Damn, you people are harsh. Skywalker made some good points in his post. If every album that came out in the 90s were restricted to 9 or 10 tracks, you would still see complete albums that matched the quality and innovation of his eighties albums. At least, I can see that when I omit the filler from Gold, Symbol, The Truth, and Emancipation. Even a nine track Diamonds and Pearls would've been seen in a much different light.
[This message was edited Wed Jan 14 20:15:07 PST 2004 by jtgillia]

jtgillia said:

This I can agree with. And I think many folks, even in this thread, I've heard say that they've enjoyed many post-88 tracks. But I guess the bottom line is Prince didn't edit himself and he did release a lot of filler...

jtgillia- thanks. You know why people are so harsh? Because 1980-1988 is "untouchable". People seemed to ignore that I wasn't discrediting Prince's greatness during that time just that he isn't drastically worse since then and that I believe it has to do with his output (how he presented his songs.)

jtgillia said:

skywalker said:

gee, i wonder why that aspect of this thread was overlooked...

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

If you listen to or watch any Prince material from 1980-1988, you see how incredible and near-perfect it was. We don't romanticize it too much.

skywalker said:

Firstly define quality. If you can do this then good luck!

IMHO the main reason there is so much conflict between Prince fans as to what is good and what is not is due to the vast variety in his music and the vast differences in the age of a Prince fan. Way back when...one of the most exciting things about being a Prince fan was you never knew what you were gonna get next. Take Purple Rain, ATWIAD, Parade, SOTT and Lovesexy. How different are these periods in terms of sound, feel, image etc etc. Now take the releases over the past 4-5 years and tell me they aren't the same. You can pick any one of 'em up and you can play one track to someone tell 'em it's Prince and they will know any following tracks are from the same artist.

Play Purple Rain to someone and then play Rspberry Beret then Housequake followed by Kiss, followed by Alphabet Street, (alright they are all hits and thy'd know they were Prince but the vocals, the music everything is different).

A lot of fans of the age now that I was back then have not experienced this in real time and are going backwards through the eras rather than living them and going forward with each step, they haven't lived the progressions.

Anyone get what I am trying to say?
[This message was edited Wed Jan 14 23:07:47 PST 2004 by 67TBirdHeartAttack]

well I think anyone can say this about anything from the 80's (mid 80's)

Ok forget Prince because he is a true musican and could have been huge in any era. without the phoney mtv hype.

The Music Industry embraced MTV & Cable because they say in Arkansas kids were buying new wave albums from Euro Groups ..which is what MTV was playing before 1983.

From that point on every artist was pushed! Who didn't have a hit album in 1984? Old Acts, Next Gen, 70's Acts..damn even Huey Lewis & the news were big.

sooo the whole era is being romanticize more then it should. Allot of acts that couldn't even really sing OR wouldn't have been half the size they were without a video.. some of those acts wouldn't even get record contracts.

As For Prince.. he was one of a few that were actual Musicans & getting Pushed. So saying anything negative about him when he was a guy doing something different something new is just plain stupid.

Because of MTV taking Dance Class is more important then learning to write or read music! OR even worse learn to play a instrument.

Prince would be the last guy I would blame for this! His Albums were not safe, all different, he took chances & challenge his fans to learn to have different tastes!

The key to Prince is what he did after 1984! ..and what everyone did after 1984! Did they try to repeat their album OR take risks and grow as a musican?

fact is, if prince didn't keep changing, i wouldn't bother. i don't want to re-live the 80s, great as it was. i want to hear where prince is NOW. his newest record, or his next record, is always what i'm most interested in.
for the record, i've been there since the beginning, and to my ears, trc, xpectation, N.E.W.S. represent musical leaps and bounds from where prince was in the 80s. listen 2 "east" and tell me the man ain't free...
prince is like a shark - he needs to keep moving or he dies

I agree with u skywalker. The people here tend to attack if u go against the group reality. It is easy and very simple-minded to create this arbitrary dividing line with the year 1988. Human beings have a tendancy to try to take complex situations (like the evaluation of art) and render simple explanations for them. To my ears Batman seems a progression and cousin to the lovesexy/black album sound. Alot of people seem to get caught up in ideas of commercialism and all that with that album. Things outside of the actual music. While Batman may not be the most inspired Prince it certainly isn't some huge change or drop-off from his previous output. Like I have explained before as prince's canvas has expanded many of his disciples have been unable to make the leap with him. People have been jumping off/on the bandwagon since at least Dirty Mind. With someone as relentlessly creative as Prince it is inevitable that he will lose most people eventually. Few can keep up with the changes and the output.

That being said of course the eighties represent Prince in his youth. When his growth was expointial. No one can grow at that rate over a lifetime. Even 'normal' people experince dramatic change & growth in their youth. The problem with the org is that group of peolpe who want to simplify things into pre 1988 (brilliant) and post 1988 (crap, shit). It is way to extreme. And says more about the simplicity of their thought processes (intellectally lazy) than Prince's music.

tricky99 said:

Yes, it's much more enlightening to accept everything he puts out like a conditioned zombie/junkie rather than have the free will to like/dislike as we see fit.

It's pretty arrogant/ignorant of you to label people because they don't like things you do like.

But then again, you have been ignorant for quite some time.

Neversin said:

Maybe you would agree that what he does since TRC is anything but following trends?

the3rddoctor said:

I stand by my statement. No where did i say u must like everything. Noone likes everything. I'm just commenting on how extreme people seem to be. U obviously must fit that pre/post brilliant/crap cateogry since u felt the need to attack me. So the shoe fits. I bet even u realize that its not as simple as pre/post 1988 or are u that simple?

tricky99 said:

This response to the3rddoctor's post is exactly why I didn't say anything. I saw tricky's response coming from a mile away. The pseudo-intellectual types that post on this site like to think they're smarter and deeper than the rest of us ignorant bastards. They like to come to this site, not to say something positive about Prince's music, but to try to put others down who don't think like them. I don't get that. A lot of folks on the site dislike a lot of Prince songs I happen to like and it does not phase me at all. Wouldn't it be better to lead by example, tricky? If you were to go back and take a look at your past posts, you would see that you basically live to shit on other people.

skywalker said:

Very true...the cd has given artists a bigger medium to fill. Albums are not 30 to 44 minutes anymore but are twice as long.

the3rddoctor said:

I stand by my statement. No where did i say u must like everything. Noone likes everything. I'm just commenting on how extreme people seem to be. U obviously must fit that pre/post brilliant/crap cateogry since u felt the need to attack me. So the shoe fits. I bet even u realize that its not as simple as pre/post 1988 or are u that simple?

tricky99 said:

It was so insulting, you had to say it twice.

COMPLETELY disagree with your post, but others above me have already stated quite well the same reasons I hold as to why you're off base.

.
[This message was edited Thu Jan 15 8:51:19 PST 2004 by PrimordialOoze]

Crap! i think totally otherwise. Sorry.

but everyone can have an opinion. So feel free to thin what you like, and say what you want.

in the end, Prince will always have a 80's fanbased group and a 90's fanbased group.

What I am realy worried about it the millennium fanbased group (2000-...), if young people in this era pick up Prince, i wonder what they think about all this?

peace people, and forget all your fears. Puhleaze.

calldapplwondery83 said:

I agree with that...
I'm glad he finally dropped that crap ass Okayplayer clique muzak sound...
But now he's on some jazzy/1970's vibe that just doesn't work... And that for a guy who claims to be living "in the now"...
If I wanna listen to "Tower Of Power", James Brown or Sly Stone kind of music I'll put on a record by them, I don't need Prince for that, he shouldn't restrict himself...
I've read on some topic here that some guy wants him to form a funk-band, now how fucking lame would that be, that's just backtracking...
The fun and cool thing about Prince was that he was different and I could relate to that...
Nowadays he's just becoming another product in an occasionally updated package...

Neversin.

No. Not really.
No one's over doing anything cept for you, sky. Prince was very creative and experimental during this time. Over romanticizing him, the person, hasnt anything to do with it. The music speaks for itself, not the sales, but the sound of it.

Of course there were mixed reviews on it, there were always mixed reviews about the music Prince put out because he touched every genre and added his own spice to it.

Those years may have not been untouchable but they sure arent attainable by todays artists!

tricky99 said:

Nowhere as simple as you are. You are one of the zombies I spoke of (and you brought on the attack with your smartass remark, so spare me the "innocent victim" crap). This isn't the 1st time we had words, either, so I don't really care how intelligent or deep you think I am.

As for pre-post good-shit, after Batman, the scale tipped to shit on every occasion. It turned into sorting out good songs from shit until I just stopped buying. I'm in the process of giving the post batman stuff a 2nd chance, but it's still not the same, whether you like it or not.

TheOrgerFormerlyKnownAs said:

Emphasis on the word THINK. Yes, they do THINK they are smarter and deeper.

In reality, they are circus clowns...

Some orgers and Prince fans in general have an "'80-'88" bias, sure. It is true that some of his work did not sell well (by Purple Rain standards) and was not critically well-received. But by any factor, the era was the most commercially successful and artistically creative of Prince's career. During that time, Prince made his best albums, including 4 that are widely recognized as all-time greats (Dirty Mind, 1999, Purple Rain and Sign O' The Times), a string of hits, tons of money, and millions of fans around the world. Even for LPs like Lovesexy or Parade, for every bad review he got, there was a glowing review alongside it. Were it not for that period, 75% of the orgers wouldn't know of or care about Prince.

So the era may be overrated to some people, but I don't think it can be overemphasized in terms of its importance.

the3rddoctor said:

That's not what he said.

TheOrgerFormerlyKnownAs said:

thank you. tricky, please think before you type.

BlaqueKnight said:

Almost exactly echoing my thoughts, everything up to Lovesexy was a journey, he was finding his way spiritually and discovering things on the way. His music reflected this, it was all a journey and sometimes that journey was a struggle, tough mountains to climb and at other times floating a clear crystal lake. Lovesexy & Batman & Graffiti Bridge were the discovery time and the wanting to share the discovery with everyone. Diamonds & Pearls acceptance of who he was and what he believed and if others didn't then hey it didn't matter and have a bit of fun just with life in general, a man falling in love with a woman (enter Mayte full time) from here on in I think a little lost, perhaps not focused totally on his music as he had a partner in his life big time. I sort of lost touch a bit here with Prince and didn't listen much to the stuff, musically it wasn't doing much for me and certainly nothing in the lyrics that touched me. The Gold Experience and I am back in with a vengence, the lull was over! Wrong, back into the previous groove with the following releases. Then bang The Rainbow Children - oh my the wait was worth it, he's back on track again - once again WRONG! Lovesexy was one thing, TRC was a whole other! Arrogance personified! My apologies to any who follow the JW faith.

For those who didn't have God in their life before 1988 or understood what God was, Lovesexy brought this to them and we embarked on the journey. For those that did, they celebrated with Prince on his discovery. All that had gone before made sense, we looked at things with new eyes, we saw a new world.

The Prince of Now is nothing more than a musician who once rocked my world and changed my life. I see glimpses every now and then. I cried when I saw him in Australia last October because I felt I had lost a part of me. The happy Prince who had found what was right for him and made sense to many was gone.

I am not saying any of the above is right or wrong, just how I feel. (this is edited from a very long essay I wrote so sorry if it seems disjointed in places)

Supernova said:

Sure sounded that way to me...