Prince is dead

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

are we talking here about how Prince loved using Clare Fischer for his string arrangements?  that seems like something we should discuss!

[JSngry]

Indeed.

I watched Under The Cherry Moon last night and was totally drawn into the  comedic sensibilities of it, a very broad range of references, targets, and techniques. Jerome Benton should have gotten an Oscsr! Not a perfect fim, but when people start talking disaster and such....noooo. Anything but that.

And Claire Fischer getting a very nice end credit, not just for orchestrations, but also for bringing the color to the black and white (I think that's the exact phrase), and that has meaning past the immediate context, I think, for Claire Fischer was a writer who always brought the color!

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

i just experienced his la coliseum gig....i mean, the stones meant well, they (mick jagger?) invited him to open........but yea, the audience wasnt into it.  get this bill:  Prince 1st, then George Thoregood & The Destoryers, then J. Giles Band, then stones.   prince had the card stacked against him to begin with, what a crazy gig

[JSngry]

I watched Graffiti Bridge last night, and, ok, as a "mainstream" movie, whatever, but as deeply personal allegory dealing with a borader term/struggle (i.e. "Divided Soul") that came to be associated with Marvin Gaye but which goes further back and further ahead more than the mainstream either wants or, probably, needs, to know, I found it to be for the most part riveting. The denouement was a little weak, but everything leading up to then, strong.

I see where most reviews think the story line is about Morris & Prince competing for the same girl and for ownership of a club. Hahaha, yeah, right. 

 

 

[robertoart]

 

[MomsMobley]

re: Clare Fischer... this also perhaps the single best Prince side project album, though the first two Time, first Sheila E., large parts of later Mavis ++ are also very good or better. But I'd say this album, is inventive, hot and flawless within its bounds...

jump ahead to 1 hr 45 min if you get impatient, dig the audience dancers brought on stage, imagine some brooding untucked shirt 'free' schmoe offering likewise... PHILLY!

 

Edited May 10, 2016 by MomsMobley

[Soulstation1]

Prince OWNED the stage 

[CJ Shearn]

http://www.okayplayer.com/news/prince-loring-park-sessions-1977-stream.html

This is some nice stuff, Prince on mainly everything.  I suspect quite a  few people like Lon will be familiar with these sessions, hope they see an official release!  Musically they kinda fit with the general tenor of Herbie Hancock around 1973-76, pretty typical jazz-funk vibe.

Edited May 10, 2016 by CJ Shearn

[jazzbo]

Neat stuff. The man was a forceful talent from the start.

[jeffcrom]

On 5/1/2016 at 4:16 PM, ep1str0phy said:

Popular v. unpopular debate aside, one of the chief reasons that the showmanship v. non-showmanship thing sticks in my craw is because the whole "just sit down and play" thing doesn't apply with equal meaning to all kinds of music. Physical animation will not mean the same thing if you are playing a Paganini Concerto, a barwalking saxophone solo, or Hendrixian histrionics, respectively--and that's twofold.

I have only sporadically kept up with this thread, so I just read ep's long post from May 1, of which I'm only quoting the first paragraph.

I'm not going to say where I come down on the Prince thing or the showmanship thing, because it's kind of complicated. But this post is one of the best things I've ever read on the subject.

But just about every time ep1str0phy posts something here, it's deeply thought out and and near-perfectly expressed. Thanks for your contributions.

[CJ Shearn]

13 hours ago, jeffcrom said:

I have only sporadically kept up with this thread, so I just read ep's long post from May 1, of which I'm only quoting the first paragraph.

I'm not going to say where I come down on the Prince thing or the showmanship thing, because it's kind of complicated. But this post is one of the best things I've ever read on the subject.

But just about every time ep1str0phy posts something here, it's deeply thought out and and near-perfectly expressed. Thanks for your contributions.

I couldn't agree more!  They are like these unbelievable essays where you learn so so much I know I do.

[jazzbo]

Absolutely Jeff. And your contributions, and CJ's, and Jim's, et al---this board is unlike any other.

[Bluesnik]

21 hours ago, jazzbo said:

Neat stuff. The man was a forceful talent from the start.

Yes, that's true. Fully agree.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

I was listening to the 80's On 8 on Sirius/XM this morning when Prince's "When Doves Cry" came on. What the hack time signature is this song in and why have I never thought about this before?

[Larry Kart]

The sheet music says 4/4:

https://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/mtd.asp?ppn=MN0077772

[JSngry]

Definitely 4/4. I can see where some questioning of the symmetry might arise though, as the 7th & 8th bars of each verse can play tricks on the ear, the 8th disrupting the established symmetry of phrase/pause for a continuous phrase that has kind of a "looping back" effect.

I figured this out on a 14 hour road trip, btw. The song had just come out on the radio and it was in very heavy rotation on damn near every non-country non-NPR station all the way. Unlike Kevin, I never questioned the meter. But like him, I was wondering hey, wtf? is going on here. So I started counting bars. Nothing odd there either. So waht's left to create some kind of temporal distortion/disorientation? Phrase lengths/structures. And, sure enough, that was what was doing it.

There for a moment, I felt like Alec Wilder. Then I farted and had to roll the window down. So much for that!

[Scott Dolan]

2 hours ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

I was listening to the 80's On 8 on Sirius/XM this morning when Prince's "When Doves Cry" came on. What the hack time signature is this song in and why have I never thought about this before?

If you have trouble picking it up, right at the end of the word “cry” during the chorus start counting. That might be the easiest point to pick it out. 

[JSngry]

Like James Brown like to put it, "on the one".

[Kevin Bresnahan]

55 minutes ago, Scott Dolan said:

If you have trouble picking it up, right at the end of the word “cry” during the chorus start counting. That might be the easiest point to pick it out. 

I don't think it's that simple. It's like 7/10 time or something weirder. That off-beat drum machine "pow" every other measure seems to throw the whole thing into Monk-land.

I always knew there was a reason I liked that song.

 

Maybe it's just 4/6 with an unusual beat tossed in there every other measure?

[JSngry]

7/10 or 4/6?

Dude, you are more metrically imaginative than Don Ellis!

Here's how the online geek community breaks it down:

https://www.onlinedrummer.com/drum-beats/when-doves-cry-prince/

And for real, no snarkiness intended, when a person reaches retirement age and still has a healthy musical appetite/interest, there's far bigger wastes of time than to take some kind of Fundamentals of Music class.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

28 minutes ago, JSngry said:

7/10 or 4/6?

Dude, you are more metrically imaginative than Don Ellis!

Here's how the online geek community breaks it down:

https://www.onlinedrummer.com/drum-beats/when-doves-cry-prince/

And for real, no snarkiness intended, when a person reaches retirement age and still has a healthy musical appetite/interest, there's far bigger wastes of time than to take some kind of Fundamentals of Music class.

Oh no - now I'm hearing imaginary ghost beats!!

Those measures above still don't include that off beat "pow" drum sound nor where Prince layers in percussive keys that seem to simulate drums that also seem to be off beat.

If it's really just 4/4, that's even better!! Ha ha ha.

[JSngry]

Prince was a trip, for sure.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

It amazes me that he did everything on this track. No one played a note but him. He was quite the musician.

[Scott Dolan]

1 hour ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

I don't think it's that simple. It's like 7/10 time or something weirder.

Brother, I play drums, albeit poorly. This song is 4/4 from beginning to end. 

As for doing everything on that song, Lenny Kravitz used to do that, at least on his first couple of albums. Including the vocal harmonies, which were really well done.