A PUNK PROPHET OF SEXUAL ANARCHY

this quote from New Musical Express, expresses my continued need for Controversy and what it was and what it could have been. I believe the 'era' did not last a few year before he was into 1999. the Controversy era (outside of the recording process) started in September 1981 and was done May 1982. I always felt is was too short an era and had so much potential. It is the album that I want to have a Deluxe set for sooner than later. What if the Hooker debuted during the Controversy era(even if they evolved into Vanity 6) When I look at unused photos from Allen Beaulieu, listen to song outtakes and just the solidifying vision of Uptown, I just wish he gave more from this one. More promotion, more b sides, more...

I'm still frightened of Prince allured by the promise, alarmed by the chintzy crud of his live routine, partially assuaged by this new "Controversy". -NEW MUSICAL EXPRESS November 14, 1981

The Controversy Daily
Love They Neighbor
Do You Believe in God

U.S. Goes To Zoo -

Tourist Invasion of Uptown Fails, 89 Beheaded

Annie Christian Sentenced to Die
President Signs Gun Control Act

* Joni*

President Declares UPTOWN New U.S. Capital

Free Food Stamps For Good Samaritans

The Second Coming

Lingerie - New Fashion Trend

Sixty Thousand New Breed Schools Built by June
HANG ON AMERICA

What is "sexual anarchy?"

Prince

The 2nd Coming film The Hookers The Time

Hollywood Sound Recorders Studio

Sunset Sound

North Arm Drive HOME Studio
Kiowa Trail HOME Studio

ENGINEERS
Mic Guzauski

Bob Mockler

Ross Pallone

Peggy McCreary

Annie Christian

Baby I’m A Star

Broken

Commercial

Controversy

Dear Uncle George

Delivery Boy

Do Me, Baby

Friction

Gotta Stop (Messin’ About)

Gym Class

Heart Attack

Hump You

I Need A Man

Jack U Off

Jealous Girl

Let’s Work

Make U Mine

Mink Kitty Cat

Pizza

Poppa Grooves

Private Joy

Rain

Rearrange

Ronnie, Talk To Russia

See U Dead

Sexuality

She’s Just A Baby

Strange Way Of Saying Eye Love U

Susan

There’s Something I Like About Being Your Fool

Tick, Tick, Bang

Dr (Matt)Fink keyboards/synth
BrownMark bass
Bobby Z drums/linn

Prince -the fearless leader guitar keyboards/piano

Dez Dickerson -guitar

Lisa Coleman -keyboards/synth

TrivialPursuit said:

What is "sexual anarchy?"

that was from an article/review of Controvery-Prince in 1981

I think it looks like this a bit

OldFriends4Sale said:

TrivialPursuit said:

What is "sexual anarchy?"

that was from an article/review of Controvery-Prince in 1981

I think it looks like this a bit

Proooobably not. But ok.

TrivialPursuit said:

OldFriends4Sale said:

that was from an article/review of Controvery-Prince in 1981

I think it looks like this a bit

Proooobably not. But ok.

what is this dance we are doing here? lol

(Touré 113). But whether or not it was the result of an overfed ego, by 1981 there was “a running subtext” in Prince’s band: “a theme of ‘We were sent to help people see,’” as Dickerson puts it. “It was this sense that there was a certain enlightenment that he, and we, by default, were messengers of and we were there to bring this enlightenment to people who needed it” (112).

Alexander O’ Neal, pre The Time 1981
Rough #2

Home studio, early 1981
She’s Just A Baby #1 (4:44)
Broken (3:04)
Commercial #1
Hump You
Susan

The Time, home studio, April 1981 – album mixed in late April
- Lead vocal: Morris Day, backing vocals: Lisa Coleman, synth solo on “Get It Up” & “The Stick”: Matt Fink
Get It Up (9:05)*
Girl (5:34)*
After Hi School (4:20)* (Dez Dickerson)
Cool (10:06)* (Prince/Dez Dickerson)
Oh, Baby #2 (4:57)*
The Stick (8:23)* (Lisa Coleman/Prince)

Home studio, spring – summer 1981
Let’s Rock #1

Home studio, 1981
Dancin’ Flu (Prince/Dez Dickerson)
Dear Uncle George #1 (Private Joy was based on the music from this song)
Delivery Boy #1
Forever Mine (Kenny Gamble/Leon Huff) – cover of The O’Jays
Friction
Hard To Get #2
I Can’t Figure It Out (Dez Dickerson)
The Rain And You - ballad
Rain #1 – possibly a cappella

Controversy, home studio, summer 1981
Controversy (7:14)*
Sexuality (4:20)*
Ronnie, Talk To Russia #1
Annie Christian (4:21)*
Poppa Grooves (Instrumental) #1
There’s Something I Like About Being Your Fool #1
Tick, Tick, Bang #1 (3:16)

Controversy, Hollywood Sound, June - August 1981
Delivery Boy #2
Do Me, Baby (7:47)*
Let’s Work #2 (3:57)* (previously “Let’s Rock”)
Ronnie, Talk To Russia #2 (1:48)*
Jack U Off (3:12)* (June) - Keyboards: Lisa Coleman & Matt Fink, drums: Bobby Z. Rivkin
Make U Mine (June) - Keyboards: Lisa Coleman & Matt Fink, drums: Bobby Z. Rivkin
There’s Something I Like About Being Your Fool #2 (June)

Controversy, Sunset Sound, 14-16 August 1981 - album completed by mid-August
There’s Something I Like About Being Your Fool #3 (14-15/8)
Private Joy #2 (4:25)* (16/8) (previously “Dear Uncle George”)

The Hookers, home studio, 1981 - Jamie Shoop & Susan Moonsie
I Need A Man #1 – lead vocal: Jamie Shoop
Make-up (2:39)*
Wet Dream #1
Jealous Girl #1 – offered to The Bangles in 1985
Pizza
Drive Me Wild (2:32)*

Unnamed project, home studio, 1981
See U Dead
Heart Attack
Kiss Me Quick
Strange Way Of Saying I Love You (2:09)
Gym Class

Home studio, autumn-winter 1981
The Second Coming (1:58) (autumn)
Baby I’m A Star #1 (autumn/winter)
Rearrange #1 (7/12)
Baby I’m A Star #2 (7-8/12)
Let’s Work (Dance Remix) (8:02)* (8/12)
Feel U Up #1 (6:38) – segued with
Irresistible Bitch #1 (4:36) (winter)
Jerk Out #1 (late 1981) (Prince/Jimmy Jam/Terry Lewis/Morris Day)

I love this Era. Love this album! I would kill for a SDE of CONTROVERSY. There are quite a few unknown tunes from these sessions and diuring this time pretty much everything Prince touched was awesome. I bet the songs "FRICTION" and "HUMP YOU" are fantastic. And who else wants to hear the proto version of "LET'S WORK" called "LET'S ROCK"??

You could throw in a soundboard recording of one of the concerts as well as a remaster of THE SECOND COMING mini movie that never saw the light of day.

NEW MUSICAL EXPRESS
November 14, 1981

Some Day My Prince Will Come...

Prince
Controversy

Prince has an urge in him which sometimes comes out as a nightingale, sometimes a vulgar pierrot and then occasionally just a babyish gurgle. Here is a minstrel who sings of his bedtime succour - a modern prince, mark you, and may have the captives seduced, only to dash the accomplishment away; straddled o'er an earthquake of rocky showtime guff and peacock proud of Mr Reagan to boot.

I'm still frightened of Prince allured by the promise, alarmed by the chintzy crud of his live routine, partially assuaged by this new "Controversy". Prince's value continues to lie in the merger he affects, implicit rather than explicit, of categories usually taken for granted as token dualities (love/sex, rock/soul) or as irreconcilable opposites (pleasure/politic, gaiety/acuity). We will get nowhere quickly searching Prince's practice for principles of judgement: he is not uniformly lovable or loyal.

A Christian God. A God-fearing Country. The Original "funk" - Sex. Triplets which Prince plays with during the course of Controversy-inconsistently, with an often absured nobility of purpose. Prince obviously does not regard Sex, Politics and Popular Music as perverse bed (wherever) mates: they are alignable aspects of Being. The screwiest thin about "Controversy" is the dispersed division between rosy-cheeked humanist and slutty confessional; the Moral Majority will nog know whether to fete or castrate this hammy spritualist.

Prince refuses the Outlaw part offered him, detects nothing unnatural in his private or public affairs: his sex, his singing, are accomplices of Law and Order (in a symbolic sense) rather than crimes against it. To regard himseld as indecent, a kink, devious - this would render the pleasure of his deeds a cerebral rather than sensual one, the vicarous intellectual pleasure of the away-day Outsider (a popular pose amongst rock'n'rollers both nimble and thick) thinking he is engaged in forbidden activities. Prince beleives - in some kind of God, in the onslaught of a universal love. Or is there a gag in his mouth?

To put it bluntly: Prince's prick is the source of his pride, the guarantee of his love. The fissures of the flesh intrude upon even his more visionary Political plateaux. There can be no knowledge, Prince avers, without bodies set free from the bondage of repressive persuasions. Or, as the irresistibly titled "Sexuality" puts it: "Sexuality is all I ever need? Sexuality I'm gonna let my body be free."

Of course it is not wise to take this sort of stuff too literally; does a "freed" body come that simply? Perhaps by necessity of the (word) processes of his chosen medium, any transference of his political views into reord will condense the heterogeneity of Prince into an easy entertainment, a potted provocation, little more than a glib fib. Thus transcribed he conspires or compares with Reagan and the Moral majority not insofar as anyone is "left" of "right" of the impossible centre, but because their politics are all somewhere over a rainbow..... "People call me rude/I wish we all were rude/ I wish there was no black and white/ I wish there were no rules". ("Controversy").

When Prince gets "explicit" about earthly as opposed to earthy powers, it's no less ambiguous: a kind of polymorphous perversion of policital life. In "Ronnie, Talk To Russia" he seems to be putting the blame squarely on those nasty Reds and urging Ronnie to play a conciliatory Audie Murphy type, pipe of peace 'n' all that, complete with the sort of advice the barrom whore with a heart of gold (sic) might give here avenging sheriff: "Ronnie, if you're dead before I get to meet you/Don't say I didn't warn you."

Prince' work ethic ("Let's Work") has got more to do with the subject viewed exclusively as sex machine than with the New Protestantism and in "Annie Christian" he seems to be (that phrase again) shifting the blame back to the harbingers of New Amerika; whatever, the track in question is eerie, incorrigibly subjectieve and very funny (the punchlines have a lot in common with Defunkt: "Everybody say 'electric chair' - ELECTRIC CHAIR!!!!!"

Maybe Prince is as utterly wet and naive as it all seems to unfortunately hint. He simply can't understand what all the fuss is about! Prince himself doetn't appear to be in any pain over his manifold contradictions. He doesn't even present them as such: they are present. His polemic comes in pouts rather than shouts, spouts or spurts.... and perhaps he secretly realises that, of course, contradiction is ultimately more intensely "thought provoking" than bald, blank policy statement can ever be. So, so. 'Controversy' is packaged as a collection of quibbles and queries unified under a vagueley 'conceptual' sign. And I like it. I obsessively like two of the eight inclusions ('Do Me, Baby' and 'Annie Christian') and all in all it's a more elaborately and easily realised music than last year's 'Dirty Mind'. Prince can get geally expansive with his voice (how the abstract gospel intro shifts into a sexy smoky falsetto stutter in 'Private Joy') and his contructieve appliance of synth techniques assures that the sheer aesthetic and structural power of the music, thud and skim, shudder and tightening, has as much in common with Kraftwerk as with the more abvious Hendrix and harmony funk lineage.

Sex is his shrine, and that's where Prince's confusing charm works best. "Do me, Baby' recalls the likes of imagination in its slippery slipstream, but is so much better. Prince comes complete with a dischord, jettisoning the eleborate arrangement and shivering in a silent afterglow. It's Smokey Robinson singing aobscene moonbeams, lust imploring love, and the strains on the pillow aren't the tracks of our tears.

Does he want to do much more than put his tongue in our cheek? I'm not sure that I'd vote for him if he did. Prince is ultimately conservative, but temporarily valorous; that's funk?

I can't wait til they finally release a SDE of this album.

SoulAlive said:

I can't wait til they finally release a SDE of this album.

man U know it!!

by photographer Allen Beaulieu. Bobby Z, Lisa and Dez Dickerson

Dez and Prince wearing the same/each others jacket with the hot pink?

by photographer Allen Beaulieu

TURN IT UP

My favorite aesthetic era, my first "favorite" album, every single song is a fucking banger, and so many firsts on this record. Controversy is the first album where Prince was on full thrusters and where he stepped into his musical sense of humor.

Can't remember how to post photos now. That Ad though gives me the creeps. Like a Japanes ghost girl or something.

[IMG]https://thumbs4.imag....jpg[/IMG]

.

rlittler81 said:

Yes! Dirty Mind, Controversy, 1999..... it doesn't get more badass than this era!

Released September 2, 1981
recorded @ the Kiowa Trail Home studio completed @ Sunset Sound, Hollywood Sound, 1981

PrinceVault: Prince lead vocals/instruments Lisa Coleman -background vocals Morris Day (uncredited drumming)

Controversy is the title track and lead single to the 1981 album by Prince. One of his most respected classic funk songs, "Controversy" addresses certain speculation about Prince at the time such as his sexuality, religion and racial background, and how he could not understand the curiosity about him. The song has two main verses, a few choruses, with the title repeated throughout the track. Towards the middle he recites the Lord's Prayer in full, which fueled the fire for some to say the song was blasphemous. Toward the end is a repeating chant of doggerel: "People call me rude / I wish we all were nude / I wish there was no black and white / I wish there were no rules." The song is straight funk with a steady drumbeat, synthesized bass, "chicken grease" guitar and keyboards. The song was backed with "When You Were Mine", from his previous album, Dirty Mind.

Controversy

I just can't believe all the things people say (Controversy)
Am I black or white? Am I straight or gay? (Controversy)
Do I believe in God? Do I believe in me? Yeah (Controversy)

CHORUS:
Controversy
Controversy

I can't understand human curiosity (Controversy)
Was it good 4 U? Was I what U wanted me 2 be? (Controversy)
Do U get high? Does your daddy cry? (Controversy)

CHORUS

Do I believe in God? Do I believe in me? (Yeah, ooh yeah)
Some people wanna die so they can be free
I said, life is just a game, we're all just the same
Do U wanna play? (Yeah, yeah, yeah)

CHORUS {x3}

Our Father,

Who art in heaven,

Hallowed be Thy name
Thy kingdom come,

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven
Give us this day, our daily bread

and forgive us our trespasses
As we forgive those

who trespass against us
Lead us not

into temptation

but deliver us from evil
For Thine is the kingdom

and the power

and the glory forever

and ever

Love ya, love ya, baby

Listen...
People call me rude, I wish we were all nude
I wish there was no black and white, I wish there were no rules
People call me rude, I wish we were all nude
I wish there was no black and white, I wish there were (was) no rules


Do I believe in God? Do I believe in me?
Let me tell U, some people wanna die so they can be free
I said life is just a game, we're all just the same
Don't U wanna play?

© 1981 Controversy Music - ASCAP

Producer: Paul Flattery Director : Bruce Gowers

vainandy said:

Yes! Dirty Mind, Controversy, 1999..... it doesn't get more badass than this era!

Exactly!

SoulAlive said:

The look of misery on his face...