PRINCE
Prince (born June 7, 1958) is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and actor. He has produced ten platinum albums and thirty Top 40 singles during his career. He has written several hundred songs and produces and records his own music for his own music label. He changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol () in 1993; but in 2000, he began referring to himself as “Prince” once again. Prince has a wide vocal range and is known for his flamboyant stage presence and costumes. He has sold over 100 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling artists of all time. (More from Wikipedia)
Minnesota is probably not often thought of as a hotbed of rock stardom, even though two of the brightest stars of the past half-century come from the Land of 10,000 Lakes: Bob Dylan, from Hibbing, and Prince, from Minneapolis.
(September 2010)
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Only last year did I discover that the Premiers were a Chicano band; there was a show on PBS that explained how this band and so many other Latin bands had been chased off the charts by the British Invasion. They are hardly the only ones; Question Mark and the Mysterians are a dynamite Latino garage rock band with a big hit to their credit, “96 Tears”. Their bandleader legally had his name changed to ? (though it was usually spelled out) decades before Prince did something similar – at least ?’s was a pronounceable symbol. Thee Midniters is yet a third one familiar to those in the know; generally bands who use “thee” are Latino bands.
(January 2011)
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Some bootleg albums have been big sellers. When Prince came up with a funk album scheduled for release in 1987 that he later shelved called The Black Album (where the front cover was completely black without any lettering), the handful of promotional albums that had already been released were widely bootlegged in all formats. Official sales figures are obviously not available, but an estimated 500,000 bootleg copies were sold before the album was officially released in 1994.
(August 2012)
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The newest member of Trillion, CJ Vanston has also performed on the last two albums by Steve Lukather of Toto and the recent tour by Tears For Fears, as well as a remarkably varied list of other artists like Joe Cocker, Ringo Starr, Bob Seger, Prince, Tina Turner, Barbra Streisand, Richard Marx, Celine Dion, and ’NSync. Interestingly, CJ Vanston also worked with Patrick Leonard on the Anna Vissi album referenced previously, Apagorevmeno.
(October 2012)
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The second album by the Bangles, Different Light spawned two major hit singles, “Manic Monday” (written by Prince under a pseudonym) and the #1 song “Walk Like a Egyptian”. Several other hits followed, including a tough version of Paul Simon’s “Hazy Shade of Winter” and another #1 song in 1989, “Eternal Flame”.
(November 2013)
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Terence Trent d’Arby, Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent d’Arby – Allmusic tells what happened next: “All of the success – both commercial and critical – had d’Arby poised as a major act, artistically and popularly. d’Arby’s mix of soul, rock, pop, and R&B recalled Prince in its scope and sound, yet his sensibility was grittier and earthier. At least they were at first. By the time of his second album, 1989’s Neither Fish nor Flesh, his ambitions were more nakedly pretentious. The record carried the weighty subtitle ‘A Soundtrack of Love, Faith, Hope & Destruction’ and attacked many self-consciously important themes, including homophobia and environmental destruction. In addition to the self import of the lyrics, the music added a variety of new textures, from Indian drones to straight-ahead ’50s R&B. All of the added baggage was too much for his audience, and Neither Fish nor Flesh dropped off the charts quickly, without so much as one hit single. It took d’Arby a full four years to record a new album.” Terence Trent d’Arby has released several more good albums and has carved out a niche as a cult act, but it wasn’t what might have been.
(December 2015)
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For some reason, over the years the 1970’s have gotten a reputation as a poor decade for music. (So do the 1950’s, for that matter, even though that is where rock and roll came from). It certainly cannot be because everything sounded the same. Most of the British Invasion bands were still active. The top American acts were still going strong as well – Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Carole King, Simon and Garfunkel, Linda Ronstadt, the Beach Boys, the Band, Johnny Cash, Frank Sinatra, etc. – and major stars who arrived in the 1970’s include Elton John, Michael Jackson, Queen, ABBA, Billy Joel, Aerosmith, Bruce Springsteen, AC/DC, Prince, James Taylor, and Tom Petty. Anyone who says they are a music fan has to be able to find someone, and probably several someones on that list that they like a lot.
(December 2016)
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One of the hallmarks of the bandmembers in early punk rock bands is picking new names for themselves. Not everyone did that, and most musicians perform under their own names. For the record, as best I can tell, Frank Zappa, Fats Domino, Major Lance, Kris Kristofferson, and Stonewall Jackson are using their real names (with Fats being a nickname, though Major and Stonewall are not). Grace Slick is her married name; she was born Grace Wing. Most though not all of the one-name performers are also using one of their real names, with slight spelling changes and anglicizing here and there: Madonna, Prince, Jewel, Cher, Björk, Enya, Beck, Donovan, Morrissey, Liberace, Sade, Seal, Shakira, Rihanna, Adele, Dido, Melanie, Beyoncé, etc.
(March 2017)
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Since I am down to a quarterly schedule rather than a monthly schedule, my annual list is a lot shorter, so I will try listing all of the people that I have discussed in some depth rather than just the Under Appreciated Rock Band and the Story of the Month. They are all punk rock bands of one kind or another this year (2015-2016), and the most recent post includes my overview of the early rap/hip hop scene that an old friend, George Konstantinow challenged me to write – probably so long ago that he might have forgotten.
June 2016 – 1980’s-1990’s gross-out/punk band THE GYNECOLOGISTS; Story of the Month on Dead Kennedys; also, Prince, Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), Tipper Gore, W.A.S.P., Twisted Sister / Dee Snider, Cyndi Lauper, the Beatles, “Louie Louie”, Mr. Holland’s Opus, Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts, Coven, Black Sabbath, Betty Blowtorch, Tommy Afterbirth.
(Year 7 Review)
