly more so than stale links to concerts that happened months ago and non-events like the Facebook Q&A.

.

But then Prince deleting his social media accounts is apparently also "not news enough" for this site.

I think it was to be expected, considering the venue--honestly more indepth than a lot of NPR's pop culture bits. But I'm hoping that's more a matter of where and to whom Light was talking than it was what he actually had to say. And actually I think there's a lot in his limited comments on the way that Prince has constructed his own world--ideal for creating whatever he wants, whenever he wants, and the limits that also causes. If you want to know why it's been so long since his work has excited many of his fans, it's probably right here:

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"It's amazing to be around someone who's constructed a world that enables them to create at any moment, wherever they are. If it's 4 o'clock in the morning and he's in Dayton and wants to go in and record, everybody knows they have to get everything set up for him to do that. And that means that there's nothing that touches him that he doesn't go out and bring in. There's no casual contact. There's no accidents in that world. It means entering this very strange bubble when you're with him and when you're around him."

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Think about the bolded for awhile--where's anything beyond artistic refining ever going to come from in such a hermetically sealed environment? I'm pleased by some things Prince has done over recent years, but I think you can hear the effects of what Light describes intensifying as he's pulled further and further away. Again, not a stunning insight--and one many of us have had--but an insight, nonetheless. And I think he'll probably move beyond Purple Rain to discuss the ways Prince's success then led to this sort of subsequent career, for better and worse.
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And as I said in my first post on this thread, I just read his Hallelujah book, and it was actually pretty good--and while I don't know a ton about Buckley, I've done quite a bit of listening to and reading Cohen (as well as a fair amount of the stuff written about him), and Light's take on things, while not earthshattering, was generally intelligent and insightful. While it's unlikely he'll be able to dig up much that those of us around here haven't already heard about concerning Purple Rain, I'm still thinking he might come up with something worth reading. So I'll give it a read when it comes.

[Edited 12/8/14 18:40pm]

Just started reading the book on my Kindle (or rather: using Amazon's cloud reader) and boy it is irritating that Light doesn't think "soundtrack" is one single word.

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EDIT: Have read 20% (hmmm, either this book isn't that thick or I'm reading really fast) and so far it's OK but I don't think I've seen anything new of remarkable. The usual suspects are interviewed; would have been nice if he'd been able to find some fresh interview subjects.

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[Edited 12/9/14 11:41am]

BartVanHemelen said:

Just started reading the book on my Kindle (or rather: using Amazon's cloud reader) and boy it is irritating that Light doesn't think "soundtrack" is one single word.

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EDIT: Have read 20% (hmmm, either this book isn't that thick or I'm reading really fast) and so far it's OK but I don't think I've seen anything new of remarkable. The usual suspects are interviewed; would have been nice if he'd been able to find some fresh interview subjects.

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[Edited 12/9/14 11:41am]

Like I said, I'll check it out--I figured the ground would be pretty much gone over--who else is left to talk to, honestly? The best boy? The caterers?

"Sound track?"--sounds annoying, all right.

BartVanHemelen said:

Just started reading the book on my Kindle (or rather: using Amazon's cloud reader) and boy it is irritating that Light doesn't think "soundtrack" is one single word.

.

EDIT: Have read 20% (hmmm, either this book isn't that thick or I'm reading really fast) and so far it's OK but I don't think I've seen anything new of remarkable. The usual suspects are interviewed; would have been nice if he'd been able to find some fresh interview subjects.

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[Edited 12/9/14 11:41am]

Yes, I don't see the point in yet another book based on the same sources.