Hi everybody,

I used to be on this site but took a break for a while thus I apologize if my post, questions, and comments are repetitive. Here is my point to you orgers

Looking back, I really clicked with the 80's and the 2000-2016 period. I am not sure why I can't feel a connection with his material from 1992-2000 (post Get off, Cream, and Sexy MF).

Do you all have a similar experience? If so, can you share!

I connect with all of it, but I have to say the period from 1991-1996 isn't as "top of mind" with me - especially when it comes to things like who was in the band, who the protegées were, etc.

I think it's partly because Prince was less visible during those years than he had been (all the fighting with WB) and also because of what was going on in my life at the time. I was working a full-time and a part-time job, and going to school part-time - for the better part of four years. I still loved Prince and bought all the music, but I wasn't involved in all the "peripheral" stuff like concerts and TV appearances. I was just too busy - and the internet hadn't really taken off yet, information about what he was doing wasn't as readily available. (Thank goodness - or I probably wouldn't have graduated. )

I do remember, though, the first time I saw Mayte shaking her ass onstage. I said to myself, "Okay...now who's this bitch?"

The 1940s to the 1960s.

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Not my thing really.

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It's always been TRC for me. Although.... I have given it another shot since he left and it's not as bad as I remember it, but still not particularly interesting or memorable overall.

Thank you guys

LOL @ darkroman.

In a way, it shows the versatility of the artist through a variety of music and styles. Some click more than others.

Nope, I love it all.

maybe the period where he went underground a bit. the era of one nite alone, rainbow children, news. not because i didn't like the music, i loved one nite alone but his music was hard to get ahold of in that era. Outside of that, I never lost touch with him and his doings, never. There may have been things or ideas I didn't like as much or whatever but there was always, always something worth listening to.

Militant said:

It's always been TRC for me. Although.... I have given it another shot since he left and it's not as bad as I remember it, but still not particularly interesting or memorable overall.

Amen to that! He totally lost me with The Rainbow Children. Musically, yeah it's interesting, and certainly nothing like we'd heard before to that point. There's a milky thickness about it that's nice. But lyrically - it can duck a sick.

I was in a weird place in my life when D&P came out and I was disconnected from it, and all things Prince, for about a year. (As in, it was a religious thing and I threw out all my secular music.)

Frankly, anything post 2001 has been hard to really dig into as before. It's certainly more hit n' miss that in the 20th century.

Good point you all! Thank you for responding.

I am fairly certain there are many of us out there who connected, disconnected, and reconnected over the course of the eras. Also changes in our own lives might have played a crucial role in not appreciating and coming to appreciate some material or the other way around.

TrivialPursuit said:

Militant said:

It's always been TRC for me. Although.... I have given it another shot since he left and it's not as bad as I remember it, but still not particularly interesting or memorable overall.

Amen to that! He totally lost me with The Rainbow Children. Musically, yeah it's interesting, and certainly nothing like we'd heard before to that point. There's a milky thickness about it that's nice. But lyrically - it can duck a sick.

I never got into TRC and I think it's the only album I haven't even revisited since 4/21. I will eventually but no time soon I don't think. I'm not too crazy about '96-'01 in general really. Of course there are many songs I do love, but as a whole I personally didn't love it.

I checked out from approximately 1996 to 2003. Once he released Musicology and I went to see the show, I was back on board again

KingSausage said:

The High era. A lot of that stuff just sounds cheap and uninspired, especially considering that TRC was just around the corner. Everything between 3121 and AOA. Although Lotus is pretty cool and 20ten is a guilty pleasure of mine, Planet Earth and MPLSoUND are two of my least favorite Prince albums. The live bootlegs from this era didn't do much for me. The one-off songs and Internet singles aren't his strongest material. And at times it seemed like he was such a trendy thing for other celebrities to squeal about, it just made him seem even more distant to me. Not distant in a good way, like during his heyday. But distant in almost a Mick Jagger way, if you follow.

Co-sign on all of this. Grateful the period ended with AOA to HnR 2.

leslievette said:

TrivialPursuit said:

Amen to that! He totally lost me with The Rainbow Children. Musically, yeah it's interesting, and certainly nothing like we'd heard before to that point. There's a milky thickness about it that's nice. But lyrically - it can duck a sick.

I never got into TRC and I think it's the only album I haven't even revisited since 4/21. I will eventually but no time soon I don't think. I'm not too crazy about '96-'01 in general really. Of course there are many songs I do love, but as a whole I personally didn't love it.

i never really listened to it, i got it off a russian boot site but i scratched it up. hearing the last december by santana and co. really moved me, great song. if that was the only good one on there, he did not lose his touch.

Problem with prince was, he was so gifted and so generous with his gift that people took him for granted. The Mixer for my first album told me one time, when he came by my work a few times, he'd see me scrubbing, doing demeaning, dirty jobs or checking the customers, but every time, i was busy. He later told me, when this work relationship went bad that, "I could see that you were badly needed and you were always working, that's not something that gets appreciated sometimes". It was true, people get used to it, take it for granted and when you say "wait a minute, I deserve respect" all hell breaks loose. same with prince, dude gave plenty of great songs, in my mind, he never lost it. even in his golden period there were songs to like/dislike, same all the way up to his last albums.

ONA / TRC period. I didn't like all the full on religiousity and the narration ruined it for me, without that it would have been pretty good. I hated him acting conformist, dressed in suits like a dodgy preacher. Was so glad when he went out of that phase back to his flamboyant individual style!

However i found 2004-2006 too mainstream, bland and commercial, trying to imitiate trends. I really disliked the lifeless sounding RnB production of his music in this period.

I think in general 1997-2006 was a pretty bad patch musically for him, broken by 2007's Planet Earth which i liked, and then Lotusflow3r/MPLSound which was also pretty good.

[Edited 7/5/16 15:15pm]

TheFreakerFantastic said:

ONA / TRC period. I didn't like all the full on religiousity and hated him acting conformist, dressed in suits like a dodgy preacher. Was so glad when he went out of that phase back to his flamboyant individual style!

However i found 2004-2006 too mainstream and trying to imitiate trends.

I think in general 1997-2006 was a pretty bad patch musically for him, broken by 2007's Planet Earth which i liked, and then Lotusflow3r/MPLSound which was also pretty good.

that's the problem, no two fans agree on what was good and not good, just soo much material. Personally, I thought Lotusflower was his weakest album since, well, let's see, since maybe his first, which I really couldn't get into. The bria material was atrocious and I never even bothered to download it. Randy Phillips told him years ago to "stop doing a&r with your dick". wouldn't be a problem if they brought the music but I can't think of any of those women bringing anything. I haven't checked out Judith's music and I know she's got more to offer than the standard singers he worked with.

jaawwnn said:

Love Symbol is about it for me, I still scratch my head over that album. Watching 3 Chains Of Gold only made it worse! It used to be 1998-2000 but I've come to appreciate that era over time. [Edited 7/5/16 11:50am]

[Edited 7/5/16 16:44pm]

Yeah, apart from TRC and Lotus almost everything post Lovesexy.

1990 - 1996: the early, bombastic, hippity-hoppity New Power Generation years! Rock operas, "slave", Kirstie Alley, Diamond and Pearl, Carmen Electra, Tony M, oh god.

I actually like all his periods except one. That is 1997 to 2005, why/ it was the age of NewPowersoul and Rave , 2 very ho hum albums and the era of TRC, ONA and the NPGMC era, none of that music I gravitate to. A lot of plastic music, bombastic production, overdubs, samples and looping in the early part and then all the preaching and boringness of the ONA set. NEWS was maudling Jazz.

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Pretty much I love all the period from 94East up to Emancipation (This would include Crystal Ball, but not the truth, which is late 1996) and again from SST/3121 through to the last notes on HNR Phase 2 "Thats it!"

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In general music, I really like all the early era (1890s to 1940s) as I listen to a lot of music on 78s, like 1920s Jazz, blue, rags, comedy and a great song I am discovering now is "Crazy Rhythm" from 1928. I watch a lot of videos showing old 78s playing and have a few ancient 78s myself. The only period I do not care for is the post 2000 era and most rap music and heavy metal type music. For eras, I really like 1900s and 1910s music, 1920s jazz and pop, 1930s big band and swing, blues 1940s big band, 1950s rock and roll (early 1950s sentimental music I am not a fan of, eg Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney) not into Elvis either. I like 1960s rock and pop, 1970s funk and disco, 1980s synth pop and early 1990s new jack swing and pop. My tastes stop around 1996 with the last stuff I love being Fantasy era Mariah Carey, Toni Braxton and TLC.

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But I recommend 1920s jazz pop, seriously this music is really quite funky for its time. Mostly post 1925 when they had electric recording and you can hear it more. The standard late 1920s song had about a minute of hot jazz playing, you get trumpets, horns, saxes and even violins and flutes, and then some guy will sing for about a minute and the song descends back into the hot jazz and then usually suddenly ends with a cymbal clang or the music stops as often they were cutting the mother wax in those days. The music is always hot and frantic as they had to play a whole piece in like 3 minutes and 20 seconds as that is all the music a 10 inch shellac platter could take.

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Most of the best stuff is 1925 - 1929 and 1929 was the biggest year of record sales until 1955, why because the depression killed off the music industry. Sales of gramophones and records peaked at this time, but as a standard disc cost 75 cents in the USA and 7/6 or 10/- in the British world and even the cheapest players cost several guineas (21/- or $4 US) and the Depression saw mass poverty, records lost popularity. The movies and radio were cheaper. Many unions also stopped many musicians and most big bands did music for movies.

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Records revived slightly in 1934 and through the late 1930s (1930 was a farily good year as the Depression took a while to sink in). Also much music of the later 1930s was re recordings and reissues on budget labels like Regal Zonophone (Such records cost 35c or 4/-) and country/hillbilly music really caught on. Big names had records too like Bing Crosby and Frank sinatra in the later 1930s and 1940. This was the age of the album too, the first albums contained 4 to 10 78 records in cases with nice covers, but these were very fragile as well. In 1949 the 33 rpm vinyl long player came out and it was called an album, that is where the name comes from - Volumes containing multiple 78s.

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WW2 saw many artists into recording V discs and their were drives to recycle old shellac and make new V disc out of it, hence why we have lost a lot of classic 1920s music (Records before the 1920s are scarce and often played poorly because they were acoustically recorded and heavy steel needles before 1935 wrecked the discs after a few plays). Only after 1946 did musis sales and records take off again, but vinyl entered the market in 1948 and these records quickly took over from the fragile 78s (Still most 1950s singles were shellac 78s as it was cheaper).

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1955 was a bumper year for music, thanks to rock and roll and now more teenagers bought singles whereas before it was adults who often bought discs. This growth continued until the late 1970s as music was mainstreamed. 78s finished around 1957 to 1963. Although the 78 ruled supreme in India and Africa (There was a thriving market for 78s in 1950s/1960s Congo) well into the 1960s.

[Edited 7/5/16 17:05pm]

I guess the Planet Earth/3121 time. I was still haunting this place, still bought the music, but he was hella Hollywood (with the latter, at least) & I loved it when he was a bit more underground. When he was trying too hard to be "out there" I found it a little offputting, for purely selfish reasons.

For me it's mostly 1998 (a little after the Crystal Ball set) through 2003-2004.

[Edited 7/5/16 18:18pm]

ksgemini63 said:

Everything after Revolution. Without Wendy and Lisa not the same tonal quality just not the same after Dream factory era

That's... that's a longgggg time

ksgemini63 said:

Everything after Revolution. Without Wendy and Lisa not the same tonal quality just not the same after Dream factory era

A narrow view. The Revolution did 3 albums out of almost 40 years. That discounts For You, Prince, Dirty Mind, Controversy, and 1999, plus gems like Sign O The Times, Lovesexy, and Batman. To say gems like The Gold Experience, Come, Exodus (sans the segues), & Chaos and Disorder don't measure up makes me question if you've even listened to Prince music at all.

[Edited 7/5/16 18:41pm]