Tag: sheila e

Podcast: Everybody Shut Up, Listen to the Band – Felicia Holman and Harold Pride on the Salford Purple Reign Conference

Podcast: Everybody Shut Up, Listen to the Band – Felicia Holman and Harold Pride on the Salford Purple Reign Conference

(Featured Image: “The Band with No Name”; from the Sign “O” the Times tour book, 1987.)

Settle in, folks, because today we’ve got not one, but two presenters from this spring’s Prince conference at the University of Salford: interdisciplinary artist/activist Felicia Holman and independent scholar/activist Harold Pride. Both were part of the organic community of Black artists and academics who came together in Manchester and, each in their own way, helped to reclaim Prince’s legacy as a specifically African American artist. The three of us talk about that, as well as their specific papers–Harold’s on the underrated, short-lived “Band with No Name” from 1987–1988; Felicia’s on Prince’s autodidacticism and its connection to traditions of Black self-determination–and, as usual, a lot of other things along the way. It’s a great conversation that could have easily been twice as long; I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

I still have a handful of these interviews lined up, and will be posting them at least through Labor Day. If you want to hear them, you can follow the podcast on any of the major services (iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play). Appearances to the contrary, I’m also still writing: I’ll be back to the ol’ grind next week. See you then!

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Podcast: It’s Time Someone Programmed You – Leah McDaniel on the Salford Purple Reign Conference

Podcast: It’s Time Someone Programmed You – Leah McDaniel on the Salford Purple Reign Conference

(Featured Image: The infamous “Prince’s Women” cover, Rolling Stone, April 1986; photo by Jeff Katz.)

For the third installment of my miniseries on the University of Salford’s interdisciplinary Prince conference, I’m talking to Leah McDaniel (née Stone), a businesswoman, world traveler, and lifelong Prince fan. Her paper was on the eternally unsettled question of whether or not Prince was a feminist; we reflect on that question, as well as the contrast between his artistic warmth and his sometimes-chilling approach to interpersonal relationships, and why even Prince at his worst was still better than R. Kelly at his best.

If you’re frustrated that we don’t issue a final verdict, come back in a few months, when I plan to host a round table discussion on the “was Prince a feminist” debate (and almost certainly still won’t offer a definitive answer). In the meantime, you can check us and our way-improved new logo out on all the major podcast services (iTunes/Stitcher/Google Play). Your reviews and subscriptions on your service of choice would be a big help in getting us more visibility. As always, thanks for listening–we’ll be back with another episode by the end of next week!

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Our Destiny/Roadhouse Garden

Our Destiny/Roadhouse Garden

(Featured Image: Prince at his 26th birthday concert, First Avenue, June 7, 1984. Photo stolen from Prince Off the Record; check it out for a very nice review of the show!)

Well, folks, the podcast episode I promised yesterday isn’t going to happen until early next week; I simply didn’t have enough time to finish editing. Luckily, though, Warner Bros. has my back, because last night they surprise-released another advance track from the new Purple Rain reissue: the studio-recorded medley of “Our Destiny” and “Roadhouse Garden.” So, rather than completely skip a post today, let’s take a short look at these songs and how they fit into the grander scheme of Prince’s work.

Like the previously-discussed “Electric Intercourse,” “Our Destiny”/”Roadhouse Garden” has advance notoriety among hardcore fans and collectors–though, in this case, its connection to the Purple Rain project is much less clear. Prince and the Revolution performed the song only once, at his 26th birthday celebration at Minneapolis’ First Avenue on June 7, 1984: the same concert that yielded the basic track for Jill Jones’ “All Day, All Night.” And as all of us Prince obsessives know, that might as well have been a decade after the previous year’s August 3 First Avenue date, which similarly provided the majority of Purple Rain’s second side. By summer of 1984, Prince was already hard at work on his next project(s), including tracks that would end up on 1985’s Around the World in a Day.

Adding to the confusion, Roadhouse Garden would later become the title of an aborted late-’90s compilation of refurbished Revolution tracks by the artist then-formerly known as Prince–most of which seemed to date from what Princeologists would consider to be the “Dream Factory era” of 1985-1986. This, in turn, appears to have transformed in many fans’ reckonings into a whole other album between Purple Rain and Around the World in a Day, possibly also called Roadhouse Garden. Basically, the song’s provenance is a mess, and I’ve seen more than a few people cry foul over its and its sister song’s inclusion in what “should” be a compilation of outtakes specifically related to Purple Rain.

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1978 Instrumentals

1978 Instrumentals

(Featured Image: Prince in 1978; photo by Darlene Pfister, Minneapolis Star Tribune.)

One thing Prince established very early on was a near-constant rate of musical productivity: as we observed way back at the beginning of this blog, he spent the vast majority of his day-to-day adult life–not to mention a good amount of his childhood–participating in some form of songwriting, recording, rehearsal, or performance. So it should come as no surprise that when Prince moved into his first house in the summer of 1978, the otherwise-unassuming 5215 France Avenue in Edina, Minnesota brought with it another first: his first home studio. Indeed, according to his cousin and former Grand Central drummer Charles Smith, the rest of the house was mostly an afterthought for Prince: “The basement was full of equipment but he didn’t have any furniture in the house,” Smith told biographer Per Nilsen. “He didn’t have any carpets. He just had a rocking chair and a little TV for his games.” Eventually Prince’s girlfriend at the time, Kim Upsher, would help decorate and make the place “look like a home” (Nilsen 1999 43). But it’s clear that creature comforts placed a distant second for Prince, below his ability to create whenever the muse struck him. The lifelong blurring of the lines between studio and living space that he’d set into motion while still living in the Andersons’ basement was, by mid-1978, in full swing.

The France Avenue “studio” wasn’t exactly Paisley Park, of course: just a basement space with instruments and a portable TEAC four-track reel-to-reel. But it did the job, giving Prince an opportunity to flesh out new ideas without booking expensive studio time–which, after the hefty $170,000 recording cost of For You, probably came as a relief to the bean counters at Warner Bros. Many of the demos for Prince’s second album were reportedly recorded at home, and a few of the tracks that ended up on 94 East’s infamous Minneapolis Genius compilation (more on that to come). There were also several songs known only by their titles: “Darlene Marie” (also known as “Darling Marie”), “Do It Again,” “Gypsy,” “I am You,” “I Met a Virgin Queen,” “I’m Leaving L.A.,” “Love Affair,” “Love of Mine,” “Rocking Chair,” and “We Would Like to See You Again,” as well as a re-recording of the 1976 demo “Rock Me, Lover.” And then there are the circulating recordings: starting with today’s six untitled instrumentals.

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