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CD review: Prince
06 June 2004
By GRANT SMITHIES

If you were to draw a line connecting all the skinny, sexually obsessed, borderline psychotic freaky black dudes ever to distill their genius in a recording studio, who'd fall exactly halfway between Little Richard and Outkast's Andre 3000?


Who's right there, both sonically and chronologically, on the fulcrum between Richard's volcanic '60s rock'n'roll and Dre's pervy future funk?

That's right. Prince. In this game of musical join-the-dots, The Artist Formally Known as Crap, now known as Really Quite Good Again, isn't so much a dot as a towering planet-sized entity blocking out the sun.

Or at least he was during his heyday, a period that lasted for the entire decade of the '80s.

Controversy, Dirty Mind, 1999, Sign o' the Times, Purple Rain, Lovesexy, Around the World in a Day, Parade - great albums all. Back then Prince dominated black pop, incorporating funk, rock, soul, doo-wop, disco, folk, gospel, you name it, he shoe-horned it and gave us some of the most colourful and adventurous pop records ever made. And then, suddenly, he lost the plot.

The past 20 years has seen Prince shun the mainstream and willfully alienate his fan base.

A smooth jazz album here, a flabby triple album indulgence there, albums you could buy only through his website, unconvincing stylistic exercises, dense religious meditations - no wonder most punters said "pass".

Now, at the age of 45, Prince has clearly decided he wants us to like him again. Musicology is the Royal One's first major label-affiliated album in five years and while far from perfect, it's far better than anyone might have expected.

The title track is a highly addictive James Brown pastiche, "Illusion, Coma, Pimp and Circumstance" and "Life o' the Party" provide two creeping minimal funk workouts, the pleading, let-me-back-in-the-bedroom ballad "On the Couch" is superb, as is wistful album closer "Reflections".

And, even though this album is predominantly about giving up anonymous sex for a happy marriage, many other tracks also offer glimpses of that inspired pervy oddness we loved years ago.

On the downside, Prince frequently emulates his own past glories rather than superceding them. Evidence for the prosecution comes from the over-familiar falsetto R'n'B of "Call My Name", "Cinnamon Girls" chugging '80s power pop riffs and the appalling pomp rock guitars of "A Million Days".

In other words, Musicology presents no serious threat to Sign o' the Times. Even so, this is certainly the funkiest album by a Jehovah's Witness you're ever likely to hear.

One label that preoccupied the younger Prince back when he was still just a strange kid wearing his mom's nail polish to school in Minneapolis, is Motown. From the sad glamour of Diana Ross and the Supremes to the close shave harmonies of The Temptations, from the deep soul epiphanies of troubled troubadour Marvin Gaye to the sanctified funk of The Four Tops, I love this stuff too, deeply and forever.

New compilation Motown 1's shows why. Who could resist the profound optimism of Stevie Wonder's "Uptight (Everything's Alright)", the chirpy pre-Wacko innocence of The Jacksons' "I Want You Back", or Smokey Robinson's resplendent "Tears of a Clown"? Even the track order is nearly perfect, with Mary Wells' "My Guy" holding hands with The Temptations' "My Girl", and the two sides of Marvin Gaye presented back-to-back; the politically conscious "What's Going On" giving way to bedroom anthem "Let's Get it On".

Quibbles? Several early tracks are marred by those then-popular semi-comedic solos in which the sax player makes his horn squawk and bray like a donkey.

The seriously funky Commodores' only offering is soppy schmaltz-fest "Three Times a Lady". And the post-1980 contributions of Debarge, Boys II Men and Michael McDonald are beyond dull. But the early stuff here is uniformly superb; each song so splendid it's still being picked over for ideas by the songwriters of today.

From pop genius to personal pain. Years ago, planting a tree in my backyard, I dug my spade into a huge wasps' nest. Within seconds I was surrounded by a dense cloud of surging, stinging, angry little dots. A mini-swarm of the malicious little buggers flew down each gumboot and within 10 minutes both feet had swelled up like melons.

So it's interesting to learn when he was a toddler Gerome Mills, now sleaze-meister lead vocalist of Wellington band Paselode, encountered a nestful of livid wasps. Which has clearly left him emotionally scarred, from his crazed contributions to their ferocious gigs, and the more unhinged moments of impressive debut album The Taming of the Wasps.

With a sound so grimy, greasy, fuzzy and filthy you need to wash out your ears after listening to it, Wasps avoids the cold digital clarity that renders so many contemporary rock records sterile.

With a rhythm section as happy playing funk as hard rock and occasional outbreaks of tender balladry and twang-happy country guitar, this five-piece brings something fresh to the rock'n'roll riff-monster party. Dig in, but prepared to get stung.

I wish these people would get off it, and stop saying that Prince isn't the artist he used to be. It's really annoying! How would they like to be constantly compared to things they did in their past? How would it be for them if I looked at reviews they did today, and said, "Well, it's not nearly as good as the one you did five years ago?" For God's sake, CUT IT OUT!

yeah - i agree with the above post.....and as 4 the sheepland thing...well - we have hobbits here too....and soon u'll see we have a big hairy gorilla!!!

being a kiwi, i'm embarrassed by references to sheep, hobbits and gorillas- for fuck sake we have more going on here than sheep and peter jackson - but i guess it's winter.... baaaaahhhh!

"Over familiar falsetto on call my name"
is this guy an idiot? where's the falsetto. The song is mainly sung in a deep register - with only a few high notes!

idiot.

New Zealand (sheepland) needs to import some of us Aussies to make the place less boring and arrogant if that's at all possible.

keep laughing fudgeface, as we send more maoris over to Sydney, thus increasing the average IQ of both countries... nootch

gottagottagotta said:

- True. Although I love it, the song structure is very similar to Prince classic formula (Do me baby, Scandalous, etc).