Tag Archives: Prince

The greatest ‘band’ in the world

Here is a stunning performance by the world-famous Pete X, featuring (in this configuration): A “drummer” who only sometimes can get through Rock Band songs on the Hard setting; an inexplicably shirtless lawyer; a disco ball; a tambourine-less backup singer; and one bona-fide guitar hero.

Mostly we just did this to see if Prince’s people would send a takedown notice.

UPDATE: Drumroll please…

Dear jskorr,

This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a notification by The Publisher claiming that this material is infringing:

Pete X – Purple Rain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp71CqKcgaE

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Sincerely,
The YouTube Content Identification Team

The mysterious downfall of a Prince

Prince’s generally dreadful — but copious — recent output is one of the enduring pop culture disappointments of the past 15 years. His “comeback” performances at the 2004 Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame ceremony and last year’s Super Bowl notwithstanding, Prince’s creative decline falls somewhere between post-accident Stephen King and post-sanity Michael Jackson.

My friend Eric reminds us of better Prince times in this post, where he provides links to Prince’s aborted Camille and Dream Factory projects. They’re both definitely worth downloading and listening to, and they’ve inspired me to do a more thorough re-examination of what the heck happened to Prince (short answer: ego and a misunderstanding of hip-hop). This will require a bit of listening and a rereading of the fascinating biography Possessed.

But to get the conversation started, here’s a review of the 2004 album Musicology that was supposed to run in the St. Pete Times a few years back but got lost in the shuffle. It was an attempt to counter the CW at the time (which has since been revised, I think) that Musicology was vintage Prince and a real comeback. I saw Prince live for the first time on the Musicology tour, and he was great. But the album was just as boring and lame as The Rainbow Children, Emancipation, Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic, etc.

So two views of latter-day Prince: His jaw-dropping (literally — watch Dhani Harrison) RnR Hall of Fame performance (Prince solo starts around the 3:20 mark) …

And a contemporaneous review of Musicology:

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