Tag: rick james

A Few Recent Posts from Dystopian Dance Party

(Featured Image: André Cymone’s underrated, alternate universe Vanity 6, the Girls, on the back cover of their 1984 album; © Columbia Records.)

I’m hoping to have my next post ready by the end of the week, but the Internet service in my new house might not cooperate; in the meantime, I thought I’d share a few recent links from my other blog, Dystopian Dance Party, that may be of interest to other d / m / s / r readers.

First, my sister and I recorded a podcast on the memoirs (plural!) of Rick James, with a fair amount of discussion about his longstanding, albeit mostly one-sided rivalry with Prince. It’s sort of an irreverent companion piece to my recent post on “Head,” so if you liked that and/or Rick James, check it out:

Dystopian Book Club Podcast, Jheri Curl June Edition: The Memoirs of Rick James

Second, just this morning I posted a short piece on the Girls, André Cymone’s spinoff group from shortly after he parted ways with Prince. Like so much about André’s career, I found it a good opportunity to reflect on the strange combination of luck, opportunity, and talent that made Prince a star over (and, at times, at the expense of) his friend and collaborator:

Jheri Curl June: The Girls’ “Girl Talk”

Like I said, hopefully I’ll have more to share shortly. Thanks in advance for your patience!

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When You Were Mine

When You Were Mine

(Featured Image: Cover art for “Is She Really Going Out with Him?” by Joe Jackson, 1979; © A&M Records.)

In early March, 1980–right around the same time Rick James was absconding with their Oberheim–Prince’s band took a break from the tour and spent a day at Disney World. “In Orlando, we decided to have some fun being tourists,” keyboardist Dr. Fink told journalist Mobeen Azhar. “We asked Prince to come along, too, but he said, ‘Go ahead. Have fun.’ I remember leaving him sitting outside the hotel room on the balcony, with his guitar. By the time we came back, he’d written ‘When You Were Mine’” (Azhar 23).

If “Head,” as suggested last week, was “the foundation upon which Prince’s racial, sexual, and personal preoccupations of the next decade were built,” then “When You Were Mine” laid the groundwork for his musical expansion. It was his first real foray into crossover territory: a masterful capital-“P” pop song with all the literary value of contemporary New Wave troubadours Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson. It wasn’t Prince’s first classic song–that, again, would be “I Wanna Be Your Lover”–but it was his first standard: timeless, durable, and rewarding of endless reinterpretations by other artists.

Continue reading “When You Were Mine” →

Head

Head

(Prince and Gayle Chapman on Rick James’ Fire It Up Tour, 1980; photo stolen from Reddit.)

“I can’t believe people are gullible enough to buy Prince’s jive records,” Rick James griped to Britain’s Blues and Soul magazine in 1983. “He’s out to lunch. You can’t take his music seriously. He sings songs about oral sex and incest” (Matos 2015). It was the first public shot across the bow in a years-long, mostly one-sided beef between the godfather of “punk-funk” and the young upstart who first rivaled, then surpassed him. But it was hardly the first time these titans had clashed: James’ comments were transparently rooted in tensions from three years earlier, when Prince was the opening act for his early 1980 Fire It Up tour. And it was just before his tour with James when the “mentally disturbed young man” debuted his most notorious song about oral sex, “Head.”

Continue reading “Head” →

Dystopian Listening Party Podcast: Prince, 1958-2016

Dystopian Listening Party Podcast: Prince, 1958-2016

(Featured Image: Prince tribute outside First Avenue; photo by Jeff Wheeler, stolen from the Minneapolis Star Tribune.)

Yesterday, I spent an unbelievably self-indulgent six hours on Skype with Jane Clare Jones, preparing and recording a podcast to mark the first anniversary of Prince’s death (because of our unbelievable self-indulgence, it will actually be several podcasts). The first installment of our conversation should be ready to post by Friday; but in the meantime, here’s another conversation from last year with my sister Callie, which ran on our blog Dystopian Dance Party just over a week after we heard the terrible news. In case you’re concerned–I know emotions are raw this week–it’s mostly a joyous discussion, focusing on Prince and what he means to us rather than the tragic conditions of his end. I thought now was as good a time as any to share it with a wider audience. Show notes are here, and I’ll be back tomorrow with a review of another recent addition to the canon of Prince literature.