Tag: papa

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Uncategorized

Prince’s Friend: Who was Prince’s Best Drummer – Judge’s Panel

As I continue to work on my next proper post, I’m happy to share another collaborative effort I had the opportunity to participate in with popular YouTubers Prince’s Friend, Nightchild-Ethereal, and Mr. Ant. We discussed the eight main drummers Prince worked with during his career–Bobby Z, Sheila E, Michael B, Kirk Johnson, Cora Coleman-Dunham, John Blackwell, and Hannah Welton–and ranked them based on our performances. I hope you enjoy it, even if for some reason I was not looking at the camera in the first clip! Thanks to Prince’s Friend for the opportunity, and to Darling Nisi for recommending me.

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Uncategorized

Prince Track by Track: “Papa”

Prince's funereal cover for Come, 1994; photo by Terry Gydesen, © Warner Bros.

Allow me to begin this post with a few simple facts: when I first started guesting on Darren Husted’s chronological Prince: Track by Track podcast last September, I had just started writing about 1980’s Dirty Mind, and Darren was in the middle of 1985’s Around the World in a Day. Now, a little more than six months later, I’m a few tracks away from starting 1981’s Controversy, and Darren is over halfway through Come from nineteen-fucking-ninety-four. Whatever, it’s not a race, etc. Here’s us talking about “Papa,” one of the weirdest, toughest listens in Prince’s body of work:

Prince Track by Track: “Papa”

As we all know, April is a big month in the Prince world, so I’m hoping to kick d / m / s / r back into high gear pretty soon. Keep your eye out for more updates!

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Podcast

Podcast: Empty Room – Part 4 of a Conversation with Jane Clare Jones

April 14, 2016; photo stolen from prince.org.

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I have to begin with another apology: I had hoped to get this last installment of the podcast up early in the week, but I’ve been busy with job interviews, house hunting, and most recently, an illness that is definitely audible on the outro I recorded last night. But here, at last, is the final full installment of my now month-old conversation with writer, philosopher, and fellow Prince obsessive Jane Clare Jones. This is the one we’ve been building up to for the last month: a reckoning with the psychological factors that led to last year’s deeply tragic, avoidable death. But in case you’re concerned this will be prurient muckraking in the Prince: The End/When Doves Cry tradition, please know that it’s coming from a place of genuine love, and is grounded in research rather than wild speculation. And if you’re also (justifiably) concerned that it’s going to be a depressing slog, I promise it’s not all as grim as it might sound.

And with that, the first wave of the d / m / s / r podcast is over! Jane will be back, probably sometime next month, to talk about the Purple Reign interdisciplinary conference at the University of Salford; I also still have a short, lighthearted chunk of our original conversation that didn’t quite fit this episode that I’d like to post at some point. But other than that, the future is a blank slate. I’d love to hear your thoughts on where to go with the podcast–topics to discuss, suggested guests, etc.–because it seems a shame to go to the trouble of making a feed, etc. just for one month of episodes. I hope you’ve enjoyed these as much as I have. Thanks!

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Ephemera, 1975-1976

Home Recordings, 1976

Prince at the piano, circa 1976; photo stolen from prince.org.

“Guess how many times I’ve changed addresses,” Prince asked at one point in a 1979 interview with Cynthia Horner of the African American teen magazine Right On! “Twenty-two times!” (Horner 1979) His typically charming, almost childlike delivery made it seem like an amusing anecdote; for what it’s worth, it was also probably an exaggeration. But beneath the wide-eyed ingénue act, he was revealing something profoundly sad about himself. For about six years during his childhood, Prince’s living situation was unstable at best; at worst, he was functionally homeless.

The period of instability ended around the same time that Prince formed his first band, thanks to the same catalyst: André Anderson, whose mother Bernadette took him in around 1974, and with whom he lived until after he signed with his first manager in late 1976. It was at the Anderson household where Prince made his earliest home recordings, at the ages of 17 and 18. But it was during his proverbial “wilderness period” when he established the fierce independence and drive–as well as the distance from others–that would define his professional life for decades to come.

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