STANDARD MUSICOLOGY QUESTIONNAIRE

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Reply #270 posted 05/05/04 4:24am

gooeythehamste
r

Finally, while listening to Prince’s latest release Musicology, I understand why I am not the Prince fan I used to be. It is of course, as in many break ups, an accummulation of many reasons. But at last I can simplify it to just one reason.

Musicology sounds simple at first. Which in my book is a good thing if the music makes you move.
Remember the song Sign “O” The Times, ya’ll? It was, and is, simply a lyrics sung over a drum computer, with little embelishments. That song was classic and you know that’s true when Prince recognises the same fact and still plays it a grand seventeen years later on in his career.
And sure a song like Musicology makes something move. If Rhonda’s bass not not move ya, yer a tight assed white boy. And I ain’t. Tight assed, that is.

So. Why did I not warm to most thing Prince released since 1991? Except maybe that time around the release of The Gold Experience, when Prince tapped into new ways of reaching the people hungry for his music?

Well. It’s simple. I dug Prince when he was a searching soul. When he was looking for ways to still the dis-satisfaction in him. For things to fuel his inmense hunger. When he would consider to be an album a palet on which he mixed colors to fit the image in his head.

For a while this journey was simultaneously with my own. I recognised the colors, could identify with his words. I felt his music and was connected to the colors his voice invoked.

And then we both wandered different ways. Prince asked us on Controversy ”Am I gay or straight?” while knowing the answer to that. I liked Prince when he wanted us to doubt his image and fill in the blanks, in this way also allowing us to color his music ourselves.
And I started feeling disconnected to the Prince that feels the need to explain that in fact, he’s black and straight.
sigh

In a few strokes he is painting a new picture. And I do not like it. It’s a picture that is trying to form us instead of letting us find our own images. A cross is no longer The Cross, Abraham Lincoln was actually the MF he now tries to brush underneath the carpet.

And it’s not the fact I do not like his politics or religion, in many ways we go at it in different ways and end up in the same corner.

The fact is that I do not longer like the way Prince paints his pictures.
To me, Prince’s music was never only that. It was his image, the mystery, the teasing.
Back in the day I considered songs with silly lyrics like the b-side of Sign “O” The Times genius, nowadays I am a bit perplexed by his use of words like baklava and icy plunder. Something took the “La’s” outa his “Hee’s” and I am no longer willing to bark along to whatever game Prince plays.

I guess I grew up. And there is nothing wrong with that. I no longer am willing to go along with the mindspins of a man that ties slavery to the way he feels treated by his employers. Man, how that so-called name change irked me. Even though at the time his musical output excited me.
I no longer understand the ways he travels to sustain his hunger for peace. His usage of the phrase Akashic Records certainly did not make me curious for the religion he now abides to. And a holocaust reference in a lovesong still can make me angry. Talk about taking things out of context.

To me the best of an album like The Rainbow Children was that at least he used his music again to channel his believes, instead of aimlessly throwing songs at us that sounded like a handfull of pebbels hitting the waters of Lake Minnetonka, only to sink faster than it was thrown on tape.

I still respond to Prince’s voice, though. Whenever he sings songs like Let’s Have A Baby, The One, One Nite Alone or Reflection, I can hear the genius filtering through the mediocrity. And I love the colors of songs that he feels, cuz then he sounds believable.

But most songs he releases these days are build up around a reflection of genius and then torn to bits by the laziness of that same genius, that thinks it can just do what it likes, no matter what. Bugger for us that he retired Jamie Starr.

And that’s where my whining stops. Cuz it’s bugger for us. I am sure Prince is quite happy with the music he releases. He does not have to pay attention to top lists like Beyonce. He caters to his fans in his own way, even if that means he dangles them diamonds in front of us, only to feed us carrots instead.
In this case, the diamonds being our treasured bootlegs, the carrots the lame assed edits he stuffs down our throats forcefully. Cuz hey! We’re fans. We need to collect, no matter what.

And if Prince is really as serious about his music as he always claims he is, he might wanna take a step back and look at the way he is treating his children. On the New Power Soul album he described his songs as babies, the people playing them the midwives. Really strange he uses plastic surgery on his own children then, cutting them up to fit daddy’s strange way of fitting a hollow theme, like he did with jewels like Moviestar and Crystal Ball. If only I could understand the way his ponderings take him while making these decisions, then maybe it would make sense.

Cuz I consider myself a godfather to many of his tunes. I listen to them, nurture them. Have done for many years and will do so for years to come. And I will still visit every concert and aftershow I can, cuz that is when he still makes sense to me.

I understand Prince when he walks onto a stage and lies down first because his band is way too wicked.

I channel his music alongside with him when he “talks” the same notes that come from his guitar.

And I sing along when he wants us to “Whoa, Candy!”

Cuz he is Prince. And hell! He’s funky. And a sexy mf. No matter how much make up his religion wears.

I am sure that in the end we will both travel different roads that will lead us to the same garden. That’s why I love “Walk Over God’s Heaven” so much, cuz the words Ms Jackson uses are different than the ones I would use to describe faith, but the feeling is the same; “…flowers and feathers… and they all is exactly right”.