Went with a longtime friend to see Fame outdoors in Prospect Park in Brooklyn. A film I’d seen several times as a kid, especially summers in Boise where my brother and I spent two months each year as part of a child custody agreement and where neither of us knew any peers. No friends but my brother meant a lot of watching Fame, My Favorite Year, The Making of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”, and Purple Rainon VHS (especially Purple Rain, stopped counting after 50+ views).
Memorized
Watched the Thriller VHS so often that I learned the choreography for that music video, and “Bille Jean” and “Beat It” (also included in the VHS). At 14, I got second place in a MJ dance-alike contest (losing to an adorable toddler – several strangers said I should have competed in the 15+ age category). The Summer of 1985 I danced to “Thriller” on the center of Autzen Stadium’s football field during the July 4 fireworks show in Eugene. It came together spontaneously. My Mom got calls from friends the day after and she had no idea it had happened. Stories for a later time.
The crowd dug this super-New York-y movie on this comfortably warm not-too-humid night. Sing Harlem was the opening act. Hadn’t seen this movie in decades. Still charming.
Averted my eyes during that scene with Coco. If you know the scene, you know. Talking at the screen fails to change Coco’s situation. I’ve tried.
Most of the cast ended up having long careers. Gene Anthony Ray, fiery and sly and compelling as Leroy Johnson would continue the role into the Fame television show. During the film, his mother got caught trying to sell illegal drugs on the set. Her behavior continued into the production of the television show and she got arrested running a drug ring. Gene Anthony himself struggled with addiction, was often absent, and ended up dying in 2003 at age 41. Still managed to have a varied career. The Wikipedia page linked above is worth reading.
Gene Anthony attended the school Fame is based on. In this introductory scene, he helps a friend with her dancing audition, while he himself is not interested. Then he gets interested and steals the moment. (Clip is dubbed in French, quel dommage. But Debbie Allen’s asst. dance teacher describes his style as “wicked”.)
As you can see, it’s one of those entertainments where none of the high school students seem to be under 25 years old.
Directed by Alan Parker, whose career includes similarly shot films like Midnight Express, Pink Floyd: The Wall, Birdy, Angel Heart, Mississippi Burning, on and on, his style really conveys the vitality and dark of late 70s New York City. Watching it in Brooklyn conveyed nostalgia for that era. Not that anyone wants that back, necessarily, but it’s a palpable and compelling vibe.
I didn’t watch much of the television show. I liked Debbie Allen, had crushes on Janet Jackson (Willis’ girlfriend from “Different Strokes”!) and Cynthia Gibb. But, just couldn’t get there. If you watched the show I’d like to hear about it.
Prospect Park was a great, low-key location. Lightning bugs flitted on and off in the woods just a few steps away. And it was a delight to see that “Hot Lunch Jam” still slaps.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_CxdKLvodM
Tip: The Good Batch’s Chocolate Chunk ice cream sandwich served in Prospect Park is better than the Confetti Cake (sprinkles) one.
I was allergic to musicals growing up. Didn’t see ‘Grease’ until the mid 80s. Didn’t watch ‘Sound of Music’ until the late 80s. Around ’90 became obsessed with ‘Singin’ in the Rain’, later ‘An American in Paris’. The musical form struck me as ridiculous when the world was full of David Lynch and cult classics and massive blockbusters.
In ’85 I was subjected to the movie of ‘West Side Story’. Well, it played in the background while something extraordinary was going on. Let’s say the first major engagement of Eros and with someone I adored. I recall the whiteness of Tony’s overbite. Cries of “Maria!” and co-marveling at the can-you-believe-this-dorky-musical-keeps-playing? moments.
What was really happening was an imprinting process.
I had a self-imposed ban on ever seeing the movie again, out of respect for that one time I barely watched it (we heathens have our rituals, too) and a few times was a bit of a pain in the ass about it. “Oh, no! We have to rent something ELSE! I shall NEVER…” blah blah.
As couples smash plates and glasses after a wedding under the premise those objects would never serve a higher function, I mentally smashed VHS copies of ‘West Side Story’ out of pop culture psychoemotional sanctimony.
And then, ENOUGH!
I rented. No, hold up, I BOUGHT ‘West Side Story’ on VHS and watched it.
Me: “I’ve decided NO FEAR and I am going to watch ‘West Side Story’!”
My apartment mate (reasonably): “…”
In 1993 or ’94 I watched it, all the way through. Of course, I laughed as most everyone does at the dorky gangs.
Sharks (L) nattier dressers, Anita’s on their side. Jets (R) a bunch of smart-alecks. Go Sharks!
Think of what gang members have worn in the decades of your life. Aren’t those fashions ridiculous? No way for gangs in the 60s to look cool now. Hoodlums are trite. Go ahead and tell them I said it. I don’t care.
Of course the movie’s music, some of the bite, and the supporting performances got to me. I watched it over and over. Not perceiving the imprinting it had done under primal circumstances a decade before, I defensively mocked the movie to vainly assert an ironic distance. The precision and number of ways I was soon able to cite the movie would make the bond plain to all but the one snarking.
KING LEAR
Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand!
Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back;
Thou hotly lust’st to use her in that kind
For which thou whipp’st her.
I was hot for the movie, but was not aware enough to admit it. Like any tedious moral zealot having to stand before microphones to confess lust toward those he publicly rebuked/abhorred.
Chita Rivera, the original Anita on Broadway. Ooof!
I don’t know the movie best in a room of people. I was baffled by a colleague a few years ago who made reference to “Puerto Rico, island of tropical breezes.” WTF? I looked at him. “It’s from the song ‘America’.” “No, it isn’t” I said haughtily while mentally running through the lyrics. He was right. It’s in the musical, but is not a line in the MOVIE. He was being friendly, and inadvertently my erudition totally GOT SERVED!
Now, however, I get there are significant differences between the lyrics, order of the songs, and arrangement between the Broadway production(s) and the movie. Some lyrics are improved in the movie. And the song order makes more sense to me in the movie with “Cool” sung by Ice (!) after Riff is dead, and “America” is better as an interplay between Bernardo and Anita, the two best performers in the movie. So glad they both got Oscars.
Rita Moreno is an idol from ‘The Electric Company’ t.v. show (“Hey you guys!” was her catch-yell). That she also played Zelda in ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ makes her all-time. One of the few EGOTs ever.
Once reminded of one song, they come not single-spies but in batallions. I end up reminiscing, humming, bellowing, jumping octaves while traipsing over the whole soundtrack.
John Barrowman, mensch, gives a really solid perfomance of “Maria” below. He miffs the last note (who wouldn’t?) but he sings like he means it. So many use it to show off without trying to convey any emotion. “Check out the runs I can make!” kinda crap that induces saccharine shock on television singing contests like ‘American Idol’.
But when I sing, it’s not held to one character. Or the dude characters. Once I’m in, I’m in full throttle singing mostly all of the parts. Sometimes I invoke a heavenly/hellish daydream where I perform the entire soundtrack (at least the songs with lyrics) as a one-person revue. Keep the paddy wagon parked right outside the theater.
I know in the clip above Natalie Wood’s singing is overdubbed. I know that, crazily, the Grammy-winning (and Tony-winning, and Emmy-winning, and Oscar-winning) Rita Moreno is overdubbed. On a commentary track, Moreno politely, but rightly, nitpicks about the overdub, including its use of a faked Mexican accent instead of a Puerto Rico accent.
I know the movie is melodrama. I know neither one of their arguments makes sense. Anita: “Stick to your own kind!” Maria: “Right or wrong, what else can I do?” Both have ROTTEN advice and LOUSY proclamations!
Yet, even though the role of Maria can be a trilling soprano extravaganza at the expense of articulation (the version above is modest on this count) and expression, Could be the crying sound of ecstatic, despondent female voices, the urgency of the music. But I am moved most every time I hear the song, especially the end lamentation/surrender/boast. Decades away from such high drama in my own life, the coda makes me solemn and brings the adolescent urgency and surging of hormones and hope for metaphysically impossible things and deflation and euphoria like nothing else.
I’m not entirely rational, is what I’m saying.
[Originally posted in October 2011. Haven’t seen the new Spielberg movie yet, but the soundtrack is fantastic. Listening to it now as I type. Rita Moreno sings a solo “Somewhere” in her own voice!]
From the start, the finale of Prince’s Purple Rain album bored me. Not the movie (which, thanks to remote summers as a teen I’ve seen 50+ times), but the final tracks “Baby I’m a Star” and “Purple Rain”.
See, doesn’t Prince himself look a little bored?
“Baby I’m a Star” sounds off-key, like someone playing with the pitch dial. For instance, in the chorus Prince sings “Oh baby I’m a” and the Revolution wanly warbles “…staaaar” like a cat wanting to get let in the house. I’ve spent 37 years trying to like it. But life only allots us a finite number of heartbeats, so I’m done trying.
People who have seen the movie feel obliged to languidly point one finger or whole hand upward then slowly sway their arm back and forth as “Purple Rain” plays. The First Avenue club extras in the movie did. But it feels like a shallow duty, like reciting the Pledge of Allegiance or standing respectfully while a foreign nation’s unfamiliar anthem plays. Are people genuinely moved beyond nostalgia, by resonant, personal emotions? Or do they mostly experience fondness for the movie or the album? Granted, the audience participation element feels great. But, oh, the ongoing repetitive guitar and basic drums that cycle for too many measures. The long fade out with synth strings into tinkling sounds that goes…so…long…
Waiting for you and far more moving, playful, charming, and shorter is “Adore”, the culminating song of Prince’s Sign o’ the Times album. He infused it with a range of genres (including doo wop & testimonial gospel) that run above and below and circles around a basic slow jam groove. His vocal harmonies and dissonances reflect the many facets of romantic feelings, yet soar at the end with warm, united enthusiasm. Outright lovely.
These lines at the midpoint always make me laugh:
This condition I got is crucial (crucial). You could say that I’m a terminal case. You could burn up my clothes, smash up my ride. (Well maybe not the ride.)
He’ll love you for all time, pour his soul into this song and sacrifice most anything. But, please don’t mess with his car. He needs that.
Great, just great.
Listen below:
See? Hear? Isn’t that better than the song “Purple Rain”?
Only now, after owning Peter Gabriel’s album Up for eighteen years and having listened to it, conservatively, dozens and possibly a hundred times, did I notice the blurred image in the background.
My eyes, from the moment of purchase, were on the falling (rising?) droplets. Today, listening to the album for the first time in a while, the album art came up on the player in a thumbnail. And, not catching it in the first place back in 2002, I thought “Wait. Is that Peter Gabriel’s face?”
Indeed it is. A later remastered version with a zoomed-back image made this even more obvious.
Later edition of Up that says “Hey, dummy. Get it now?”
No particular wisdom to offer here. I felt obliged, after not posting for a while, to share my delight and shame at realizing something I probably should have gotten three U.S. Presidents ago.
“Head Over Heels” is a sumptuous, colorful jukebox musical that blends the music of The Go-Go’s and Sir Philip Sidney’s 16th Century Arcadia. The same-sex romance at the center is added, but much of the transvestism belongs to Sidney in the 1500s.
The humor is bawdy and sly and exuberant. Relationships of all kinds abound and treated with the usual conventions of period romantic comedy with many wry quarter-twists here and there. There’s wrestling with a lion!
The central figure is Philanax, the royal fool, who functions as chorus, narrator, and playwright’s proxy. Like a combination of the characters Autolycus and Time in Shakespeare’s ‘The Winter’s Tale’ (though the Oracle in ‘Head Over Heels’ also serves a role similar to Time).
I have a distinct memory of Professor Robert Grudin in an Advanced Shakespeare class discussing ‘The Winter’s Tale” and going into detail on how the character Autolycus was a proxy/metaphor and asked what he represented. Silence. Grudin then prompted with pain in his voice: “He’s a peddler of tales, celebrated for his creativity, a comic and creative character.” More silence. He swallowed and after an inward moment of palpable existential/career despair before the couple dozen of us dullards: “He represents the artist.” The memory of this still makes this dullard laugh, 28 years later.
Notes on the playwright, Jeff Witty. He was an acquaintance in college. Fast forward more than a decade to 2004. I am channel flipping and stop on the Tony Awards. I never watched the Tony Awards. Within a couple minutes, Jeff Whitty takes the stage for winning Best Book for his work on “Avenue Q”. I freak out. Did I mention never watching the Tonys, then this person I recognize is onstage having fucking WON! I go nuts. I call my friend that he dated, enthusiastic that a good guy earned a premiere award. In the decade plus since then, I do watch a few MORE minutes of the Tonys every few years, but that high will likely never be matched.
Narrator in LDS Missionary garb, Mormon Temple. Photo by my daughter at age 9.
Jeff continues to do thoughtful, fun work. To my shame, I still haven’t seen “Avenue Q”. Yes, I should because the composer later won a Tony for his work with Trey Parker & Matt Stone on “The Book of Mormon”, a musical I have seen in person THREE TIMES and have listened to the soundtrack about a HUNDRED MILLION TIMES, even dressing like a Mormon missionary for Halloween 2011, then wearing that same costume and posed in front of the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City (making my kids take the photo) in June 2012. “Avenue Q” essentially calls out to me as plainly as possible. Still, hermit-like, haven’t made it.
I was delighted by Whitty’s play “The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler” in 2008. It built on the same lead actress, Robin Goodrin Nordli, as the previous production of “Hedda Gabler” put on in Ashland. “The Further Adventures” resumed with the dead Hedda Gabler simply getting up from the stage she had died on a few years before and we were rolling.
Musidorus makes Philanax bloom. Photo: Jenny Graham.
Two older people next to me left “Head Over Heels” at the intermission, one muttering “Too much. It’s too much.” I smirked. The majority of people stayed. And the majority of people’s spirits stayed high, and it was an older crowd (older than me). Was the adolescent part of me amused by my instinct to sneer and the older folks around me (so, like, 47 years or older) who apparently DIDN’T know that the clapping part of “We Got the Beat” goes clap-clap, clap, clap-clap, clap? Yes. But even without everyone catching that subtlety, the crowd clapped in time.
POSTSCRIPT: I drafted this in 2015 but spaced-off posting it. Since then, “Head Over Heels” got to Broadway. I read a New York Times article about the incoming production, excited this idiosyncratic and bouncy musical by a good person with an English degree from the same fond but mid-level state university I did. All seemed right with the world. Then the article mentioned Whitty left the project before it got to Broadway. No idea why. I live on the other side of the continent and far, far from theater circles. But it was a WTF moment. The Broadway show opened July 2018 and closed January 2019.
Since then, Whitty earned an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for the comedy Can You Ever Forgive Me.
Today is Elvis Presley’s birthday and by 1968, at an ancient 33 years old, he needed a comeback. He was 27 or 28 films into a junky Hollywood career (although Jailhouse Rock is amusing, and King Creole is genuinely good. No, I’m not kidding.). A comeback special got scheduled, Elvis slimmed down (due to good choices and also, well, pills) and showed regained vitality throughout the broadcast. In the acoustic segments in particular he recovered his guileless strangeness that made his 50s recordings so essential.
For my favorite parts, the acoustic sessions, he reunited with his original lead guitarist, Scotty Moore. Bill Black, the bassist in the original trio (Elvis on rhythm guitar) had already died. D.J. Fontana, the first drummer to back Elvis, also plays in these segments.
I recommend you do a search for the entire Elvis Presley 1968 Comeback Special. The entire program(me) is a delight of fluctuating rawness and cornball showmanship.
In 1977, at age 42, he’d be bloated again, frustrated by his bloat but still striving to entertain, and by August he’d be dead. There’s a lot to mock but a lot to mourn in his life. Below is the finale of the program. He wanted to sing about unity given the special followed the April 1968 murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. and June 1968 murder of Robert Kennedy. Even in a white suit, he channels something essential here.
And, honestly, between us, is this song any goofier than John Lennon’s “Imagine”.
Prince often came across as a kook, but mostly he worked and played and danced his ass off to help people get their heads straight.
When a contemporary artist dies, if we have carried that person’s work along a span of our lives our reaction to that death is interwoven with our personal memories. The truncation of the artist’s life cuts a hashmark into the branch of our own life. No new art will accompany our life as if the artist continues to compose with us in mind. There is past art to be reviewed, and perhaps art to be uncovered despite what may be the artist’s intent to keep it hidden. But the living conversation with the artist stops. We engage the artist as a ghost, or pretend the ghost is there as we converse indirectly with ourselves.
1983 was a miracle year for me. Somehow, at the age of 14, I shifted from listening to Abba (dorky, but wonderfully crafted) and Air Supply (dorky, flat-out, though I try to make a case they are darker than you think) to Prince and The Police. As a pimply, gangly, 14 year-old with braces – being cool or, really, having any idea what the heck was going on anywhere remained far down the road. As a white kid in Eugene, Oregon chances I would be exposed to anything non-white or sophisticated were dim. I had a faint sense of Prince beforehand, mostly from an album cover that made him look like a Breck girl with a mustache.
Breck Girl (left), Breck Boy (right)
I had heard the song “1999” and liked it. Then I saw the video and, well, rather than make 14 year-old-me seem more eloquent, my reaction was essentially: “What is going on? This is crazy! I think I like this. A lot.” I got the album after latching on to “Little Red Corvette” and determining well, whatever this dude was doing, he did it two songs in a row and it was awesome and I should check it out more songs.
1999 was double album. Four sides of vinyl. His eye at the center of the platter where the spindle went. Music that was exuberant, horny, deep, wrenching, playful about lust and Armageddon and psychological complexes and visions of a better unified world that could come together even at the world’s ending. I recorded the album onto a cassette tape, then listened to it over and over on my Walkman knock-off many nights when I should have been asleep.
Then I went backwards into his work and liked his albums Prince and For You, but really absorbed Dirty Mind and Controversy almost as deeply as 1999.
Conformity was oppressive in the 1980s. The Reagan presidency was both a product of it and fostered it. The nation was moony-eyed over the illusion the 1950s was a great time. Not a good time to be a minority. Not a good time to be homosexual. In the 1980s tens of thousands of people were dying from AIDS in the U.S. as the President remained silent. His braintrust and allies sniggered behind the scenes, and sometimes in front of cameras and microphones, about the “gay cancer” as something the victims deserved.
Prince’s strangeness, he sang “Am I black or white, am I straight or gay?”, in the realm of his music all came across as entirely normal. That realm was a better place to be.
Prince, Bryant Junior High B-Ball Team
There were scarcely any black people in Eugene. Gender lines generally were strongly marked and rarely broken openly. Yet here was this musician in a confident mid-point. Mixed-race, if that phrase has much meaning. A short guy who played junior high and high school basketball. A man dressed in bikini briefs, high heels, eyeliner, in touch with his feminine side and primped to within an inch of his life, yet one of the most masculine forces ever to take the stage. Like a tornado or hurricane. He seemed to say: “Be yourself. Let others be themselves. Let’s all mingle, we’re all we’ve got, and let’s all be funky.”
Taking in all of his music up to 1999 primed me for Purple Rain in 1984. I got the album right away. And… the movie that came out in July 1984…?
I was stuck in Boise that summer, and at age 15 had no ride to a movie theater who could accompany me to a rated-R movie. I didn’t see the movie until EARLY SEPTEMBER. The world had moved on by then, and I was a huge fan struggling to catch up in an almost empty theater. My frustration remains palpable to this day. Though feeling sly about getting into a rated-R movie alone gave some solace.
The movie was exciting, but clearly bags full of dumb that even I could detect at 15. However, it was electric that the world was catching on to Prince. Roger Ebert listed Purple Rain among his top 10 films for that year. When it came out on VHS, I bought a copy at my beloved Earth River Records in Eugene and watched it over and over. Especially during two following summers in Boise. I kept count and viewed Purple Rain over 50 times. I had no illusions about it being a great film, or even a good one beyond the music sequences, but I was fond of it and absorbed it with adolescent intensity. It takes little to start reciting minutes of dialog.
Yesterday, driving in rush hour the day of Prince’s death, I recalled that once when my house was empty of family as a teen I put a black light bulb in a lamp in the living room, turned off all other lights, and danced & pantomimed to the entire “Purple Rain” album. I might have been in a t-shirt and shorts. More likely it was just in tighty whities (we lived in the country so passers-by were unlikely). I smiled in modern-day rush hour at this nerdiness. Then I realized this was probably at some point after I had started dating, against the odds and perhaps in defiance of Nature, one of the coolest girls in the high school. That I did this after having at least gotten to third base, possibly all the way around the bases, made it even funnier and I started laughing out loud. Skinny kid in white briefs, miraculously a player.
I stuck with the following zillion albums devotedly. Around the World in a Day, Under the Cherry Moon (and its esoteric and weirdly charming movie), Sign o’ the Times, The Black Album (unreleased for years, snatched a bootleg), Lovesexy, Batman, Graffiti Bridge, Diamonds and Pearls, O(+>, Come. His side projects and protegees as soon as I heard of them. Of course, the fun Jill Jones album. Yes, I can also defend Carmen Electra’s album. Apollonia had charm, but didn’t her thin singing sound like she was yawning all the time?
In 1988 (or was it 1990?) at a summer camp job at a college campus, I was a dorm counselor who was also the camp dance disk jockey. In a dormitory loading dock (Carson Hall) on the concrete upper deck that I had to myself I did a rehearsed dance to “Alphabet St.”. White billowy shirt. Tight black pants. Even did a hurdler’s stretch split on the ground and bounced back up. It was fun. The kids really liked it, as they often liked seeing grown-ups let down their guard. I think fellow staff liked it. I know that I loved it, got lost in the song and let Dionysus take over with an abandon I have rarely allowed since.
I would not hazard a split like that again, but I do practice the other moves in private from time to time. Don’t ask me, though, I’ll probably blush.
As adulthood waxed, music became a less intense experience for a while. But I bought all the albums. Crystal Ball (a lot of past material from his vault), Emancipation, and The Rainbow Children remain favorites. 3121 and Musicology also stood out as albums I enjoyed but didn’t absorb, though I couldn’t tell definitively how much of this period was Prince phoning it in (he seemed to be conveying songs, not being within the song) or my not being as enthusiastic for music. Probably a little of both.
But Prince remained productive, even if his agon was not as strong, music was his essence.
The last couple of years were great ones for Prince. His heart was back into his music, and he was having fun and continued to challenge the forces of power. Art Official Age was playful. His 3rdEyeGirl project with three female musician partners was a blast. Hit ‘n’ Run Phase One and Phase Two had great spirit and social conscience. His song “Baltimore” last year to take on the beating death of Freddie Gray is among Prince’s many career highlights. The energy behind it is strong.
His messiah moods irked me. Former bandmates are chock full of stories about him conferring blessings, pretending to have a pathway to higher existence he could confer to others. That he became a Jehovah’s Witness was dorkily inevitable. But while listening to his music the day of his death, I realized that even his desire to be a conduit to magical experiences was driven to make things better for people. He wasn’t trying to trick anyone for his material gain or terrestrial power as we see in so many others.
His songs on erotic matters were almost fully an interplay of equals. Perform for me, I’ll perform for you. I like your mind, but let’s not talk right now. Okay, I’ll shut up, too, so you can do your thing to me.
After typing the last few sentences it may be fun to take one of his lust paeans and neuter it by translating the lyrics to be square:
Act ur age mama, not ur shoe size and maybe we can do the twirl.
U don’t have 2 watch Dynasty 2 have an attitude.
Just leave it all up 2 me. My love will be, will be ur fool.
– “Kiss”
Behave at a level appropriate to your chronological attainment to assist our erotic compatibility.
To develop a sense of stylish self-possession does not require study of tony pop culture touchstones.
Delegate the burden to me, and I will engage you with respectful humility.
And, as autonomous as he was and often playing most or all of the instruments and many of his albums, he was a collaborator. He liked to share music, to cultivate other artists, and took joy in fostering happiness.
Skimming over his 700+ songs of his that I have (all the studio albums, all the officially released live recordings, many Napster-era live bootlegs), it strikes me that Prince never mastered how to incorporate rap into his music. He tried as himself. He tried using male rappers. But tellingly he got the best flows from women. Two examples popped up while shuffle playing his tracks over the last day. Sheila E. in “It’s Gonna Be a Beautiful Night” and Cat Glover in the album cut of “Alphabet St.” Of the lyrics encountered in the first day following Prince’s death these fun but still sincere lyrics sum up a lot of Prince’s ethos:
Talk 2 me lover, come on tell me what u taste. / Didn’t ur mama tell u life is 2 good 2 waste? / Did she tell u Lovesexy is the Glam of them all? / U can hang, u can trip on it, u surely won’t fall. / No side effects, the feeling lasts 4 ever. / Straight up, it tastes good, it makes feel clever. / U kiss ur enemies like u know u should. / Then u jerk ur body like a Horny Pony would. / U jerk ur body like a Horny Pony would. / Now run and tell ur mama about that!
This bootleg recording of him playing “Superstition” with Stevie Wonder in 2010 shows so much delight in his face as he jams with one of the few humans capable of understanding what it’s like to be so talented. That Prince also has his longtime friend Sheila E. onstage to assist is also is a delight. Even an initially disconnected guitar does not dissuade him. The groove is going. He will add to it soon enough. Then he gets there and it’s loose and terrific.
Prince has left us many grooves. And the word for decades is that he has a vast vault of already recorded tracks, alternate takes, and other songs. Unless his will legally locks that material up, we will probably be exploring new music from him for years to come. I am down with that.
All those scattered thoughts and words, and I’m still staring at the screen feeling hollowed out. I will miss this talented, prodigious, Muse-driven, caring, mad, skinny, sexy motherfucker. My life would be much poorer without him.
This came on the iPod, and I wondered whether the chorus goes: “I don’t think you’re ready for this jelly” (I have jelly you may not be prepared for) or “I don’t think you’re ready for this. Jeally?” (You lack preparation for “this”, and are jealous of it).
A typical contemplation for me during a long drive. Don’t look up the answer on any CD booklet lyrics you have, or, heaven forfend, any of those sloppy song lyrics websites. Ponder this as a koan.
As a teenager, many of the girls around me who had a rabid (libidinous?) fetish for horses later had a rabid, libidinous fetish for David Bowie. It seemed best to not intrude between girls and their horses or their David Bowie. So I mostly ignored him.
The packaging was marvelous. For 1989, it contained three great CDs that ran a gamut of his career up to Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) including familiar tracks and alternate takes. It had a video CD with the video for “Ashes to Ashes” saying goodbye to his pre-1980 personas when hardly anyone had a player to do anything with it.
Bowie described himself as “synthetic”. Before I closely listened, when I was a teenager he came across as always viewing his own work from a distance. Never fully engaged, but pulling a trick of some kind and watching to see everyone’s reactions rather than being in the moment.
What is easy to miss, for all the hairstyles and colors and external trappings, is his voracious curiosity for music. He put a great deal of heart into his work, often getting far further in than trying on genres, but studying and expressing himself from the genre’s center.
Over time I bought all his albums up through Never Let Me Down. His recordings at the BBC. For all this intense time of catching up, all his changes and playfulness had the safety of the past. It didn’t offend or challenge me in the way it would have had I caught it at the first. The daring stuff struck me as wonderfully funny and clever. I could see things as they were meant and did not have to deal with the contemporary “What is he doing?”
Sound + Vision. Terrific packaging. Great music.
When strapped for cash at various times, I ended up selling a few of his albums I didn’t listen to very often (Farewell, Never Let Me Down). I haven’t purchased every album he released after 1987. I did like Tin Machine. Yes, really. And Black Tie, White Noise. And I especially liked Outside. And like much of his mid-level fans I had heard whispers about his ailing health in recent years, and was delightfully surprised when The Next Day came out, viewing it in 2013 as a final album emerging after ten years of retirement.
In 2016, with Bowie dead, I now drum my fingers, awaiting delivery of his final album Blackstar. I saw the video for his song “Lazarus” when it was released and knew he was near death. Not only tipped-off by the title of the song, and the prolonged shots on a sick bed, but most especially the black and silver-striped harlequin going into the chest/coffin at the end. This was goodbye.
And three days after the video’s release, he was dead.
The news bummed me out, intermittently, for a couple of days. And I still shake my head a few times at the news. I don’t associate a wide range of his songs with emotionally laden relationships or memories. But playing random tracks from the 25 albums of his that I still own evokes specific times in my life when listening and getting engrossed in his music was an experience distinctly (this is absurd) mine, even listening a decade or two behind others. His hunger to try things, his love of music and bending of forms all generated an impressive body of work. Yet, it feels like a chill has settled on all of those accomplishments for now. Once Blackstar arrives, his space on my CD shelves will not get much wider.
When thinking of an example of Bowie deploying both a sense of play and a clear drive to get into the center of a song, his cover of “Wild is the Wind” came immediately to mind.
Many of us will take solace in the work he left behind, even though listening to it for a while will be hard because we will sorely miss him.
I got sad writing this. Headed up the stairs. Then I started thinking of “TVC15” and Bowie’s performance on Saturday Night Live with Klaus Nomi and started laughing. Had I seen this in 1978, at age 9, I would have wondered what was going on. Seeing it much later, it is so wonderfully fucking funny. Pink poodle with a t.v. screen. Stick around for the second number in the video of David Bowie acting like a puppet for “Boys Keep Swinging”. Yes, that is Martin Sheen introducing him.
“Black Widow” seems about 14 minutes long. But only recently did I discover it goes “I’m a black widow, baby.” not “I’m a black widdle baby.”
It had mystified me slightly why such a slinky, repetitive song was sung from the first person perspective of a little baby, let alone a specific skin color. Most pop songs are about grown-ups, common themes: “You do/did this to me”, “I feel this way”, “Let’s do this thing”, on an on. It’s about time that another song emerged from a baby’s perspective. An odd choice, lazily delivered, but okay. Whatever.
For that matter, why would a baby singing on behalf of herself (assuming this from the female voice), clearly capable of speech, use the phrase “widdle” for “little”? Was it parroting the baby talk the adults engage in around the baby? Maybe (realize I had only spent a dozen or so seconds contemplating the song before changing the station), this baby was mocking the adults around her for being so patronizing?
Finally, I saw a song title on a Top 10 list somewhere, and put together there was a popular song named “Black Widow”, and I heard it wrong. After finally listening to it all the way through, to my disappointment it’s another boastful song from a grown-up first-person perspective about one’s prowess in mating and exacting some degree of emotional satisfaction. *yawn*
The baby hip-hop/dance genre remains woefully unexplored. To my knowledge, the only legitimate entry remains “Dur Dur d’être bébé!” by Jordy, a French novelty song in 1992. Get on this, babies with a story, and stop horsing around!
Breck Girl (left), Breck Boy (right)
1999 was double album. Four sides of vinyl. His eye at the center of the platter where the spindle went. Music that was exuberant, horny, deep, wrenching, playful about lust and Armageddon and psychological complexes and visions of a better unified world that could come together even at the world’s ending. I recorded the album onto a cassette tape, then listened to it over and over on my Walkman knock-off many nights when I should have been asleep.
