Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Your Wednesday Moment of Words Fail Me: Special Apparently It's Prince Week Edition

The Kid in Osaka, Japan in 1990. Fooling around with Gershwin's "Summertime" at a soundcheck.



This guy was so abundantly talented it's almost unbelievable.

[h/t Steve Schwartz]
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3 comments:

Gummo said...

Friggin' amazing.

Y'know, I always liked Prince but about a dozen years ago, I started collecting some, shall we say, non-commercial recordings of his -- and I realized that, like the Grateful Dead or Neil Young, Prince's official output was literally the tip of an iceberg, and not necessarily the best or most impressive of his work, either.

And his Superbowl show can still give me chills.

4/27/2016 11:50 AM
VanessaStone said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
4/27/2016 8:10 PM
Anonymous said...

Gummo: Yeah, the bootlegs are abundant and wonderful. And essential. Too many great ones to even name favorites. Mid-1990's was an insane flood of material.

First saw Prince in Fall of 1981 when he opened for the Stones at the L.A. Coliseum. He was pelted with trash and booed off the stage:-)

I was 26 and had gone to the show with several cute younger girls who had never been to a Stones show. I brought them to my breasts and dubbed them the "Go-Go's". This was because that record had finally come out and they were huge fans of the band since their club days. But they were much better looking than the Go-Go's. You might say proteges of mine that I gleefully led astray. Their new favorite Stones song was "Little T&A". Their old fave Stone song was "Before They Make Me Run." You see, they were young. They were into Keef like they were into Johnny Thunders. But none of them went for a junkie chic look. Wholesome looking California girls with completely warped values.

I brought an ounce of Peruvian Flake to that show. I always had at least an ounce of blow in my purse at the time in my life. It was my "personal". Always best to be prepared. We used a framed photo of Keith Richards as our coke mirror. You know, the Ethan Russell photo of a blissed-out Keef standing by a drinking fountain next to a sign which reads "Patience Please, A Drug Free America Comes First". I'm sure you've seen it. Great fuckin' shot!

Needless to say, we made lots of fair weather friends. The place was crawling with cops both on foot and horseback. They left us alone because the entire place was in the grips of rampant and blatant drug use. Nobody had learned to "Just Say No" yet. It was one of those long overnight waiting in line experiences. The blow made the time fly.

The "Go-Go's" had a silly banner which read something like "The Beatles Were a Fad But The Stones Are Bad". A photo of that banner and a few of "the Go-Go's" ended up in the Los Angeles Times story on the Stones concerts in the following days. Both Coliseum shows were bootlegged, with varying quality, as were both Candlestick Park shows from a few weeks later. Me and the "Go-Go's" went to all four. One of the Candlestick bootlegs was titled "Cracked Mirror, Dull Blades and You" :-)

So Prince played a very short set, under a half hour. The crowd hated him. I could tell he had talent, but the masses just wanted to get to Thorogood and J. Geils. He and his band definitely dressed like a rock stars. It wasn't as stupid as booking Hendrix to open for the Monkees, but you couldn't tell the crowd at the Coliseum that. Prince didn't fall under their AOR definition of 'Rock 'N' Roll".

VR

5/06/2016 3:56 PM

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