dustoff said:

Cool about the Paris gig!

Cafe de Paris is (was?) in... London

26ten said:

KoolEaze said:

Out of sheer curiousity.....what exactly do you find clever and cool about that song?

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I mean, I do like it and prefer it over stuff like Push It Up or I Like Funky Music but I don´t see why you´d consider it clever or cool.

Compositionally the song is insane. I don't know if you are a musician so I'll just sort of describe what I hear: So it starts with the crowd chanting. Already I see a stadium full of people chanting - texturally to hear that, your first response is to mentally see it. It's a really interesting sound musically and it's sort of sharp and fuzzy at the same time. The crowd is on beat and pretty well synchronized. Then they get used as a metronome and the drums and bass hit in at once - but we still hear their echoing voices (now with reverb, which adds a real cool psychedelic feel). Then suddenly these ultimate P funk horns enter with a jolt and are joined by this real dark sounding organ. When the horns drop out the organ continues and Prince's voice enters, but there is an slight atonal effect on his voice that throughout the song gets increasingly dissonant until by the end it sounds like two wacked out voices that are pulling themselves apart. All throughout the bass and drums keep the beat, and the chants are put back in and then removed back and forth. Texturally it's one of his most incredible tracks, and it's the equal of any of his 80's work in my opinion. It would have worked well on SOTT for instance. [Edited 10/7/21 19:23pm]

I'm pretty stoned and was drifting away there when I remembered this thread and fired this song on the headphones as loud as my ears could take it.

And aye, yet again, as it always did, it sounds like nothing else I've ever heard. Certainly not concurrent with the found sounds and production techniques of the era, which I remember well. I'd suggest it's as genuinely 'avant-purple' as WDC or Rin Tin Tin.

I've always viewed NPS as deliberately cartoonesque, P's first and perhaps last true deliberate insight into how his brain actually interprets musical notation and how his gift can synthesise and alchemise the entire akashic record of pop music since 1956/57. And also, like light entering the pyramid released as the entire spectrum (the humans can perceive) , digesting and regurgitating the sounds before mass consumerism made us all slaves to what our controllers and wilful, compliant propagandists deemed 'popular culture'.

I think this is Prince trying to produce a sound that simulates to our ears what music originally sounds like in his head, before it gets to us in its compromised form to fit in with present pop culture formats and/or what P thinks his fans should be hearing. It's maybe Prince's In Utero in that sense, his true soul and 'rawness' haemorrhaged for all to view. Musically, it could be his most honest album. Lyrically, his most veiled.

So, for those of who care, I guess the question is, why would he do this? Want to show us this true, raw version of himself? I think pain. I think all you have to do is listen to how he subverts the previously joyous 'Jam Of The Year' choral chant into a funfair horror show harmony. To hear what we all wanted to hear at that time - the truth. That he was devastated, he was destroyed, he was fucked. He'd been dealt a blow he never saw coming, that he couldn't protect himself from. All that hope and optimism, that energy, became something else. And with this oddity of an album, he told us - perhaps for the first time - that he was lost for sound. So he gave us the truth.

Comment deleted - l'ange bleu - moderator

Number23 said:

LoveGalore said:

Number23 said:

Comment deleted - l'ange bleu - moderator

Newpower Soul is a weird hill to die on.

At least quote my edited version

And anyway, I died years ago. On the Prince hill. Like most of us did. Don't tell me there's wee hills for all his different albums. There is only the Prince hill and we're all living and dying on it.

LoveGalore said:

Number23 said:

Comment deleted - l'ange bleu - moderator

Newpower Soul is a weird hill to die on.

Number23 said:

26ten said:

LoveGalore said:

26ten said:

I want to join the Def Leppard fan forum so I can just endlessly put down their work haha Seems such a strange idea - to join a Prince forum to talk more shit than a bit.

Imagine having the same opinion about all albums a person released over a 40 year period. How boring.

Exactly. Not even Led Zeppelin fan praises the IV album. Not every Madonna fan thinks Like A Prayer is a seminal album. Not every Michael Jackson fan thinks Thriller is the end all and be all of his discography.

And not every Prince fan thinks NewPower Soul is in the upper echelon of material.

Maybe 26Ten is new to the Org, maybe they're new to not everyone wearing purple-tinted classes. But I'd rather enjoy the discourse to balance the mutual accord, than live in an echo chamber.

A true fan can discern and accept differences in the material and opinions, and live to tell about it. Not get up in their feelings cuz someome hurt their feewins.

TrivialPursuit said:

TrivialPursuit said:

LoveGalore said:

26ten said: Imagine having the same opinion about all albums a person released over a 40 year period. How boring.

Exactly. Not even Led Zeppelin fan praises the IV album. Not every Madonna fan thinks Like A Prayer is a seminal album. Not every Michael Jackson fan thinks Thriller is the end all and be all of his discography.

And not every Prince fan thinks NewPower Soul is in the upper echelon of material.

Maybe 26Ten is new to the Org, maybe they're new to not everyone wearing purple-tinted classes. But I'd rather enjoy the discourse to balance the mutual accord, than live in an echo chamber.

A true fan can discern and accept differences in the material and opinions, and live to tell about it. Not get up in their feelings cuz someome hurt their feewins.

This is true, but what is CONSTANTLY disappointing about this place, is the lack of discourse.

Like, there is so little attempt to actually think about or discuss aspects of the music, other than THIS IS A MASTERPIECE or THIS SUCKS DONKEY BALLS, or equivalently, PRINCE WAS A GENIUS or PRINCE WAS A SHITTY BUSINESSMAN WHO HATED HIS FANS AND WAS A TERRIBLE PERSON.

For example, I think there's huge amounts to like in Newpower Soul... whether it sold much or not, or is 'in the same league as When Doves Cry' or not, who cares? It's far more interesting to discuss the successes or failures of a piece or album in terms of what the artist was trying to achieve, whether they succeeded, why or why not.. at least to me.

The best example I give involves Bob Dylan.

The series of books by Paul Williams 'Bob Dylan: Performing Artist' cover various periods of Dylan's career, and what I love about these books, is that although Williams is clearly a fan and hugely fascinated by Dylan and his work, he doesn't praise every single piece, and he doesn't shit on Dylan either (as an author like Clinton Heylin tends to), rather he tries to get under the skin of what a less successful (to him) performance/recording was trying to achieve and where and how it fails to do that.... but what he doesn't do is resort to 'what the fuck was Dylan thinking with this album'? or 'Jesus, so-and-so made an album the same year and it was so much better'...

Thinking of this in terms of Prince, it would be far more interesting to spend time at the org if people were actually willing to discuss the music, rather than just blanket it with their own narrowminded ego-based opinions.

Prince was a fascinating man, that's why we're here. It's fascinating to me to consider how much he tried different things, how much he followed his muse, for better or worse... and yet still people on here will reduce his work to 'it only sold THIS many copies, so it's clearly shit'.

Just baffles me, and is why I spend little to no time round these parts these days. The org has gotten mighty dull.

Rimshottbob said:

This is true, but what is CONSTANTLY disappointing about this place, is the lack of discourse.

.....

Just baffles me, and is why I spend little to no time round these parts these days. The org has gotten mighty dull.

Stick around more. There's plenty of discourse and difference of opinion. haha

Bitchin album. LOVE it. One of my favorites from the '90s.

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Not a fan of some of the production choices. I could take or leave several of the songs.

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But overall, it's album album that has consistently risen over the years (decades, I guess, now).

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I remember not liking it much upon release. From the artwork to the often-clunky percussion tracks and sometimes chintzy overall sound.

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Also I remember someone on AMP, back in the day, writing a RIDICULOUSLY over the top review praising it. I wish I still had a copy. I couldn't tell if it was sincere or if it was a parody of a rabid "fam" gushing over it.

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Point is, I feel more like that reviewer these days. I CHERISH the 'Newpower Soul" album.

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Many have already pointed out the pluses. The HORNZ are insane. Best horn arrangements on any Prince record.

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But some of these songs are simply MONSTROUS. "Come On" is just a landmind of a groove, undermined only by its generic title. Speaking of lame titles, there's "Shoo-Bed-Ooh," which another PEAK LEVEL song. That's my opinion, sticking to it.

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"Until U're In My Arms Again" --- tacky production, yes, but this is GORGEOUS. The melody and P's vocal, just sublime. Overproduced. But not to the point where the stunningly exquisite elements are compromised.

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"When U Love Somebody" -- with the right promotion (i.e. an actual record label like, oh I don't know, WARNER BROS) could've been a hit. Maybe. He was done having hits. But in some alternate universe where deserving songs by aging legends could actually trouble the charts, this GEM would've at LEAST scraped into the lower reaches of the Top 40. I LOVE THIS SONG.

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"Mad Sex" - I found this particularly lame back in '98. I was too quick to dismiss it. I can put this on repeat, sing along, and just have an utter BLAST with this song.

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"Wasted Kisses" is cool, so is "The One." For whatever reasons, these two don't make my mouth water (I love the video for "The One," though), but they're both very solid album cuts.

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What's left... title track, totally dig it. HATED, HATED, HATED upon release that it shared elements of "Big Fun." And it just struck me as corny. And the plastic-y percussion track... But I've gotten over all that.

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Weakest section, for me, I guess it would be "Push It Up" and "Freaks On This Side" - BUT, and this is a big but, that's mainly because I don't love "Push It Up" and when it segues into those corny chants that open "Freaks," I associated these two songs as basically one loooong song for many years. I now appreciate "Freaks" for the badass horns and the other elements that have been discussed already in this thread (though the chants still strike me as corny).

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I think I posted something similar to all this in another thread on this album.

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EDIT: oops, forget what I said about "Push It Up," I like it a lot compared to "Eye Like Funky Music" - that's the weakest track on the record, for me. And forget that I said I don't salivate over "Wasted Kisses," because I do - it's the REAL ending for the record, which is dark and moody and I kind of look at "Funky Music" as a forced, fake "happy happy joy joy" moment that isn't all that sincere and not indicative of the true brilliance of much of the album.

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Peace and Be Wilder (as in 'Gene')

[Edited 10/17/21 18:23pm]

Mad Sex is sheer brilliance. In my Prince Top 20. Overall, it is a cool album...underrated among the Org crowd.

jdcxc said:

Mad Sex is sheer brilliance. In my Prince Top 20. Overall, it is a cool album...underrated among the Org crowd.

Good to see someone else who rates this song as highly as I do! Mad Sex is so f'ing cool!

MattyJam said:

jdcxc said:

Mad Sex is sheer brilliance. In my Prince Top 20. Overall, it is a cool album...underrated among the Org crowd.

Good to see someone else who rates this song as highly as I do! Mad Sex is so f'ing cool!

Yesssss! This is New Orleans done Princely.

This writer loves it too...and nails it:

318: Mad Sex

It's a great album and further evidence he is the greatest of all time. Until U're in my Arms Again, When U Love Somebody, Freaks on this Side, Come On, The One are all brilliant.

fortuneandserendipity said:

It's a great album and further evidence he is the greatest of all time. Until U're in my Arms Again, When U Love Somebody, Freaks on this Side, Come On, The One are all brilliant.

The Org has a bad tendency to throw away good-great albums based on 1-2 clunkers or production styles/choices. They wud never do this with other artists. When Ive listened to many other "classic" artists (Beatles, Stones, Dylan, etc), with Rolling Stone Top 500 Albums, there are always some crap songs on the album...or lame, boring, tired, copycat songwriting.

jdcxc said:

MattyJam said:

Good to see someone else who rates this song as highly as I do! Mad Sex is so f'ing cool!

Yesssss! This is New Orleans done Princely.

This writer loves it too...and nails it:

318: Mad Sex

Newpower Soul (1996)
This song itches parts of my soul I’m scared to probe. Spoonfuls of piano and horns are piled onto a dank and sleazy groove to mask the grime. and the result is an off-kilter, back-alley jazz hand-job. The album’s lurch from this dark dishevelment to the syrupy schmaltz of Until U’re In My Arms Again gives the kind of jolt that can cause whiplash. I avoid that clash by skipping past tracks 3 and 4, allowing Mad Sex to flow straight into the equally scab-picking satisfaction of Shoo-Bed-Ooh. Two songs that feel so good by sounding so wrong. Rumours are rife online that Mad Sex is about Mel B. I don’t believe that’s true but that’s now who I involuntarily picture when Prince sings about tongue studs and animal prints. Thanks internet!

Ohhh, I'm intrigued what you mean by New Orleans? I've had an obsession with Mad Sex for years, especially that jazzy bebop piano line and have been trying to find a style similar for years in other peoples music. Care to elaborate?

jdcxc said:

fortuneandserendipity said:

It's a great album and further evidence he is the greatest of all time. Until U're in my Arms Again, When U Love Somebody, Freaks on this Side, Come On, The One are all brilliant.

The Org has a bad tendency to throw away good-great albums based on 1-2 clunkers or production styles/choices. They wud never do this with other artists. When Ive listened to many other "classic" artists (Beatles, Stones, Dylan, etc), with Rolling Stone Top 500 Albums, there are always some crap songs on the album...or lame, boring, tired, copycat songwriting.

And even then, the songs thought of as clunkers often aren't. Prince seldom does any. Heck, this motivates me to assess this often maligned album track by track.

Newpower Soul - 4
Mad Sex - 3
Until U're in My Arms Again - 5
When U Love Somebody - 5
Shoo-Bed-Ooh - 4
Push It Up - 4
Freaks on This Side - 5
Come On - 5
The One - 5
(I Like) Funky Music - 4
Wasted Kisses - 5

Because I give albums with average score 4.33/5 or higher a 10, this album gets a perfect 10. AllMusic's assessment of the album though - 2/5. LOL

fortuneandserendipity said:

It's a very good album, though I feel half the album would've sounded better played live. People who don't like the album probably have rockz for brainz.

99.99% of humanity doesn't/ wouldn't like this album. Mad Sex is the only serviceable song on it and even that I haven't bothered to listen to for years... and for those associating it with P-funk hand in your card now and grab a bottle of Debrox on your way out.

whodknee said:

fortuneandserendipity said:

It's a very good album, though I feel half the album would've sounded better played live. People who don't like the album probably have rockz for brainz.

99.99% of humanity doesn't/ wouldn't like this album. Mad Sex is the only serviceable song on it and even that I haven't bothered to listen to for years... and for those associating it with P-funk hand in your card now and grab a bottle of Debrox on your way out.

Yeah, nonsense, I'm afraid.

whodknee said:

fortuneandserendipity said:

It's a very good album, though I feel half the album would've sounded better played live. People who don't like the album probably have rockz for brainz.

99.99% of humanity doesn't/ wouldn't like this album. Mad Sex is the only serviceable song on it and even that I haven't bothered to listen to for years... and for those associating it with P-funk hand in your card now and grab a bottle of Debrox on your way out.

Well, that puts me in the lucky one in ten thousand. Lucky me. Probably listened to it over 500 times now. And Mad Sex is the worst song on there, though I still like it.

the mistake ppl make in evaluating this album is thinking of it as a prince album and comparing it to other prince albums, when youre really meant to compare it to exodus and gold nigga. its got prince on the cover, and singing a lot, but its an npg album, ie. more funk and rnb influences, not so much pop. i.e certain things like melodies, pop songwriting, or just trying to do something differnt isnt that important, its just meant to deliver funkiness in some way or another.

Exodus = Great
Newpower Soul = Great
Goldnigga = Disappointing

fortuneandserendipity said:

Exodus = Great
Newpower Soul = Average at best
Goldnigga = Disappointing

There. Fixed it.