So I was 13 and we were having a big family reunion on my Mom's side. She had 11 brothers and sisters and many of them had 2 or 3 children so you're talking about 50 or 60 really rural North Carolina folk stuffed into a high school gym somewhere. Well I was 13, had discovered Prince within the last year and most of my faves at the time were the more risque of his songs. So anyway, me and my cousin Alice were bored. Alice was a big Prince fan too but she was one of those that fell off, started listening to heavy metal in 1987 and lost her from the Prince family after that. But at the time she was as rabid a fan as me so we hatched the idea to hijack the big boombox that was playing country music and put a Prince tape in there. We knew people weren't really paying much attention to the music, it was background noise so we thought we could probably sneak in a few songs and we were right. We snuck the "Purple Rain" tape in there and played "Darling Nikki" and no one really noticed, a whole bunch of hillbillies were still chatting away. I wanted to play "Let's Pretend We're Married" so we snuck over and played a few minutes but I stopped it before the "@#$# the taste out of your mouth line". We wanted to try one more song so we waited a few minutes and when attention was away from the music we put "Controversy" tape in and played "Jack U Off". No reaction at first and then slowly the talking stopped and all of the sudden 100 rural eyes were focused on the boombox. Alice and I were under the table, watching it unfold. There was a look of shock on the faces that made the whole thing worth it. My Uncle Paul was pretty cool and he could have been an a-hole about it but he went over to the boombox turned it off and said "I don't think we're all ready for that yet." I realize this story is rather pointless and it will disappear to Page 2 and beyond within a day but the point of it is that these are the life experiences that we are having to process through right now. Prince was tied into so many of our lives, the good, bad, and funny moments. It's hard to let that go.

I'm glad I saw it before it slipped to page 2. Thanks for sharing, that's an awesome story

Bonus story: My cousin Alice and I, once again when she was still a Prince fan, would record fake interviews with Prince on my tape recorder. She would be an interviewer and I would get to be Prince and I would have all these mysterious answers and speak very haltingly like Prince. So before people pretended to be Prince on the Internet, there was the old days where geeky 13 years olds would make unscripted recordings on cheap Maxell casettes.

Aerogram said:

I don't have a better story that this one, but so long as we're talking family... I was just getting into Prince in 1983 and had bought DM, Controversy and 1999. I quickly made tapes to listen to on my Walkman. I was not that familiar with all the songs yet, my English was rudimentary. Well the Walkman I had was one of the best and most compact, it was an Aiwa, and very coveted. One day my sister was sunbathing in the backyard and i decided to lay there too, but not liking to be in the sun for tno long, I made frequent trips to the kitchen, leaving the Walkman with my sister for a few minutes. Bored, she had seized the Walkman so when I let her listen while I tried to tan a bit. After a while, she looked at me, her little br0ther, all smiles and her eyes really... hum... contented. She said Damn! What are you listening to now, brother, this guy is moaning like he's about to come! Making it clear that she was feeling very aroused herself. She handed me the headset so I could tell her what song that was and it was Do Me Baby.

It was my sister that was indirectly responsible for the "Great Johnson Family Reunion Disaster". It was her "1999" tape that I listened to secretly that got me into Prince, "Let's Pretend We're Married" pushing me over the age into Prince fandom. My sister stopped listening to Prince regularly in 1985 but the damage had been done. The seeds were planted in hearing the creative use of profanity that only Prince could pull off.

me 2

DreamRose311 said:

I'm glad I saw it before it slipped to page 2. Thanks for sharing, that's an awesome story

GottaLetitgo said:

Bonus story: My cousin Alice and I, once again when she was still a Prince fan, would record fake interviews with Prince on my tape recorder. She would be an interviewer and I would get to be Prince and I would have all these mysterious answers and speak very haltingly like Prince. So before people pretended to be Prince on the Internet, there was the old days where geeky 13 years olds would make unscripted recordings on cheap Maxell casettes.

Too funny. My friends and I would do stuff like that on tape recorders all the time.

1985: The year of the family reunion was also the year of the 8th grade in-class project that involved Prince. I was a Prince newbie but 1985 was the year that I went from knowing nothing about him to knowing everything I could find. I bought everything from "For You" to "AWIAD" and just took a crash course in purpleology. Well my 8th grade Honors class, about 20 students, we decided to do a talent show in class and I coordinated with a kid named James who was also a big Prince fan and we did a "rehearsal" where we sang "Raspberry Beret" a capella...it was as bad as hell but both of us thought we nailed it. We decided that for our act (I think we had one other person I can't remember) we were going to lip sync Pop Life. And I think all of us were going to dress up like Prince, I supposed one of us could have been Brown Mark or Dr. but I think we decided we would all be Prince. But you see I was a heavy set nerd with no cool clothes whatsoever so pulling off Prince was not an easy task. I wore a purple shirt I bought at Sears and some courdoroys (I couldn't pull of jeans with my proportions) and some cheap sunglasses. And we performed Pop Life in front of our fellow Honors classmates. Now performing it wasn't bad, I was in a zone and for that 3 minutes and 41 seconds I felt like and thought I was Prince Rogers Nelson. Watching the videotape back, my teacher videotaped it so we could watch the next day, was as painful as a root canal without anesthetic. What I saw before me was this really awkward Prince impersonator making weird hand gestures and basically rocking back and forth (thankfully no splits were attempted). My dreams of being the next Prince were shattered that day. Also, any hopes of ever running for political office for fears that the tape may show up some day and truly show my limitations.

Love all these stories! It's so nice to take a break from the shit that is reality!