Prince demanded the presence of Los Angeles radio station Indie 103 at his miniature purple house earlier this week, because he wanted to play them his new album.

One thing led to another, and the tiny tyke decided to let them premiere four of the tracks on Steve "Sex Pistols" Jones' show. And, if you missed it going out live, you can still catch the programme the station's website (scroll almost to the bottom of the page and select the ultra-low-quality audio stream for 18th December).

The first track is a cover of Tommy James & the Shondells’ Crimson & Clover which, for no good reason, incorporates the "Baby, I think I love you - but I want to know for sure" bit of The Troggs' Wild Thing. It uses a very similar guitar sound to Purple Rain, and ends with one of Prince's best solos since 1995's Gold Experience. In other words, it's really good.

Second track, Colonized Mind, is a lugubrious bluesy jam with Prince bitching about "The Man" "stealing" from "artists". We get the message - he's not a big fan of record companies. According to Steve Jones, Prince is looking for a way to release this record without the help of a major multinational corporation. Would it be churlish to suggest he offered it as a download - a bit like he used to before he threw all his toys out of the internet pram?? Probably, yes.

Track three, Wall Of Berlin, kicks off with a slamming drum beat and Prince asking "where am I?" It's more upbeat and playful than the previous two tracks - with the chorus punning "she gets down like the wall of Berlin". But the verses are stupidly verbose - with phrases like "galaxy of monumental delight" and "parallel hologram copyright". In the final analysis, it’s all a bit awkward and cheesy.

Finally comes 4ever, a lush, piano-led ballad with a big old choir on the chorus. Like the other tracks, it sees Prince unleash an impassioned guitar solo towards the end - but it doesn't save the song from being one of those by-numbers pop/gospel numbers he's been turning out for the last decade.

It'd be great if Prince could stick to the rockier template of the first two songs and turn out a late-period classic. But I think even his biggest fans are resigned to the fact that every future Prince album will feature two barnstorming rock-outs alongside a tonnage of mediocre nonense.

Still, Steve Jones' co-host Mr Shovel suggested the finished album would be released in conjunction with a "coupla shows" - and if there's one area in which Prince still excels, it's in concert.

Maybe we'll finally get to see him at Glasto in 2009? Because that would be totally awesome.

Labels: Music, Prince

That new Jay-Z song I mentioned earlier this week now has a video... in which a portrait of Jay-Z is slowly created out of the letters that make up the word Brooklyn.

Jay-Z ft Santogold - Brooklyn Go Hard


In the realms of music videos that use typography, it is not as good as this fan effort for Ben Folds' Zak and Sarah:

Ben Folds - Zak and Sarah


But it's a vast improvement on Prince's Alphabet Street which, because Prince is a supreme douchebag, you can't watch online unless you go to this website. Here's a screenshot, anyway.

Labels: ben folds, jay-z, Music, Prince, santogold, video

Let's have a look at this Prince "tribute album" which has just landed on my desk.



Hmmm, nice artwork. And how about this line-up of stellar talent: Soulwax, D'Angelo, erm, Kode 9...

Yes folks, of all the people who have paid tribute to Prince as an inspiration over the past decade, these are definitely the cream of the crop. We don't have time for Pharrell Williams or Justin Timberlake. What could they possibly bring to a project like this?

Except, you know, sales.

But maybe I'm being unfair. Perhaps these artists really have delivered something unique. A new interpretation of old masterpieces, reframing the mystique of the Minneapolean maestro into a more contemporary context, revealing - as Sinead O'Connor has done in the past - a more complex, emotional side to songs we previously thought of as party tunes or excursions in ego.

We kick off with D'Angelo - once touted as the "next Prince" - whose workaday version of She's Always In My Hair shows why he wasn't even the next Ray Parker Jr.

Filth-merchant Peaches would seem like the perfect candidate to cover Prince's ultimate dirty party tune, Sexy Dancer, but she spends the three minutes shouting "we're going to Prince's house" over an anonymous club beat.

Meanwhile, Soulwax take whimsical nursery rhyme Starfish and Coffee and beat it to the ground with a rusty kettle, robbing it of all joy and life (although it now has added rusty kettle, so that's okay).

In all, about three tracks are worth keeping: British indie kids Hefner turn in a sinister version of Controversy, which wouldn't sound out of place on a Massive Attack album; Former New Young Pony Club cohorts Blue States return Alpahbet Street to its blues roots; and Sina Nordemstam (who I only ever hear on compilation albums) strips back Purple Rain to its barest essentials, making it sound more like a stalkers' lullaby than a stadium-rousing anthem.

Pick and choose your downloads carefully when it goes up on iTunes from 4 Feb!

Stina Nordemstam - Purple Rain (MP3)
7 Hurtz with Peaches - Sexy Dancer (MP3)

Labels: MP3, Music, Prince

The Onion's AV Club have just published a splendid article running through 21 average albums that would make great EPs. Among their choices are REM's New Adventures In Hi-Fi, The Verve's Urban Hymns and Kanye West's Graduation.

It's a great read... but saldy lacking in pop records. And, as we all know, pop records generally need a good bit of pruning before they make it over to your iPod.

So, here are some of my additions to the Onion's list. Feel free to add your own using the comments thingummy. It'd make my day.

Christina Aguilera - Back To Basics (2006)


In which Aguilera pays tribute to the jazz singers who inspired her by, erm, dressing up like them and singing exactly the same songs she always sings. The public duly ignored it, aghast at the thought of Aguilera screeching and wailing over the course of two entire discs. But, pared down to a more manageable size, this is a corking little album. The big band flourishes and jazz inflections actually serve to highlight Aguilera's vocal technique (it's not just shouting, after all) and the Mark Ronson track, Without You, is among the best things she's recorded.

EP Version: 1) Back In The Day 2) Ain't No Other Man 3) Candyman 4) Without You 5) Slow Down Baby 6) Save Me From Myself


Madonna - Erotica (1992)


Having hit a career high with Vogue in 1990, Madonna dragged that song's co-writer Shep Pettibone into the studio for an entire album. One of the most prolific and talented remixers of the time, Pettibone struggled when it came to writing actual songs. Tracks like Thief of Hearts and Why's It So Hard are little more than drumbeats, and Madonna - never the world's most profound lyricist - is particularly woeful here "Friends they tried to warn me about you / He has good manners," she declares bafflingly during Words. On Deeper and Deeper, Madonna and Pettibone even acknowledge their lack of ambition by slapping the chorus of Vogue over the coda. The good tracks, unusually for a Madonna album, are the ballads.

EP Version: 1) Erotica 2) Deeper and Deeper (a decent song despite itself) 3) Bad Girl 4) Rain


Radiohead - Kid A / Amnesiac (2000)


Amnesiac already appears on The Onion's list, but I reckon you need to combine both records to create a decent EP. The two albums actually derived from the same recording session - so the songs cohere perfectly. Amnesiac has the best tunes in Knives Out (pretty) and Pyramid Song (claustrophobic). Kid A provides the experimentalism and menace… Plus, in scrapping Life In A Glass House, we can pretend Radiohead never "experimented with jazz".

EP Version: 1) Everything In Its Right Place 2) Knives Out 3) Pyramid Song 4) Morning Bell (Kid A version) 5) You And Whose Army 6) Optimistic 7) Motion Picture Soundtrack


U2 - Zooropa (1993)


This is a bit unfair, as Zooropa was originally intended to be an EP accompanying the band's Zoo TV tour. Instead, in a flurry of activity partially prompted by the dissolution of Edge's marriage, the group turned in a full 10 tracks. Predictably, given the circumstances, they're not all of the highest standard. Stand-outs include the title track - a montage of three different songs that perfectly captures the chaos of the recording sessions - and Stay, Farway So Close, which is perhaps U2's most under-rated ballad. Future Batman single Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me was also started during the recording sessions, so I'm reclaiming it here for my six-track EP.

EP Version: 1) Zooropa 2) Numb 3) Lemon 4) Stay (Faraway, So Close) 5) Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me 6) The Wanderer


Prince - Symbol (1992)


Apparently conceived as a rock soap opera, this album (the sequel to Diamonds and Pearls) has a plot more confused than Terry Gilliam's Brazil. The music, too, lacks focus - as Prince tries to marry his new-found love of 70s funk with the rap stylings of his then-band, the NPG. Sexy MF, for example, wouldn't sound out of place on a James Brown album until it is spectaculraly derailed by Tony M's agressively misogynistic rap. Luckily, there is an edited version that jettisons this atrocious interruption which we can purloin for the purposes of our EP. In addition, several "classic" Prince tracks survived the NPG's onslaught, with The Morning Papers in particular recalling the glory days of Purple Rain's pop/rock crossover.

EP Version: 1) Sexy MF - edit 2) Love 2 The 9s 3) The Morning Papers 4) 7 5) 3 Chains O' Gold


The Beatles - White Album (1968)


A certain breed of Beatles fan thinks this double album ranks as the fab four's best work. They are so wrong it hurts like a spike in your ear. More than half the record is self-indulgent, druggy bollocks. The other half is frequently unfocused - presumably the casualty of the discordant atmosphere in the recording studio. Indeed, many of the better songs were essentially recorded in isolation - with McCartney playing drums on Back In The USSR and Harrison performing While My Guitar Gently Weeps with Eric Clapton after several Beatley attempts at the song proved unsatisfactory. You could probably get a decent single album out of the 30 tracks, but I prefer a more brisk stroll through this musical wasteland… and I'm subsituting the single version of Revolution for Lennon's throwing-the-toys-out-of-the-pram album mix.

EP Version: 1) Back In The USSR 2) Helter Skelter 3) Dear Prudence 4) Revolution 5) While My Guitar Gently Weeps 6) Happiness Is A Warm Gun 7) Blackbird

Labels: beatles, Christina Aguilera, madonna, Music, Prince, radiohead, U2

With mrsdiscopop and I getting engaged after seeing Prince in 2002, and last night being our fourth wedding anniversary - it seemed like a good idea to catch Prince's final concert at London's O2 arena.

We were right.

By my calculations, he got through 21 (a coincidence?) of his singles, plus a huge swathe of fan favourites like The Beautiful Ones, and teases of the "ones-he-shall never-play-again-because-of-his-religious-beliefs-or-something" like Darling Nikki and Gett Off. If I hadn't been there to celebrate my marriage, I would have married Prince instead.

Or as well. I'm sure mrsdiscopop wouldn't have minded.

The whole arena was awash with purple glowsticks from the minute the show started and, at the end of Sometimes It Snows In April, he changed the lyrics to say "As much as I wanna stay... All good things, they say, never last."

The aftershow was apparently amazing, too. We didn't go (too late to get tickets, and the ones on eBay were changing hands for silly money) but by all accounts it would have been a perfect end to the night. During the course of a three-hour set, he covered Rock Lobster - which is the tune we played while walking down the aisle in 2003 - and Amy Winehouse turned up to perform Love Is A Losing Game. Eeek!

I've already done a review of the 4th August show here, and The Daily Telegraph has sent someone along to every night of the 21-date run... Here are links to all of the ones available online:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21


Meanwhile, if you missed the shows, Prince has started putting up videos on his official website. Fingers crossed for a DVD release, then!

Setlist - Main Show I Feel 4 U Controversy Musicology Chelsea Rogers Le Freak/Sexy Dancer Somewhere Here on Earth Cream U Got The Look Prince at the piano I Would die 4 U I Wanna Be Your Lover Diamonds and Pearls Little Red Corvette The Beautiful Ones Under The Cherry Moon (instrumental) The Most Beautiful Girl In The World Sometimes It Snows In April Purple Rain Take Me With U Guitar Kiss Let's Go Crazy Nothing Compares 2 U 1999 Prince at the piano (part ii) Sign O The Times When Doves Cry Darling Nikki Alphabet St Gett Off (Housestyle) Irresistible Bitch Delirious The Ballad of Dorothy Parker Rasberry Beret Encore When U Were Mine Girls & Boys

Setlist - Aftershow Love Is A Losing Game with Amy Winehouse 7 Come Together (Beatles) Honky Tonk Woman (Rolling Stones) Rock Steady (Aretha Franklin) with Beverley Knight Whole Lotta Love (Led Zeppelin) Shhh... All The Critics Love U In London Le Freak (Chic) / Sexy dancer / Movin' Chelsea Rodgers Misty blue (Eddy Arnold) Baby love (Mother's Finest) Kiss / Alphabet St Instrumental Get On The Boat Love Rollercoaster (Ohio Players) Play That Funky Music (Wild Cherry) Anotherloverholenyohead Rock Lobster (B-52's) Villanova Junction (Jimi Hendrix) Peach / Rock Me Baby (BB King) Stratus (Billy Cobham) The Question Of U / The One What Have You Done For Me Lately? (Janet Jackson) Partyman It's alright (Graham Central Station)

Labels: amy winehouse, Music, Prince, Review

Before I get to the glowing endorsements and gushing superlatives, I'd like to make one thing clear: I do not like being lied to. So let's get a few things out of the way.

1) "Real music by real musicians"
This has become something of a mantra at Prince concerts over the last couple of years. The petit purple performer pronounced it again at the O2 on Saturday night, adding something about not using tapes. With that in mind, I can only assume Sheena Easton was obscured by a pillar when she sang her parts in U Got The Look.

2) "We got so many hits we don't have time to play them all"
Really? Then why did you fuck about playing four cover versions - including Play That Funky Music and (Gnarls Barkley's) Crazy? We'd have preferred 1999, or even Pop Life, goddammit.

3) Prince - The Official Aftershow
Actually, this was brilliant. But putting your name on the ticket is a bit dishonest when you only manage to strap on a guitar for a paltry five minutes.

Anyway, like I was saying, the Prince concert was breathtakingly brilliant. So brilliant, in fact, that none of these quibbles mattered one jot.

It was a return to the crowd-pleasing, all-singing, all-dancing Prince extravaganzas of yore. Less of the jazz noodles, more of the funky wasabi.

We kicked off (I was an integral part of the evening, obviously) with Let's Go Crazy and Take Me With U - a Purple Rain-era double whammy that instantly brought to mind the cocksure set Prince delivered at the Superbowl earlier this year.

And the hits kept coming: Kiss, Raspberry Beret, I Feel 4U, If I Was Your Girlfriend (If I Was Your Girlfriend!!!!), Cream and Purple Rain were all present and correct.

The more recent numbers from Prince's back-catalogue were well-chosen, too. Black Sweat - his Timbaland-baiting, stripped-back funk masterclass from last year - was among the evening's highlights.

The four-piece backing band were honed to precision, capable of changing up the groove at a moment's notice. Well, Prince's notice to be exact. Under his watchful eye, Musicology became a ten-minute lesson in how to get down - complete with members of the audience strutting their stuff onstage. This was also the point where Prince set free his be-suited brass section, giving former James Brown cohort Maceo Parker the chance to let rip with some of the finest saxophony you'll ever hear.

Prince himself runs about the stage like a man two decades younger than his 49 years. He's flanked most of the time by two dancers - The Twinz - whose high heels are only marginally shorter than the ones on the Minneapolis midget. But for some reason Prince didn't seem interested in a pervy dance-off with his sexy new foils. This would never have happened back in the days of Diamond and Pearl (not their real names), who got a royal rogering on a purple bed every night of his 1992 tour. Has Prince's ridiculously overworked lust muscle started to go a bit limp in his old age?

Back to the music, though, and the best moment of the night came with the encores. Prince emerged from under the stage, swathed in dry ice and seranaded us for 15 minutes armed just with his guitar and his ego. The acoustic version of Little Red Corvette stopped the entire audience in their tracks. My nerves actually tingled (and I hadn't had any beer at this point). It was just perfect... and to follow it up with Sometimes It Snows In April? Oh boy.

There are still something like 19,000,092 Prince gigs left at the O2. You really should go.

Setlist
Let's Go Crazy
Take Me With U
Guitar
Shhh…
Musicology
Pass The Peas
Play That Funky Music
Sexy Dancer / Le Freak
I Feel 4U
Controversy / Housequake
Wonderful World (saxophone solo)
Cream
U got the look
If I Was Your Girlfriend
Pink cashmere
Lolita
Black Sweat
Kiss
Purple Rain
---Acoutic encore---
Little Red Corvette
Raspberry Beret
Sometimes It Snows In April
---Band encore---
Crazy
Nothing Compares 2U

(Concert photos 2, 3 and 5 by rolyatell at prince.org)

Labels: Prince, Review

I finally got round to watching last year's TV sensation Heroes when it debuted on BBC2 last night, and it looks very good indeed.

In one of the best-written opening episodes of a multi-character TV drama I've seen in a long time, every individual had room to breathe and establish their personality tics without the whole thing seeming crammed in or forced. My only fear is that it'll end up being another Lost - with tons of cliffhangers and no actual plot.

I really, really hate Lost.

Anyway, for me, the very best moment of Heroes' opening episode was right at the start - when it revealed that Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman's had composed the score. For those of you who don't know, Wendy & Lisa were the mainstays of Prince's band, The Revolution, back when he was proper good (1980-86, fact fans). Not only did they have brilliantly ridiculous hair but, without them, there'd be no Kiss, no Raspberry Beret and no Purple Rain.

Prince, renowned for his prolific work rate, developed a working practice whereby he would record the basic tracks of a song and leave Wendy & Lisa to polish them off. Their influence can probably be heard most strongly on the psychedlic pop of the Parade album, and on fan favourite Sometimes It Snows In April in particular.

After Prince disbanded the Revolution, Wendy & Lisa went off as a solo act, releasing two average albums and one stonkingly brilliant one in the late 80s and early 90s. They never achieved mainstream success but, in my teens, I was more into them than the purple midget himself. The acoustic rock of their third album, Eroica (named after Beethoven's 3rd Symphony, don'tchaknow?) is still worth hunting down now, 17 years after its release.

Unfortunately, there ain't much Wendy & Lisa material to be found on the web - but here are a couple of choice youtube snippets.

Strung Out - acoustic performance of 1990 single


Kiss - Prince dances around Wendy, who desperately tries not to laugh

Heroes - behind-the-scenes look at composing the theme tune

Labels: heroes, Music, Prince, TV, video, wendy and lisa

Cripes, who'd have thought that the free Prince CD mounted on the front of the Daily Mail would be any good? Not anyone who's listened to, let's say, Chaos & Disorder or Old Friends 4 Sale - two of his contractual obligation albums from the end of the 1990s - that's for sure.

But Planet Earth, while not a return to form (he's been perfectly on form since 2001's Rainbow Children) is a genuinely great slab of late-period Minneapolis midget.

Eyebrows were raised when he chose to give the album away with the apallingly reactionary, right-wing middle-class, essentially racist Mail On Sunday but actually, it's not a bad fit. This is one of Prince's safest, whitest, records in a long time. As a point of reference, it's more like the pretty melodies of Diamonds and Pearls than the extended funk jams of 1999.

Opener Planet Earth sounds like it's going to be awfully twee until the chorus kicks in, drills its way into your brain and then kicks up a gear. In a sign that Prince is enjoying himself, he does a guitar solo and that scream he's been perfecting since the end of Let's Go Crazy in 1984.

Guitar and The One You Wanna See see him return to the hillbilly country-rock of early tracks like Delirious and When U Were Mine, and Mr Goodnight features one of the great man's less terrifying attempts at rap.

The only real mis-steps are the pseudo-funk of Chelsea Rodgers, which calls to mind Leo Sayer's buttock-clenching attempts at disco, and All The Midnights In The World -a jazzy little ballad that the phrase "noodling away at the piano" was invented to describe. By me. Just then.

If you bought the CD and are thinking "hey, this Prince guy can hold a tune, I wonder what else he's done" then a) Purple Rain, Kiss, Raspberry Beret, Gett Off, Little Red Corvette and 1999, and b) where in the name of the sweet baby Jesus and all that is pure and good in this world have you been?

You can get hold of Prince's back-catalogue so easily it would be insulting (and, hey, illegal) to put any of it up here. But if you're interested in investigating further, here are a couple of his forgotten gems - songs he wrote for other bands that are of equal brilliance to his solo work, but which have been unfairly sidelined by the sort of people who write "The 100 greatest songs you need to have on your iPod or generic MP3 player" lists for Rolling Stone and Q. Enjoy!

Download "Prince wrote this" (zip file with six MP3s)

Tracklisting:
The Time - Jungle Love
Sheila E - The Glamorous Life (club edit)
Martika - Love... Thy Will Be Done
Bangles - Manic Monday (nb: this has exactly the same melody as 1999 in the verses)
Sheena Easton - 101
Chaka Khan - I Feel For You

Labels: MP3, Music, Prince

Prince plans to give away his new album for free on the cover of the Mail On Sunday (an odd choice, but what the heck). This has thrown the record shops into a frenzy of hatred. "It would be an insult to all those record stores who have supported Prince throughout his career," said the co-chairman of the Entertainment Retailer's Association.

I'm slightly baffled that Prince should feel any obligation to these people, whose principle role in his career has been to fleece £5 off the price of his albums to line their own pockets. Am I missing something?

Here are some photos of Lindsay Lohan not looking pissed or stoned. Bryan Adams clearly has great timing.

Listen to Tom Baker having a strop and doing a swear while he records the voice-over for an ad:

Janet Jackson is recording her new album with the Neptunes. Is it too much to ask that it isn't a steaming pile of dog-shit like the last one? Probably, yes.

Favourite headline of the week? Stab victim 'continued masturbating'

TMZ got hold of Paris Hilton's prison canteen request form. If I am ever sent to jail - and there are many, many reasons why I should be - I want to go to one where a servant goes to the canteen to get you emery boards. Wonder what the vaseline was for?

On a related note, here is Hilton's non-disclosure agreement.

Charlie Booker on losing his Glastonbury virginity: "At 3am a group of post-pubescent upper-middle-class music-industry gitsacks pitched their tent beside mine, and no power on Earth could make them stop braying witless bullshit at the top of their idiot lungs. One of them had a bassoon."

Hooray! Amy Winehouse is releasing my second-favourite song from her Back To Black album... Here's the video:

Amy Winehouse - Tears Dry On Their Own


Right, I'm buggering off to France for a week. See you when I get back!

Labels: amy winehouse, Janet Jackson, lindsay lohan, links, Prince

Still without an internet connection at home (only a week to go, I'm promised) so here's another perfunctory update.

a) I am listening to Amerie's new album, Because I Like It, right now. It is fucking fantastic. Really, really, fucking brilliant. I'm on track seven and there hasn't been a shitty ballad or hideous "crunk" track with Lil' Jon yet. By default, this makes it the best R&B album since 1997.

b) We got tickets to see Prince in London! I nearly wet myself with excitement but in the end I decided just to go "weee" with my mouth instead.

c) Remember the video of the people lip-syncing to the theme tune of Peep Show that I posted last week? It turns out this group of people spend their entire working day making stupid videos for the internet. Look:





I hate them, but I want to be their friends.

d) The Eurovision was brilliant. I wasn't realy expecting to have such a laugh - but I met Terry Wogan, got to play with the pyrotechnics, comiserated with Scooch and flirted with the Georgian lady (through a translator - a rather disconcerting experience). Obviously, the show itself was shit and the voting a joke, but that's what it's all about, no?

That's all for now. Love you, bye!

Labels: amerie, eurovision, Music, Prince, video

Perv over this, you pervs.


Yes, it's the five Girls of Aloud dressing up in school uniforms to fulfill some pathetic male sexual fantasy support Comic Relief. How thoughtful of them.

Also (and how did I miss this yesterday?) here is Prince's Super Bowl tribute to Janet Jackson's underpants malfunction of 2004.


My, what a large instrument you have Mr Rogers, etc, etc. (Innuendo fans: by instrument, I mean ten foot giant devil's cock)

Labels: Girls Aloud, humour, Janet Jackson, Music, Prince

I've just watched Prince's halftime performance from the internet The Super Bowl, which featured (deep breath): Let's Go Crazy, Baby I'm A Star, Proud Mary, All Along The Watchtower (a reference to Jehovah's Witnesses?), Best Of You (yes, the Foo Fighters one) and Purple Rain.

I am genuinely lost for words. So here are some words from other people who are not lost for words like me.

"Prince won the Superbowl!" Serial Robots

"I've given it some thought, and I don't actually understand people who don't like Prince." deforgeo

"He rocked, tore down, and rebuilt that stadium." Angela's Universe

"Prince is a ferkin faerie. Him and his precious little logo can go suck on a guitar pick." Tearful Whisper (WRONG!)

"Prince plays guitar as easily as most men breath…" Steveimel

"Prince will play purple rain if and only if accompanied by actual rain." Irresponsible Journalism

"Prince fucking ruled!" tjfreeman



Coincidentally, I was reading Garry Mulholland's excellent "Fear Of Music" over the weekend, which has this to say about the genius from Minneapolis.

Is the guitar solo from Purple Rain a ludicrous ego-wank, a piss-take or a thing of beauty? If you answered 'all three' then award yourself many prince points, for you get everything gettable about pop

Couldn't have said it better myself.




[for more info on Prince, check out Anil Dash's wonderful pre-super bowl primer by clicking here]

Labels: Music, Prince, video

Guess what? Another 1980s pop star was in the UK to pick up a lifetime achievement award this week. Like Mr Jackson, he failed to perform. Unlike Mr Jackson, fans left the concert with more respect for him than before.

Let's take a look.


(fast forward six minutes or so to get to the speech)

Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is the definition of class.

Labels: Michael Jackson, Music, Prince

Back in 1981, Prince's career was just beginning to take off. He'd released three albums, each of which outperformed the last, and had built up a small, but respectable, fan base in the US.

Controversy, however, marked the moment when he really found his feet. Musically, Prince had abandoned the funkified disco of early singles like I Wanna Be Your Lover and I Feel For You (later covered by Chaka Khan).

Emboldened by the favourable reation to the stripped-down home-made sound of third album Dirty Mind, he embraced a more edgy, new-wave sound. Concert promoters called it punk-funk, a description Prince wasn't enamoured with, but which pretty much fits the bill.

His lyrics, too, became more personal. Controversy (the album) dealt with nuclear war, gun control and the recent murder of John Lennon. The title track addresses misconceptions people had about the miniature Minneapolis singer - Do I believe in God?" he asks, following that up with the query Am I straight or gay?

But, rather than answer those questions, Prince lets them hang in the air. In the video for the single, he blurs the issue even further by singing in a trenchcoat and stockings in front of a church window. It is the first time the purple perv's visuals and music combined so spectacularly.

As you can imagine the video was a little too, erm, controversial for the time. It was another two years before MTV started showing music by black artists and Prince's sexually ambiguous get-up wouldn't have made it on air even then. As a result, the single stalled at number 70 in the US charts.

Nontheless, the video stands up now as one of the greatest Prince performances on film. Just make sure to keep your eye on him, as the rest of the band seem oddly detached and the direction is distinctly shoddy (see if you can count the number of times a cameraman makes it into shot).

Buy Prince's video hits on DVD from Amazon

Labels: Music, Prince, Review, video

Lawks-a-lordy, the petite royal purple perv has gorn and done it again!

Remember back in the day when he made decent pop records and shagged pop strumpets like Sheena Easton? Well, after a long spell feeding off scraps in the darkest recesses of the dumper, he's back on form! Prince's new album, 3121, is getting rave reviews, and he's hanging around with a suitably curvaceous foil, who goes by the unlikely name of Tamare (a kind of chipotle sauce, it says here).

And he's doing other Princely things, too. Like forcing Warner Brothers to shelve a new record moments before it hits the... erm, shelves.

In 1988, you may recall, Prince recalled his so-called 'funk bible', The Black Album, when he got religion (in much the same manner that you or I might 'get' syphilis). For a few years, bootlegs of the album circulated amongst fans who slowly came to realise that it had really been scrapped because it was, well, largely rubbish.

This week he's at it again, according to the St Paul Pioneer Press;

"Prince's old label, Warner Bros., had planned to release the compilation "Ultimate Prince," a double-CD set containing some of his biggest hits and most interesting remixes. But after the discs were pressed and shipped to distributors, radio and the press, the label pulled "Ultimate Prince" from the schedule.

The decision happened last week, apparently too late to keep "Ultimate Prince" from appearing in the Sunday ad circulars for the big-box stores.

Why the last-minute fuss? A publicist for the label said it was an "artist rights issue." In other words, Prince took advantage of his purple reign and demanded the nonrelease of the set."

Obviously, fans are disappointed. The discs were supposed to include such ultra-rare tracks as the dance remix of "Let's Work" - vinyl copies of which exchange hands for hundreds of dollars. There is some hope, though, as CD WOW is claiming a revised release date of May 22nd.

Either way, it's nice to have Prince back. As long as he sticks to singing songs about his penis and doesn't try to make any more films.

via housequake

Labels: Music, Prince

A slight departure this week, as I've chosen a performance film for the soon-to-be-coveted video of the week page.

And what a performance! At last week's Brits ceremony, Prince reunited with Wendy & Lisa (from the Revolution) and crazy drumming lady, Sheila E, for the first time in 20-odd years. Together they run through a 12-minute set that blew every other Brits act off the stage with the force of nineteen jet engines.

Perhaps only two other live acts, Radiohead and U2, have ever given me actual goosebumps. Prince manages it every time. Even this audience of jaded music industry bozos and Mastercard bigwigs is eating out of his hand. It's not normal, I tell you.



If this is the band for Prince's next tour, I'll be quitting the day-job and following them round in a big purple campervan. And that's a promise.

Labels: brits, Prince, Review, video

Prince is back, back, BACK!!!

His new album, 3121, hits the stores on March 21st - with a host of guest stars and a video directed by Salma Hayek.

A single, "Beautiful", is also due out in the next couple of weeks, and it sees his royal badness (as they used to call him) getting all smoochy with a new soul singer called Tamar. Now, Prince is always at his best when he has a decent female foil, but the jury's out on whether Tamar is a muse (Rosie Gaines) or a menace (Cat). You can decide for yourself by watching their performance on last week's Saturday Night Live, below.



Personally, I'm not overly impressed with the new material. The two songs performed here plough a similar stylistic furrow to 2003's "Musicology" album. That record launched the purple perv back into the mainstream, but to many fans it felt like Prince-lite: a diluted and blunted version of his postmodern musical genius. Yes, it was great to him get the recognition he deserves -- but is playing it safe on the follow-up the best way to retain those fans?

Indeed, the highlights of Prince's career have always been the curveballs: ditching the power rock of Purple Rain for whimsical psychedlia on Around The World In A Day; sacking his band, the Revolution, at the height of their popularity in 1986; hiring a 10 piece soul band in the mid-90s while the rest of the world machine-gunned gangsta rap into the charts; having his sole UK number one (The Most Beautful Girl In The World), just as everyone was writing him off as a spent force…

So, let's hope these audience-friendly tracks he performed on SNL are the exception -- a sweet candy to tempt us into his dungeon of rootsy perversion. Because we all know Prince is at his best when he's being a naughty boy.

Labels: Music, Prince, snl

It must have been all those splits: Prince needs a new hip. Or so says the National Enquirer, which means it must be true...

Other purple rumours: The man has been in Marrakech recording a new video with Salma Hayek. And his charity single for the victims of Hurricane Katrina will be will be available in stores as well as online from next week.

The first of the Jarvis Cocker / Radiohead songs from the new Harry Potter movie has leaked. It's bordering on creepy - possibly the least child-friendly song from a kid's movie since Siouxie and the Banshee's "Face to Face" from Batman Returns.

First review of the Madonna album over at Drownedmadonna.com. Sadly, they fail to mention this classic lyric from "I Love New York":

I don't like cities but I like New York
Other places make me feel like a dork

Rumours that Rocco wrote this line are currently unconfirmed.

Labels: harry potter, jarvis cocker, links, madonna, Music, Prince, radiohead

While Michael Jackson promises a song for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, Prince has gone into the studio, recorded two of the damn things, and put them up on his website. Who's the King of Pop now? (Answer: Justin Timberlake, but never mind).

More info on Prince's songs at soundgenerator.com

So far, Rachel Stevens has been the only person to forge a career from ashes of S Club 7. Now she has competition - S Club's former lead singer, Jo O'Meara, is back with a new single. Rachel should be worried: Jo has already proved she has a stronger voice, and now she's managed to trump Rachel by giving an interview even more bland and innofensive than Stevens could ever manage.

In this 'exclusive' chat with femalefirst.co.uk we learn that:
- Her back is fine!!!!
- She is still friends with other people from S Club!!!!
- Her album is a 'compilation of good songs'!!!!!

After reading that scandalous news, we need to go and have a lie down.

Boooo! Billboard reports that Nellie McKay's album has been delayed to January.

Hooray! That unexpectedly yummy picture of Marcia Cross at the top of the post comes from the ever-excellent justjared.com

They're also responsible for this horrible image of Janice Dickinson shoving a big sausage down her throat. We're gagging as we type this, you know.

Over at lik-sang.com, they've unearthed a whole ton of Nintendo goodies that were supposed to be sold in the last millennium, only they kind of forgot. So now you can pick up a brand new SNES for £40, an original gameboy for a tenner, and the ever-popular Donkey Kong calculator for £1.50. It's even better than ebay!

And Girls Aloud have won the Popjustice £20 Music Prize. Well done, the Aloud.

Labels: desperate housewives, Girls Aloud, links, Music, nellie mckay, Nintendo, Prince, rachel stevens

The Madonna media machine has been busy making sure you know that her "Reinvention" Tour made more money than any other show last year. In fact, she made a whopping $125million in the space of a couple of months.

But look a little bit closer, and you'll find that more people went to see Prince in 2004 than any other artist. A total of 1.5million went to the "Musicology" tour. The difference being he decided not to fleece his fans for £150 a ticket. Fingers crossed, he's bringing the show to Europe in 2005.

When Prince tours, he's king

Labels: Music, Prince