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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).

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Prince Track by Track: “Sex in the Summer”

It’s been a minute since my last appearance on Prince: Track by Track, but I’m back again to chat with host Darren Husted about one of my guilty pleasures from Emancipation:

Prince Track by Track:
“Sex in the Summer”

Also in semi-related news, my other project Dystopian Dance Party has launched our fifth annual celebration of wet, silky ’80s R&B, Jheri Curl June. If you’re a fan of Prince’s ’80s work, you’ll find a lot to like about the stuff we cover. Check out the podcast kicking of the festivities here:

Dystopian Dance Party Podcast:
Jheri Curl June 2K18

You should also check in on the blog, as we’ll be posting a vintage Jheri Curl track every weekday this month. Some of them, I’m sure, will be Prince-related. Meanwhile, over here I’ll have an end-of-year-two wrap-up post this week, and then it’s on to our next Prince track, “She’s Just a Baby.”

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Ephemera, 1977-1978 Lacunae

I am You: Capri Theatre, January 5-6, 1979

Owen Husney’s dismissal from the Prince camp came at a critical juncture in the artist’s career. Prince spent the summer and fall of 1978 assembling a backing group, in hopes of touring behind For You the following year. It didn’t go entirely to plan; he wouldn’t embark on his first tour until November of 1979, after recording and releasing a much more successful second album. But the musicians he brought together would nevertheless determine his artistic direction for the following decade: providing the nucleus for the Revolution, the band with whom he would eventually conquer the world.