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Pop Rock Nation

Category: People

all-about-musicians-and-the-people-who-help-them-make-music

  • A Purple Celebration: Happy Birthday, Mr. Nelson


    Today, June 7th, 2008, is Prince Rogers Nelson’s 50th birthday. And despite the contrarian, slightly grumpy figure he’s cut over the last couple of years, no one can deny that these 62 inches of dynamite are responsible for some of the best music made over the past thirty years.

    In an age where most artists or bands are lucky to cut two or three classic albums, Prince has made at least four absolutely perfect (Dirty Mind, 1999, Purple Rain and Sign ‘o The Times) albums, with another 5 or 6 that come close (Controversy, Parade and The Gold Experience chief among those). He’s the total package-one of the all-time greats on two instruments (guitar and keyboards), a strong songwriter, an amazing entertainer and a top-shelf vocalist.

    Turn on pop radio today and every song that doesn’t sound like Michael Jackson sounds like Prince. The hollow drum-machine suound that he perfected in the early Eighties is still in just about every Neptunes, Timbaland or will.i.am production. Justin Timberlake can talk shit all he wants, but all “FutureSex/LoveSounds” is, is a Prince album with Michael Jackson vocals.

    Shit, how many artists are so bad ass that you can put together a greatest hits album of songs that he’s written and/or produced but didn’t sing and it would still be as bangin’ as a greatest hits album comprised solely of music he wrote/produced/performed?

    Since Mr. Nelson is notoriously prickly about people posting footage of him on the web, I won’t dig through Youtube to find video footage of him. However, we can’t celebrate the man properly without at least some music, so enjoy some excellent music that while not fronted by the man, contained his involvement.

    Stevie Nicks’ “Stand Back” was not only heavily influenced by Prince’s “1999”, but the man himself played keyboards on this record and got a co-write credit for his handiwork.

    “A Love Bizarre” is essentially a Prince song. He sings every line along with Sheila E. and adlibs enough that the song really should be considered a duet.

    Maybe someday, someone will be nice enough to release The Family’s album on CD. For those unaware, The Family was Prince’s attempt to a) keep a band in his stable after the dissolution of The Time and b) “get some of that Duran Duran money”. Their 1985 album is a highly soughty-after classic, not only because it’s a great album but also because it contains the original version of “Nothing Compares 2 U”, which went on to become a huge #1 for Sinead O’ Connor.

    Happy birthday, Mr. Nelson. How many guys out there can rock the shit out of Radiohead’s “Creep” in high heels while only being 15 years away from social security?

  • Friday Throwback – Ownlee Eue

    In 8th grade, one of the dance crews was performing at our junior high school rally. One of the members of the crew was a good friend of mine, so I was excited to see them dance. I honestly don’t remember much about their performance, but mostly because I was mesmerized by the song that came booming out of those speakers that day. In junior high school, kids are easily influenced and start liking things they may not have liked because of who introduced it to them. Well, I can’t say that I wasn’t influenced because one of my friends was dancing on stage and it was very cool, but when music hits you, it just hits you.

    – Yep, those are polka dots. That was his signature look.

    – Dude just busted out with a keytar.

    – “Love, cherish, respect and always be there for you”

    – Is he ever going to play the keytar?

    – This was the first song I’d ever heard where someone told a girl he would drink her bath water. It was disgusting then and still is now.

    – Ah, the old hump the floor dance move.

    Kwame isn’t all that well remembered even though he had 3 songs chart in the top 10 on the rap charts in 1989 and 1990. He actually stopped rapping by the mid 90s but recently came back as a producer and has worked with some main stream folks. I don’t think we’ll see the return of the polka dots, but this is what happens when rap stars go to die. If they have a good understanding with how the music is put together, they become producers.

  • "The Happening" and the Fickle Finger of Fate


    I can’t be the only one who’s had (of all things) a Supremes song stuck in his head ever since seeing a trailer for M. Night Shyamalan’s forthcoming disaster flick (which is being heavily touted for carrying Shyamalan’s first R rating): The Happening. Despite the film’s deliciously retro title which evokes images of arsty hippies staging random acts of public randomness, the trailer brims over with Shyamalan’s by now familiar (to the point of virtual self-parody) bubbling stew of supernatural terror and quasi-religious inscrutability. Urgh. On the other hand, the scariest thing about The Supremes‘ positively rapturous 1967 single “The Happening” (their 10th #1 hit on Billboard‘s Pop chart), is the way Diana Ross’s smile (to say nothing of her Bruckheimer-scale hairdo) threatens to consume the rest of her face (and everything else in the immediate vicinity) as she effortlessly maneuvers through the song’s brisk tempo and relentlessly acrobatic melody in this live performance.

    This dizzyingly catchy song, a collaboration between Motown’s venerable Holland-Dozier-Holland team and TV theme composer Frank DeVol (whose most famous composition centers on the story of a lovely lady bringing up three very lovely girls), was written for the 1967 movie The Happening starring Anthony Quinn as a mobster restauranteur who gets kidnapped by a bunch of hapless hippies (including Faye Dunaway in her screen debut!) in a plot that would get recycled for Ruthless People in the mid-80s. But despite the song’s boundlessly chipper veneer, it marks a pivotal point in the Supremes’ history. Their very next single – the #2 hit “Reflections” – would be the first one credited to “Diana Ross and the Supremes”. Meanwhile, Florence Ballard, who gave the group their name, would soon be signing away her rights to it. Considered by many to have the superior voice, Ballard actually sang lead on some of the group’s earlier tracks, but with Ross’s star ascendant, she was increasingly marginalized in the group. Her alchohol problem didn’t help matters: though she sang on “Reflections”, she’d been fired from the Supremes (replaced by Cindy Birdsong of Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles) by the time it was released. In 1976, she died of heart failure at the age of 32. What did they say about that fickle finger of fate?

    -P. Lorentz