Every half-week, I remember what beloved First Stage Theatre Academy Director Ron said to or in regard to a deflated theatre student who wouldn't be able to take classes that particular summer: "Sometimes doing Theatre Academy means not doing Theatre Academy."
Sometimes, your absence is action.
This one keeps making moves. It's all action, now, 37 years later, without the pleader and the leader of the song.
And, sometimes, writing here means not writing here, but going outside for a walk. I need that too.
This one comes from somewhere between convention and instinct. Marking the start of a new time, though if you ask the birds and the trees being smothered by snow outside right now, they don’t care, don’t know, don’t need it. They just need to stay warm and alive, and they have been preparing for this fallow time a while ago, driven by the almighty instinct.
Me, too? I guess I have been applying that guide inside (forgive the PSA and/or morning drive radio speak), preparing for winter’s starkness and solemnity. Somewhere behind it are outrageous colors, ease in the air...and the purple banana?
Expect the best of/from your collaborators. Give the best of yourself. Model what you want to see. Be them before they show up. Your tribe is out there, even if you hack away at it all alone for a long time.
I don't know or want to know where the drive crossed into being fueled by pain and chemicals more than just the drive, but he chased it and left the lab as much as he needed to.
Get your shit done at home and then get out there.
Here we go. Soul music with soul -- which Prince heard and featured in one of his last albums, though it was first heard as a stream as fast, after events in Baltimore, as you can say "Ohio."
I hope she comes out with a full-length something this year.
Me Now: How come u didn't go to the Purple Rain tour when you could have?
Me Then: I liked him, but I had to spend my money wisely--on L'Oreal eye shadow and Duran Duran import 12-inches.
Me Now: Gah---gackkk--ah. DUMMY!You liked Purple Rain...you liked it a LOT.
Me Then: Yeah, but I didn't buy it. Taped it off the radio...
Me Now: One lousy dime!!
Me Then: But none of my friends were going. I think. No, they weren't.
Me Now: You couldn't find a way to go?? I mean, you had to figure it out sometime. How else would you finally see U2 for the 45 (50?) dollars no one else was gonna pay to go with you?
Me Then: Yeah, but the concert was on a Saturday, and we had a speech tournament that day. We had to have. Or I had to work (and then go directly to Record Bar and buy another 12-inch).
But I do remember a moment of anticipation, standing in line at one of the fancypants bars on the upper concourse, listening to the preshow playlist, and letting this groove get me to move:
I like to think, now, with everything that's changed so drastically in just one noon hour, that he put that preshow list together, selected the songs to feel the spice of life, together, before he brought us together even more.
I feel every stroke of the guitar solo in “Purple Rain.” I hated to hear those mournful opening chords at the high school dance, it meant stopping the ecstasy of dancing and sitting on the sidelines for eight minutes watching others pair off and shuffle in the dim light. Eight minutes of being alone, watching the couples nestle into each other and trying to understand what that might feel like and wanting it at the same time, and knowing, somehow, that this song itself ached and mourned for that very moment.
Later, after I had learned about those moments, I stood alone, but not alone in the United Center and felt the love for us, all of us, from the small man with great stature. The song became a moment of love, peace and unity that I hadn’t felt and will never feel from another artist again.
I won’t post the song here because that’s one that is still not up.
Haven't been able to do this yet. First was shock, then the wild dancing, then put in about 15 out of the 26 hours of listening to the catalogue via (kind of) Alphabet Street, then more dancing, then foiled attempts at a jukebox wake during sportzpucker playoff season.
This all sounds more flippant than I intend it to. It's hard to process. Nothing lasts, not even him. But he and I remain, every time he turns me on.
It feels insurmountable, this knowing that from here on it's going letting go, always letting go of things, places and people. The first, easy. The second, can't control. The last, something to cross, again and again.
Excerpts from a new creed, inspired by a clip provided by a friend who has known me long and well.
...We believe in the Holy Purple,
Prince, who gives it 2 U
Who proceeds from the Father and Son.
With the Father and Son he is worshiped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Revolution.
We believe one funky, Dancetastic Church
We acknowledge The One
To lay down the groove
We look for the Godfather of Soul,
So I went back to the United Center last night to see Janelle Monae open for Prince, thanks to the clearance-priced tickets...
...And ended up with a priceless show with eleventy-thousand encores, including one that was just Prince, soloing
on the piano with "How Come U Don't Call Me Any More?" "Do Me Baby" and
"I Wanna Be Your Lover." Although we saw the show on different nights, I agree with this assessment.
But my favorite moment was hearing the song I'd forgotten about, the one that I dug, yeah, but never really dug into (and who bought Parade, anyway?), the one that was a middling hit in the summer of 1986, a summer about which I actually remember most details--movies I saw and with whom, who got a drivers license, who worked at which mall job, how I couldn't wait to get back to doing plays and speech at school.
Damn, this came at me hard, the culmination of a night that was in every way better than Monday's already "okay, I saw Prince; therefore it is good' show: sound, energy, set, pace. It had joy--and ass. My friend reported that an audience member nearby declared loudly during the "Do Me/Lover" encore that, to paraphrase, something was happening to her underwear.
He really is a sexy m.f. And ageless, too.
Anyway, at this juncture, there was such a great groove going, it was clear we were reaching the ecstatic apex of the show proper, which we slid deliciously back down with "Purple Rain" and an actual, gawddamn weep-inducing guitar solo played under a glitter-rain of confetti. We were all testifying, child. TESTIFY. Oh, this was a show.
So, yeah, back to that groove apex: until I heard the chorus I had the barest sense of recognition of this song.
Here it is, "Mountains," paired here as it was last night with "Everyday People," but featuring Sheila E., at the LA Forum shows in 2011.
But really, you should watch this clip from a Parade-era show, to feel me on this one.* Prince Parade Tour Mountains
If you watch the "Purple Rain" clip in the set list link embedded above all the way through, Prince implores us to remember "we're s'posed to take care of each other."** Hollowly pontificating from the lip of your multi-million-dollar stage, was he? Do I believe him? I do. It's the same idea he laid down over Wendy and Lisa's track in "Mountains:" There's nothing greater than you and me.
Plus, there's a genuine simplicity about Prince now. It's apparent in an interview with Greg Kot that appeared in the Trib. He's out of the game. He's free to just make music, and give us what he called in his all-caps email interview with Time Out "A NIGHT 2 REMEMBER."
Oh, it was. To remember after, and remember during.
*edited to add: I have a feeling that for some, a Myspace login (!!) is required to view the Parade concert video. You can also try this:
**edited to add: I withheld some information. The clip proves that I did hear right and Prince did tell us to "read your Bible" during the peak of "Purple Rain." But this, like the way I noticed he won't sing "in and out around your legs," "you got an ass like I never seeeeeeeeen" and other naughty bits in his older, racy material, I am going to ignore in deference to the greater good, i.e. my having had a blast at these shows.
I think the set list was printed in oversize format on the top of the
piano, which also hid his synths and beats and shit. That was my
favorite portion of the concert proper, the blazing medley (still,
medley, dammit) that ranged from "When Doves Cry" and "Nasty Girl" to "Sign 'O The Times" with the total tease of the opening strains of "Darling Nikki" wedged up there in the middle. It was within this segment that he called out "Too many hits -- we got too many hits!"
Was that a hint?
The post-encore encore
(and post-stage sweeping--and that took so long that I began to hope that the stagehand would off his workclothes and lights would bump up to reveal Prince in purple sequins within) was the best part of the night. More than thirty minutes after Prince left the stage,
around midnight, the band came back and jammed, seen here. I ran back inside the arena from the concourse when I heard a cry rise up from within. Then Prince
rode out on a white bicycle to take his place and proceeded to melt my
whole self with "1999" and "Little Red Corvette."
Dammit, I have to say that I prefer the Purple Rain-era version. He got all quiet storm on this. I miss (and love) the big synthy fills from the original.
I would have posted it, but the clip from the film--complete with a hacked off Morris Day and Apollinia and Prince eyeballing each other--with the French dubbing, she gone from the interwebs.
The absolute shite quality of this video does not matter. What does matter is that you realize that this is the moment Prince realizes he's made it. Look at his face when sings, "when you got it made, nothing comes too hard."
Then at about 3:46 in the clip he does about a dozen splits in a row, like he's on a freaking trampoline, and proves that he is a limber and insane m-f-ing genius.
And then when half the hair-gelled audience tumbles on the stage, Lori fresh-from-Footloose Singer and Grace Jones are up on stage killing it.
It's a delicious time capsule, but it it's also timeless proof that THERE IS NO ONE LIKE PRINCE.
This song cuts into my gut--even when I'm standing in a shabby office building hallway sheathed in migraine-inducing fluorescent lights. The harsh bulbs jailed by a metal grill, but they pulsed with something else while I stood there and listened to this instead of the mechanized wail of the heating system.
