I remember coming home from {high} school and throwing my books on the couch and grabing my AM/FM radio walkman{I had this very same walkman on when me and my buddies were walking to the video arcade from school when I learned that Marvin Gaye had been killed a few weeks earlier on April 1, I thought it was just a cruel April Fool's joke}. When the song came on, I couldn't believe what I was hearing it. I knew immediately who it was. After the song went off I was stunned. I simply couldn't believe what I had heard. See looking back in retrospect it's kind of hard to gauge just how unorthodox a track is. You have to remember what the musical environment was like back when the song debuted. Nothing...I MEAN NOTHING on the radio sounded like this song. I called my friends and a few of my cousins and asked them did they hear this amazing new Prince song. I didn't know the name of it because they didn't identify the song, the radio station went right into another song. My friends said they had heard it too, though on different radio stations.

The next day everybody at school was talking about the song and how great it was. Everybody loved the rhythmic structure of the song. I think one reason why the song was so popular and received by so many people is because we saw a side of Prince we weren't expecting to see. Prince- His Confessional Side. Did you hear him say..." maybe I'mjust like my father too bold". Well if you were a TRUE Prince fan you knew he was BOLD and that this line was totally autobiographical. We, as Prince fans, also knew that he SPOKE through his music. The brother rarely talked to anybody{giving interviews} during those days. Whoa did you hear him say..."maybe I'm just like my mother...she's never satisfied". It was as if he was trying to give us a purple glimpse of the purple world he dwells in. And we rewarded him for it making it the best single of 1984. The song sold well over 2 million copies in the U.S. alone.

I remember after calling my friends on the phone, calling the Turtle's Records And Tapes store to see if they had the song in. The clerk said that the song had just hit radio and that it would be a while before they would get it in. Well,I went in the next week and they had the single. And I was surprised to see that the single was limited edition purple vinyl.I remember saying to myself..."this dude is for real about this Purple Reign". Yeah... 1984... what a year for music...what a year for The Little Man. You could say that When Doves Cry was like "the shot heard around the world".

BRO915
[This message was edited Tue Aug 12 6:52:27 PDT 2003 by BRO915]
[This message was edited Tue Aug 12 6:58:33 PDT 2003 by BRO915]