Prince Track by Track: “Mr. Goodnight”

Prince Track by Track: “Mr. Goodnight”

(Featured Image: A little Spanish–well, French–man offers you wine and Moet; Hervé Villechaize in Fantasy Island, © Columbia Pictures Television.)

Just one more piece of housekeeping before I get back to proper posts–here’s my latest appearance on Darren Husted’s Prince: Track by Track podcast, where I got to talk about what has, in what feels like an escalating series of bets with myself, somehow become my favorite song from 2007’s Planet Earth:

Prince Track by Track: “Mr. Goodnight”

Also, given the obvious overlap between fans of Prince and Chaka Khan, I thought there might be some interest in my review of her very good latest album for Slant magazine:

Chaka Khan’s Hello Happiness Runs on Good Vibes

This is actually my last Slant review for a while, as I’m trying to focus my extracurricular writing time on this blog. And on that note, the next time you hear from me, it’ll be with a new post on “All the Critics Love U in New York.”

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Review: Musicology/3121/Planet Earth

Review: Musicology/3121/Planet Earth

(Featured Image: Prince presides over his domain on the cover of Planet Earth, 2007; © NPG Records.)

It’s been a little bit of a crazy week, so I’m afraid we’re going to have to wait a while longer for my next real post on “All the Critics Love U in New York”; but I haven’t been completely lax in my Prince-writing duties. Over at Spectrum Culture, where I occasionally lend my pen, I reviewed the new batch of vinyl reissues from Prince’s mid-2000s “comeback” era:

Review: Musicology/3121/Planet Earth

These weren’t my favorite albums when they came out, and to be frank they still aren’t (though 3121 aged pretty damn well); but they cover a period of great historical interest, and I’m glad they’re being made available for a new audience. If you haven’t picked up your own copies yet and you want to support d / m / s / r, you are welcome to do so through these Amazon affiliate link: Musicology, 3121, Planet Earth.

On a somewhat Prince-related tip, I also wrote a piece for Spectrum this week about Beck’s Midnite Vultures, which is turning 20 this year in what I can only interpret as an act of personal aggression against me. You can read it here and find out why I think it actually owes less to Prince than to David Bowie, specifically 1975’s Young Americans:

Holy Hell: Midnite Vultures Turns 20

Next week, I’ll finally have a little more time to do some writing for himself (a.k.a., this blog). I’m also recording another batch of Prince: Track by Track episodes tomorrow, the first of which you should be hearing very soon. Perhaps, at some point, I will also get some sleep.

Turn It Up

Turn It Up

(Featured Image: “This one goes to 11”; Nigel Tufnel’s custom Marshall stack in This is Spinal Tap, Rob Reiner, 1984. © MGM Home Entertainment.)

Along with the Time tracks and “International Lover,” Prince also cut a few orphan songs at Sunset Sound in mid-January 1982. The first, “You’re All I Want,” was recorded on January 16: the day after an unreleased Time song called “Colleen,” and three days before “Wild and Loose.” The recording has never leaked into wide circulation, though Prince Vault reports that its synth line would later be repurposed for the 1983 B-side “Horny Toad.” Prince reportedly gave a tape to Sunset Sound engineer Peggy McCreary as a birthday present; later, the song would reemerge (retitled “U’re All I Want”) as a potential track for his and Eric Leeds’ jazz fusion project Madhouse.

The second orphan had a shorter, but arguably more fruitful history. Prince recorded “Turn It Up” on January 20, the day after “Wild and Loose”; it was the second-to-last track he recorded in Los Angeles before resuming the Controversy tour in Richmond, Virginia. And, while it also hasn’t received an official release at the time of this writing, it is in circulation as a bootleg: quite possibly the most widely-heard 1999-era outtake this side of “Moonbeam Levels.”

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Wild and Loose

Wild and Loose

(Featured Image: Notorious “baby groupies” Lori Mattix and Sable Starr; photo stolen from Miss Pandora.)

As noted earlier, Prince began work on the Time’s second album during a three-week break from the Controversy tour, where the group was serving as his opening act and occasional thorn in his side. It thus makes sense that what would become the album’s opening track, “Wild and Loose,” centered around one of the most prevalent scenarios in the life of a touring musician: the backstage (and back-of-bus) dalliances between the band and their young, female admirers.

Just as he had with the Time’s earlier song, “Cool,” Prince tapped his own band’s guitarist, Dez Dickerson, to help write the song: “Prince called me on the phone with a song title,” he told the alt-weekly Nashville Scene in 2014, “and about 15 minutes later, I called him back with lyrics based on the title” (Shawhan 2014). Dez, who had spent years touring in journeyman rock groups before linking up with Prince, had more familiarity with the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle than anyone else in the camp. But his take on the song “kept the content rated G,” as he later recalled, so “Prince altered it somewhat from my original version” (Dickerson 205). The final lyrics, when viewed from a contemporary lens, seem calculated to shock and titillate: “Hangin’ by the backstage door, decked out like a queen / Your body’s sayin’ 21, but your face says 17.”

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Prince Track by Track: “3121”

Prince Track by Track: “3121”

(Featured Image: Prince tries to make “3121” happen on the 3121 album cover; © NPG Records.)

Things have gotten quiet again around here, both because I’ve been feeling under the weather and because I’ve been buried in other writing assignments. I’m working on the latter and crossing my fingers that the former is on its way out, but in the meantime, here’s an episode of Darren Husted’s Prince: Track by Track podcast I recorded late last year:

Prince Track by Track: “3121”

Also! YouTuber Prince’s Friend was kind enough to ask me back on his channel to talk about the blog, which we did over the weekend. Please check out the video and everything else he’s doing below:

As I alluded to in the Prince’s Friend interview, I will be posting about the Time’s “Wild and Loose” very soon. Thanks for your patience!