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Controversy, 1981 Podcast

Podcast: 41 Years of Controversy – A Conversation with Harold Pride and De Angela Duff

Here we are again, my first podcast in more than a year, and I couldn’t have asked for better guests than Harold Pride and De Angela Duff to discuss Prince’s fourth and quite possibly most underrated album, 1981’s Controversy. If you’ve been listening to these deep-dive album retrospectives, Harold needs no introduction; and, since the Prince scholarly community is a pretty small one, De Angela may not need one either. Suffice to say that she’s the biggest advocate of Controversy I know, and she makes a convincing case that it’s not only a great album in its own right, but also the linchpin of Prince’s entire career.

One quick note: you will likely notice that there was a significant drop in audio quality this episode; this was due to a perfect storm of technical issues that, unfortunately, left the low-quality Skype call recording as the only usable audio source from our conversation. I think you’ll get used to it, but I will assure you anyway that I’m taking steps to make sure we sound better next time. And yes, speaking of “next time,” I do have plans for more episodes in the coming months–probably not in October, but maybe one more before the end of the year, and then more to come in early 2023. If you want to hear the episodes as soon as they drop, remember to subscribe on your podcast service of choice using the links above!

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Headbangers Book Club: Morris Day’s On Time (Part 2)

After a slight delay due to various personal crises, my sister and I finally got back together to record the second part of our podcast on Morris Day’s On Time: A Princely Life in Funk. If you liked the first episode and are okay with the occasional, affectionate laugh at Prince’s expense, I think you’ll enjoy this one. Otherwise, I plan to be back next week with another installment of my ongoing Apollonia 6 reappraisal!

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Headbangers Book Club: Morris Day’s On Time (Part 1)

Hey, everyone! I’m still working on “Take Me with U,” which I’m afraid is not quite ready for prime time yet. So, I thought I’d share another thing I’ve been working on instead. It’s been a while since I cross-posted one of the podcast episodes I do with my sister as Dystopian Dance Party, mostly because it’s been a while since we’ve done anything Prince-related; but this month, our spinoff podcast about (mostly) rock biographies is taking on Morris Day’s On Time: A Princely Life in Funk. Please be aware that this side project is what I actually do for fun, so it’s a lot less polished and “serious” than what I do here; it’s also a good deal more irreverent. In other words, it isn’t for everyone, and I’m okay with that. But if you’re truly starved for some Zach Content (TM), this should hopefully tide you over for a few more days. Thanks for your patience, and for real, I’ll see you soon.

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#PrinceTwitterThread: “Endorphinmachine”

As I’ve alluded a few times recently, the last couple of weeks have been pretty hectic in my neck of the woods; but I still had to make the time to participate in this month’s #PrinceTwitterThread series on 1995’s The Gold Experience. I know I remain, somewhat unfashionably, an ’80s Prince guy, but The Gold Experience is one of my faves from the ’90s and “Endorphinmachine” is an absolute banger. Check out the thread below, and be sure to also make your voice heard on the poll I posted pitting the raw original mix against the clunktastic album version. Also, stay tuned to @PrinceThread on Twitter; the series just got started, and is going all the way through the Record Store Day release of The Gold Experience on Saturday the 18th!

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Ice Cream Castle, 1984

The Bird

In the months since Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis were dismissed from the Time, the group’s morale had reached an all-time low. Singer Morris Day, in particular, was all but fully checked out: “When we started switching musicians,” he later recalled, “it wasn’t my favorite band anymore” (Tudahl 2018 72). Only the promise of a costarring role in Prince’s upcoming film kept him from leaving the camp entirely–that and, he admits in his 2019 memoir, a burgeoning cocaine habit (Day 83).

The powder keg was primed in the summer of 1983, when Day and the rest of the movie’s principal cast were enrolled in mandatory acting lessons with coach Don Amendolia. “He had these exercises,” Day writes. “Pretend you’re a weeping willow tree. Pretend you’re a butterfly lost in the forest. Well, I didn’t wanna be no weeping willow tree. I didn’t wanna be no butterfly lost in the forest. I thought that was some dumb shit and said so.” Eventually, Day’s “cutting up” got back to Prince, who “said this was some serious business and I better not fuck it up or I’d be out on my ass… He’d banish me from his empire” (Day 86).