As I gear up for the next big post on the Purple Rain era, I’m also doing some clean-up on the remaining 1999-era tracks that surfaced on last year’s Super Deluxe box set. This week, it’s “Money Don’t Grow on Trees,” a late-1981 recording that’s about as sonically distant from the 1999 album as possible. The full post is available on Patreon, but here’s a small taste:
Prince’s first side project, the Time, began with a fundamental musical concept: They were a vehicle for the hardcore funk and R&B from which he had mostly steered away in his own career, with an added touch of New Wave rock and roll in the vein of contemporary acts like the BusBoys. Everything else about the group, from their boutique vintage wardrobe to frontman Morris Day’s tongue-in-cheek pimp persona, was an elegant outgrowth of this conceit. By contrast, Prince’s second side project, the Hookers, began with an image, and not an especially sophisticated one–the name pretty much summed it up. So it’s no surprise that the music he composed for the group in mid-to-late 1981 had a distinct whiff of throwing everything against the wall and seeing what stuck: There was minimalist electro-punk (“Drive Me Wild,” “Make-Up”), New Wave-ized girl group pop (“Wet Dream,” “Jealous Girl”), and, with “Money Don’t Grow on Trees,” even a dash of vintage R&B.
I should mention that patrons at the $5 level and above had the opportunity to vote for “Money Don’t Grow on Trees” as the next “bonus track” I covered on the blog. Since we’re now down to the “bottom two,” I’m just going to go ahead and do them based on the preference I’ve seen in past polls: first “You’re All I Want,” which got one vote back in January and one vote this month; and then “Colleen,” which only got one solitary vote in January. I will think of some more ways for patrons to exercise their democracy in the near future. For now, thanks as always for reading!
