http://www.memphisflyer.c...10&ID=5999

Signs
Book trumps record in new batch of Prince-ly product.
CHRIS HERRINGTON | 6/12/2004



Book trumps record in new batch of Prince-ly product.
With his recent induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame begetting more attention (covers of Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly) than a good-not-great new album (Musicology) would have otherwise gotten, the current Prince tour feels something like a valedictory, and reports from the early shows portend good things. If it all seems a little manufactured or if it overstates the extent of this return to form (Musicology is no "Love & Theft", to pick another recent "comeback" example), I'll welcome any excuse to turn one's attention to the greatest pop musician of the past 25 years.

Prince was my first pop love, so I've been inspired by the current wave of Prince hype to explore his back catalog for the first time in years. First single, "Soft and Wet": truth-in-advertising. Prince: maybe the best teen-pop record ever made. Dirty Mind: stone classic from first carnal electrobeat to last. Controversy: politics dumber and provocations sillier than I remembered but "Do Me, Baby" a soft-porn/soft-soul beacon he wouldn't top until Sign 'O' the Times' "Adore." 1999: more consistently body-rockin new-wave, computer-blue James Brown (especially "DMSR") with a dirty, dirty mouth. Purple Rain: coming on a little too strong (and a little too apocalyptic) but with of-the-era b-sides "17 Days" and "Erotic City" (!) a testament to his cultural peak. Around the World in a Day: the almost unlistenable negation/left-turn/comeuppance. Parade: the under-appreciated return "Kiss," his most undeniable pop moment;"Girls & Boys," an unhinged joy; lovely, lachrymose "Sometimes It Snows in April," among his most fully committed lunacies. And then: Sign 'O' the Times.

Ah, Sign 'O' the Times: This required no reexploration because I haven't gone more than a few months without listening to some or all of it since first buying it on cassette back in 1987. I consider it among the three or four best records I've ever heard, which is why my favorite bit of new Prince product isn't the fine Musicology but Michaelangelo Matos' 121-page treatment of Sign as part of Continuum's new 33 1/3 series, in which various writers tackle individual albums in long form.

Matos, the current music editor at Seattle Weekly, is a former Flyer contributor and personal acquaintance. I know him well enough to know that he holds Sign 'O' the Times in the same esteem as I, but I don't know him well enough to have prepared me for the shock of recognition that came from reading the first of the four "Sides" his Sign book is divided into.

Matos grew up on welfare in the Minneapolis 'burbs; I grew up working class in the small-town South. But the cultural development that Matos (who is my age) recounts on his way to Sign 'O' the Times is so close to my own that I imagine there must be thousands of others who share it: Prince fandom flamed by "Little Red Corvette" and Purple Rain making him seem like a superhero to an already pop-oriented elementary schooler; rock-fandom in general juiced by the dawn of the video era (MTV, Friday Night Videos, Night Flight) and the pop explosion of 1984 (see also Springsteen, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Cyndi Lauper, Van Halen); a precocious introvert's interest in lists and facts fed by such Eighties talismans as Casey Kasem's Weekly Top 40, baseball-card statistics, and the emergence of Trivial Pursuit; an archivist's interest in pop history spiked by baby-boomer nostalgia that shoved the Sixties (especially the Beatles) down your throat (with Rolling Stone's 1987 Top 100 album list providing the map to pop's past); then breaking free of someone else's nostalgia with the revelation that the best record you've ever heard wasn't made in 1967 but only a few months ago. For Matos, Sign 'O' the Times was that revelation, as it was for me.

That's a personal testament. But the rest of Matos' fine little book steps back for a more critical take on both the album and Prince's career in toto. Matos identifies the factors that make Sign of particular relevance: signifying the end of Prince's classic era; the last true double album conceived as two discs and four sides and largely experienced as such before the CD age turned nearly everything into an overlong, underedited chore; the last important R&B album that was generally untouched by hip-hop but still utterly modern. For all those reasons, Sign is historic. But it's also great, and Matos makes the case for that as well.

Matos chooses the relatively underdiscussed "Strange Relationship" as the crux of Prince's most serious and mature album, maintaining that this seriousness manifests itself not in the dated-on-contact topical material of the "overrated" (so true) lead/title single but in the thoughtfulness of its love songs, such as "If I Was Your Girlfriend," "Forever in My Life," and "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man."

"Sign is certainly kaleidoscopic," Matos writes, "moving from minimalist funk to big-band ballads to raw, gut-level rock to whatever 'The Ballad of Dorothy Parker' is. But it's emotionally prismatic as well." Matos also connects this lyrical maturity to a jazz sensibility that made Sign Prince's first horn record, even though the instruments (the only ones Prince couldn't play himself) appear on only five tracks. And the book's discussion of Sign proper ends and peaks exactly where the album does, with the one-man, slow-jam, headphone symphony "Adore," which Matos contends is "all show, all sincerity": "'Adore' means it. All of it. Every last dappled, gold-embossed, spangled, dewy-eyed, iridescent, opalescent (that's right, this song emanates light and diffracts it), incense-permeated, sweet-time-taking, defenses-breaking, manifest-destiny-of-love-sweet-love second of it."

I haven't seen "Adore" on any concert set lists for the current tour, unfortunately (or not, since it's impossible to imagine any live performance coming close to the studio version), though I have seen Sign standouts "U Got the Look" and "Forever in My Life" (as well as relative nonhits "I Feel For You" and "Sometimes It Snows in April"). The set lists are, of course, heavy on Musicology, which fits fine on what people are calling a "hits" tour, since, though lacking genius, Musicology is classicist Prince at his most assured going through the old motions with renewed purpose. The title track glances backward thematically, but the JB beats, sproingy synth lines, captivating vocals (his most underappreciated skill), and muddled politics are plenty old-school. n

E-mail: herrington@memphisflyer.com

Hell yea, hell fucking yeaaaaa

That review was great as fuck. Agreed with much of it. He is right, Strange Relationship is the backbone of the album. What a masterpiece. I'm always singin that damn song.

Great thing--I must find this book, and masterbate to it. lol.

Good to see a critic of music with some sense. But, ATWIAD unlistenable??

I think not!

But, overall, enjoyed the fuck out of this review. Gotta find the book. Thanks.

The most creative and diverse ARTIST/MUSICIAN in the history of MUSIC!

EROTICCITYNPG said:

Huh? I've seen "Musicology" as the opener for every set, occasionally seen "On the Couch" as part of the acoustic set, and one time I saw "Call My Name" being included as part of the encore, but that's all I've seen from Musicology on this tour, though I haven't been hardcore about following the setlists night to night. If anything, the tour's been heavier on Purple Rain material...

croweonbranch said:

Life 'O' The Party was in at least the L.A. sets also.
The live arrangement has been crossbred with musical elements of James Brown's Hot Pants and actually sounds better than the recorded version IMO.

tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...rmusic.htm

The Matos blog is interesting, as well.

He played 'adore' in LA in the last week of May.

And i agree that SOTT is 1 of the 5 greatest albums of all time along with 'Songs in the Key of Life' and 'Payback', 'Parliament' and there are a few others that i'll have 2 simmer on!

FINALLY!!!! We get a review done by someone who can actually write well enough for me to enjoy reading their words! I become so annoyed while reading other reviews because of the lack of vocabulary and coherent sentences.

I mean, I not only enjoyed reading about Prince's work, but also enjoyed actually reading the text. Feel me?
I know....settle down. It's just that I get orgasmic when this happens
I agree with you, Freaky. This review rocked! Best one I have read in a LONG time. Now, where do we score the book?

Yea he played adore at the show i went toin LA.
And the show is not heavy on musicology! he played only a few fom it thank god.
this guy is an idiot.
yea thats right.
anybody who claims the title track to sign is overated is an idiot.
anybody who calls ATWIAD unlistenable is an idiot.
anyone who cant appriciate the fun that is Controversy, is an idiot.

yea he thinks sign is his best record, evryone does, probalbly every music critic alive, to say it wasnt would make him a certifiable idiot.

I just emailed Chris Herrington to ask how to go about finding the book.

dianne34 said:

I actually have this book, I thought it was kinda a let down. Basically it was a music critic writing a detailed review of sign o' the times, but it was clear that he hadn't even herd all of Princes records b4 sign o the times which makes sign a little difficult to write a whole intelligent book about. I found it pretty inacurate

LAProducer said:

fine....
and here I was all excited. Doesn't take much to do that to me these days anyway....

dianne34 said:

Will talking dirty to you help??

rainbowchild said:

not really....that gets old quickly, but you could give it a try in an org note.

Good Read. Pretty much dead on...even with the Dorothy Parker line Not too much "truth" to the set lists though.

I do slightly disagree that SOTT was made/conceived with this notion...something that was well planned out. I think a double (or tripple album) was in the works and I think that SOTT was the leftovers of that idea...he just chose the best/right songs at the moment and put them on in a logical order for SOTT. I think the project would have gone over better as the Crystall Ball/Dream Factory project. SOTT is GREAT GREAT GREAT...but I think it sort of sullied what it was supposed to be...a better album. Just IMO...

Which would have fared better...a strange long and beautiful Dream factory/crystall ball...or a "pared down" SOTT. I always still wonder what the public would have thought of All My Dreams and Crystall Ball being on the same album. And both were missing from SOTT and would have changed SOTT as they are masterpieces in and of them selves.

I still think had Musicology been coupled with the other 2 (Chocolate invasion and Slaughterhouse and tack on magnificent and edited down to 16 or 17 trax) you'd have something to rival Sign. There's some really good stuff through out all 3. Though it may have been taken for a long P record or a mini emenacipation.

superspaceboy said:

Good point! I feel the same way about the NPGMC cd's(CI&SLTHouse). That's y i always say that P has'nt stopped making good music it's just been overlooked bcuz he did'nt put them out 4 commercial releases. Just like back in the day with Electric Intercourse or Sexual Suicide and other stuff that we are familiar with thru Bootlegs. P has never fell off 2me, he's still funky&creative as ever! And i wonder Y none of these music critics have critiqued those cd's? Long live NPGMC!

homeandmantel said:

It's on Amazon...

http://www.amazon.com/exe...s&n=507846

dianne34 said:

the reason you liked it so much was just cos it loved up prince.

homeandmantel said:

Yes. I love SOTT and would love to read an in-depth analysis, but this one sounds like intello-fluff of the worst kind. There are way too many people who think they are brilliant just because they can write well, and unfortunately sometimes they get published.
[This message was edited Sun Jun 13 12:02:13 2004 by Aerogram]

bloodybadbrain said:

who are you to determine why I enjoyed the piece? I made no mention of how he "loved up Prince". I did however, mention the fact that I enjoyed his ability to construct coherent sentences. Besides that, I am a bit too old to be acting like an idiot in that manner. If I like something, I like it. I do not simply follow Prince like a sheep in the herd. I am quite capable of creating my own opinions. I don't need someone else constucting them for me. The reason I am interested in the book is not simply because of the Prince material, but because I hunger for intelligent reading. I thank you in advance for not deciding why I prefer something.

homeandmantel said:

Chill, brother, it sounds like someone offended you personally...

Prince was in Toto???







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[This message was edited Mon Jun 14 7:42:41 2004 by JediMaster]

theAudience said:

I've gotta agree with you there. LOTP does sound better live than the studio version. It has an infectious and funky litte vibe to it. If I remember correctly, I think I was the only one in my section gettin' off to that one.

ELBOOGY said:

I say that too. The stuff the fans are going to like is mostly the stuff the casual fan won't and normally won't seek out. For me Musicology was for the casual fan and TCI and Slaughtlerhouse were for us.

Just did a bit of reading of an excerpt from the Vault. I was sorta correct on the SOTT concept. Lots of leftovers of other ideas..(aren't all of the albums ) It's mind boggling as to the different configs that that thing went through!