In honour of Prince who transformed 21/4/16

Crawling across the bathroom floor half naked singing "Dream if you can a courtyard, an ocean of violets in bloom, animals strike curious poses, they feel the heat the heat between me and you..." is what brought me to Prince as a young fifteen year old.  Batman  was the first music cassette in my first car and Diamonds and Pearls was the first piano book and song I played on the piano. He inspired you to make music. Prince's lyrics about love, life, sexuality and spirituality were a  book that once open you couldn't close. Profound poetic lyrics mingled with various hypnotic beats, baseline rhythms and melodic tunes, Prince presented his music with flair, always changing his style for every album. In concert he jumped around in high heels and fashionable unique clothing, dancing to every beat of his songs while he either jammed on his guitar or the piano.

Growing up with Prince, keeping abreast with his extensive broad catalogue, meant that his music became part of your own life symphony. The ups and the downs, lyrics to match all events, Prince's song words stuck in your head. Today,  21 April will always be a day when the Purple Funk Soldiers  under the motto of Live4Love and #Prince4Ever will commemorate this unforgettable and unconventional artist. Prince had his battles in life as we all do. His legal fight with Warner Brothers causing him to change his name to TAFKAP (The artist formerly known as Prince) and to write Slave on his face in the public eye. He responded in kind with difficult music but eventually, after years, he won the rights to his songs and in later years promoted Tidal not Spotify or Apple Tunes, encouraging new artists to control the rights to their productions. In what seemed a move of forgiveness, in 2014 Warner Brothers released his  Art Official Age album.   

 

Prince was revolutionary in first putting his music online via the NPG Club, long before any tech giants did. He abhorred You-Tube because so many bootlegged his music and uploaded low sound quality videos, even selling them for cash. He consequently even sued some fans, those out of line true fanatics. But that was Prince, always bold, never ordinary.  Through all the trials and tribulations he never abstained from making music and his pain, joys, frustrations and humour always found a way return annoyed fans back to his musical creations. As a Prince fan, even though there were some years of abstaining, I always returned to Prince because popular music rarely provided the ingenuity, spiritual freshness and depth that his music did. He played every genre and although I didn't like all of them, the message in all, always meant something, explained something or expressed an emotion. 

 

"Third apartment from the sun" 

With thanks for the artwork to 

                                                       http://antifan-real.deviantart.com/

 

For those unfamiliar with Prince music, apart from his early commercial hits, Prince's multi-genre catalogue, with loads of unofficially released tracks included hard rock to R&B, pop, rap, instrumental, trip hop, blues, ambient, funk, low key jazz, steamy, hot, seductive and sexy ballads and deeply, reflective, spiritual seeking songs. There was nothing that the man didn't cover. Prince layered his music in  detailed composition, and his depth and variety of tender, sexual, hilarious or sad story-lines lyrics were poetic, deep, outrageous, sad or funny. As a Prince fan, you felt all his vibes, but could choose at which genre or vibration level you wanted to reside, and there was always enough material for you to get your regular purple fix.  Music has to be the most beautiful drug there is and for Prince it was his lifeblood. Prince was also the found of text language. U, 2, Eye, B4, Ur etc. 

Prince's output was universally accepted, across cultures, genders, religions and race. His music shaped values, beliefs, behaviours, and his iconic male/female symbol is paramount to understanding Prince. His lyrics covered love and strength for life, the difference between love and lust, sexual freedom, political beliefs, self expression, spiritual searching, romantic vulnerability and even religious tolerance, the latter most notably in "Same Page, Different Book" which was released independently, free of record labels purposefully. 

 

Things that mattered to Prince, were freely available to all. He did Cinnamon Girl after 9/11, Mr Man to tackle inequality, Colonised Mind, Art Official Cage and Baltimore for Black Lives Matter, which shared his understandings of ordinary society, even though he was far removed from its general daily experience due to fame and super-star status. Inviting others to create at his infamous Paisley Park studios he wrote them hits, for example, Martika's Love Thy Will be Done, The Bangles, Manic Monday, Sinaed O'Connor's Nothing Compares to you, I feel for you by Shaka Khan and many others. Prince put together jazz orchestras, the Third Eye Girl only rock band in his last years and in his final year he went back to what he was best at. Just him and a piano, "The Piano and Microphone tour." 

 

Prince, whilst appealing to most true music lovers and musicians, was particularly loved I suppose by women, because many men have difficulty in admiring a man walking around in high heels, make-up and frills. But there were no barriers in Prince's expression for his art.  His high falsetto in love ballads and sultry thoughts were laid down in Cream, Sweet Baby, Reflection, Sea of Everything, Space, Affirmations 1, 2 and 3, Muse and Revelation, and scores more.  He understood women's  heartbreaks, their dreams and self-journeys because he had them too. Prince was strongly in touch with his female side. A tiny guy not even 5 feet, seen as an Alpha male to the outside world, was really a sensitive man who wasn't afraid to show emotions even if it shocked people.

Prince came from an impoverished difficult background, was unsuccessful in love, and lost his only son Gregory, who died after one week. Reflected in the songs Comeback,  a tear-jerker, (if you know what it's about) Solo, Into the Light and I will...."  He processed his grief through his music, sketching his ups and downs in  every colour of a painter's palette.   Although a boundary pusher, he had an innate driven discipline for work, resulting in an insatiable, intense creativity, where his soul could fly free as a dove through that ocean of violets in bloom.

Some Prince albums were like musicals. The Rainbow Children and Old Friends for Sale. Fantastic journey albums, full of eargasms, salt and peppered, with distinct unusual tinkles, double-bass strums, or animation that always fit to the theme as a hand to glove. His onstage track lists or album mixes as smooth as an audio kaleidoscope, a continuous glide where each track became an extension of the former. As a DJ mixes vinyl, with the flick of a button, Prince's musicianship performed magic on all all the instruments he played, becoming one with every one of them. It was mesmerizing to watch and the unpredictability addictive. He played his hits in mixed versions, each more beautiful than the last. The last rendition of Little Red Corvette,  from the Piano and Microphone tour, a classic example Truely transcendent and hauntingly beautiful. It was also as if he knew his time was running out.... "Slow down.. you're moving too fast..." 

Prince could also be outrageously sexual, profoundly spiritual and also downright indifferent. From Indifferent, an acoustic track released in 2015. "I'd make you lick the tears off my face, because you put each one of them there" - He always found the words to express the unthinkable with a memorable melody. Even the early (to me) highly annoying Get Off, 22 positions in a one night stand, he pacified with a spiritual flute intro. Prince's music was a roller-coaster ride of emotions and he catered for all his fans' taste. For example, The double CD in 2014 and 2015 featuring the rock heavy HitnRun I and mellow and soulful HitnRun II.  Love him or hate him, Prince knew how to every garden of Eden's Even to take the apple. 

Some songs take you to heaven in a hot air balloon and then suddenly drop you into a dark, deep, black hole  where "There is lonely, and there is how.. I feel right now." The Vault OFFS.  Improvisation was his strength and who could ever forget that cheeky scream?  Prince would play with your expectations and surprise you every time with intriguing interludes, slow downs and seamless mixing back and forth between two songs.  It was never easy trying to get hold of a live, favourite version of a song he did in concert which was why he was bootlegged so much.

Most people know Prince from the commercial time of the 80's and 90's but  if you dare to enter into unchartered waters try the 2001 album The Rainbow Children to understand his versatility. Do not  expect something normal in this ride through a digital garden to the matrix through energetic funk, ending almost in tears with the final "If your last December came.... what would you do?" There is  super soul jazz, that rip-roars and surfs down waterfalls into a pool of turbulent waves,  white-water rafting you to a horizon where you will be placed gently on a water-lily of a calm pond like Thumbelina. I would also suggest seeing the 2009 Montreau Jazz Festival live concert with "All the Critics love you in Montreau" and "I love you, but I don't trust you anymore." 

 

Gone are the days of the thrills and buzz to know when Prince is to announce a concert tour at last minute notice. No more excited secret real-time tweeting of concert goers to spill the beans on the set list, or Prince's cutely distorted, funny twitter marathons. Prince was anti social media but befriended Twitter after a concert in Amsterdam a few years before he passed. Our third eye genius is no longer here to write  hauntingly sad or uplifting lyrics so we have to enjoy what he left behind.  And there are many songs which are timeless. The acoustic version of The Truth and Third Eye being two high on my list. 
 

Long ago Prince wrote in Let's go Crazy, "If the elevator tries to break you down, punch a higher floor." Found in the elevator on 21/4/16 we don't know if he managed but he certainly has found his way home. (Art Official Age). He painted life in sound and word and listening wasn't always the only purpose, it was feeling. He created many "a box of chocolates," velvet, minimalist dreamy stuff of songs that "will rock the socks off any boy or girl who wants to  come his way." "He was the driver, we were the screw" he wound us up in an endless "sea of everything." Prince, our purple rain phenomena was the Beethoven of our time. He may be gone but his followers... "Just like the sun...the Rainbow Children Rise." So, "if you ever lose someone dear to you, never say the words they're gone.. they'll come back, yeah.... they'll come back yeah....  tears go here." To commemorate him today let's remember one of his many messages... "The only love there is..... is the love we make."

                                                    A piano and microphone tour