Prince "Cindy C"

There it was.  A little piece of legend wrapped in plastic.  And I didn't have the money to buy it.

I headed back to my college dorm, knowing who I had to talk to.

"You aren't going to believe what I saw downtown."

"What?" he said.  He was the kind of guy who believed he was cool, so he acted cool, nonchalant.  But I knew his interest was piqued.

"The fucking BLACK album!"

He knew what I was talking about, immediately.  And he knew what it meant.

I'd gone straight to him, because he was a fan of Prince, like me.

And we'd talked about the mythical Black Album before.

Word was that just weeks before its intended release, it was pulled from production.  Few copies existed.  Some stories said that Prince thought the record was too dark.  Other stories had it that the record label had found it too vulgar.

Whatever the reason, it was not in stores.  Until now.

Trolling through the import LPs at a downtown Amherst record shop, I found it.  Like the Spinal Tap record that shares its name (and predates it by several years), the record was as black as black could be, with only a small sticker to indicate that this was a Prince release.

It was an "import" suggesting that it had been released in Europe.  But more likely it was a bootleg.

And it cost $30.

I didn't have thirty dollars.  But I knew someone who would want the record as badly as I did.

"And there's only one copy," I told him.

We made our way back downtown, post-haste, ready to split the cost of owning a rare and profane piece of art.


Neither of us actually owned a record player.

But a guy down the hall did.

He let us sit in his room and listen, so long as we did it one at a time, using headphones so he could keep studying.  I got to go first.

I'd heard a few things about the contents of the record.  Like, there was a dirty tune about his lust for Cindy Crawford.  And that it was funkier than anything he'd released recently.  And that he was dabbling in rap.  And he'd done all kinds of crazy things to electronically alter his voice.

Like in the song "Bob George," where he talks (rhythmically) to a woman he suspects is cheating on him, with Prince.

I listened as the beats flew by and his voice was amped up, lyrics tumbling by at an over-caffeinated pace.  I could hear him saying some nasty shit, but a lot of it was too altered and garbled for me to pick out.

As side one was drawing to an unrelenting close, my co-owner stuck his head in the door.

"How's it sound?" he asked coolly, but with an undertone of eagerness.

"Great," I enthused.  "But he's doing some crazy stuff with his voice.  And its short too.  Side One is about to end and I've only been listening for 10 minutes."

My friend looked at the turntable, and, trying to remain cool and nonchalant, while injecting a slight tone of both disdain and glee, said:

"You don't play an LP at 45.  You're listening at the wrong speed."

Prince & Sheena Easton "The Arms Of Orion"

There are lots of songs about girls.  So when I happen to look at a girl, no one song comes to mind.

There are lots of songs about cars.  So when I happen to look at a car, no one song comes to mind.

But at night in the fall, I look up in the sky, and one stupid song comes to mind.

Because I only know one song about Orion.

In 1989 I was still a major fan of Prince.  And also a big fan of Batman.  And of Tim Burton.

Along comes news that Tim Burton will direct a new Batman movie.  And the soundtrack will be by Prince?

Yow!

So I went out and bought the new Prince soundtrack.

And this was the moment I realized that Prince may not have his hand fully on the quality control lever.  While there are some good songs on the record (I actually like the much reviled "Batdance"), there is also some pretty sub-par Prince material on there too.

But being a super-fan, I did listen over and over again that summer, and the songs on the "Batman" soundtrack did become lodged in my head, including the sappy Sheena Easton duet "Arms Of Orion."  It's such a middling tune, but the hook of the chorus is just catchy enough that I find myself singing it.

In the fall, the constellation Orion The Hunter becomes visible in the night sky.  It's one of the few constellations that I can identify quickly.

Unfortunately, with an uncommon name like Orion, even now when I spy the formation of stars and just think "Orion," this stupid song pops in my head. 



Finally giving "Orion" a more positive connotation is Meadow Dibble's "Orion's Belt Buckle." She makes one-of-a-kind pieces of wearable art, incorporating hand-sculpted polymer clay, found images, designer and recycled paper, beads, shells and other objects.  She's extremely talented, like her dad!

Before you do any Christmas shopping online with big companies, consider supporting individual artists and small entrepreneurs.  Amazon isn’t going to miss your 50 bucks, but a purchase from an artisan will help them enormously.  This week and next, I’ll be posting links to a few of my talented friends and family.


Hear the song on Youtube.

Prince “Controversy”

Thank God I grew up in the pre-YouTube age.

Prince was on the Island last week, and so I was trying to think about some of my favorite Prince memories and I flashed back to a rainy day in 1985.

We had discovered Prince, through “Purple Rain” the year before, (like most white suburban kids) and my friends and I had started to work backward through his catalogue, picking up copies of “1999,” “Prince” and “Controversy.”

On any other Spring afternoon, the bunch of us might be playing basketball or tossing the nerf around, or (of course) trying to figure out how we could get our hands on some beer before the High School dance scheduled for that evening.

But on a rainy day like this one, there wasn’t much fun to be hand, other than to hang around the house where parents weren’t home, and blast some records.

I can’t imagine who among us had the idea to make up our own dance. Truthfully, there wasn’t one of us who was particularly groovy. But we did.

We lined up. We worked out synchronized moves. We each had what could loosely be described as a “solo.” And we practiced.

That night, at the high school dance, the DJ spun “Controversy” for us, and we performed.

The whole idea that I was part of a group of people who created a series of dance moves, is so foreign to me, doesn’t seem like this could possibly be my own memory.

The last time I was on a dance from was when I got married five years ago, and that was certainly only because it was mandatory.

I avoid the dance floor like the plague, because good God, I’m not very funky. Nor, if I recall, was anyone else in that group of dancers.

Oh, I’m sure in 1985, we thought we were pretty damn slick. But no doubt, we were horrible.

Thank God we grew up in the pre-YouTube age and there is no chance of anyone, ever, anywhere, at anytime, re-living those “moves.”