Musical Mondays Week 86 Purple Rain

[grudlian. 4725]

11 minutes ago, AlmostAGhost said:

I'll add that most of the women in his life are still seriously loyal to him, and he often had female bands and engineers (music engineers are especially mainly men, esp. back then). I think womanizing and misogyny are quite different things which people blur. 

What I think it boils down to, as it always did with him, was control. That's his ENTIRE ethos. He played and wrote everything. He rebelled against music labels. That's why his bands didn't last. This probably showed up in the movie as him negging Apollonia and stuff like that, it's dated and immature, but that's him showing control. I don't think in any way is this misogyny though. 

The homophobia mainly crept in when he became a Jehovah's Witness in the late '90s. It's a crazy turn, since before that he was always so into sexual openness and challenging roles and androgyny and whatnot (I do wish Purple Rain tapped into that more). See, the "Kiss" video.

I'm not confusing misogyny and womanizing. I think his demand for control and loyalty was often at the expense of women. While I'm sure it was also at the expense of men, I've heard more stories of him ditching women than men. Maybe he surrounded himself with more women than men and it's purely a numbers thing. His demands for control also have long ties to misogyny and general not giving a shit about people in general.

I stand by my original statement that he gets a pass from a lot of people because he's a great musician.

[Cameron H. 23786]

4 hours ago, AlmostAGhost said:

What I think it boils down to, as it always did with him, was control. That's his ENTIRE ethos. He played and wrote everything. He rebelled against music labels. That's why his bands didn't last. This probably showed up in the movie as him negging Apollonia and stuff like that, it's dated and immature, but that's him showing control. I don't think in any way is this misogyny though. 

I think this is exactly right. Moreover, the message of the movie seems to be about learning how to relinquish that control—or at least learn how to share it.

I’m not really sure if that ever reflected in his actual life (seems like “no”), but for the sake of this fictionalized take of his life, that’s the message. 

[Cameron H. 23786]

There’s a small moment I really enjoyed when The Kid shows up for the band practice immediately after hitting Apollonia. I thought it was cool that *his* band was playing Morris Day’s “Jungle Love” and not one of his songs. It shows just how catchy Morris Day’s silly music is, but it also heightens The Kid’s growing paranoia. Are these people going to leave me too? Do they like him more than me? Are they trying to undermine me? Are they using me too?

It’s never explicitly commented on, and I think it’s even better for that.  

[Cinco DeNio 5290]

I found the two places I was thinking of.  At different points the dad says to his wife "I would die for you" and (paraphrasing) "If you just believed in me".  Just after singing Purple Rain, Prince sings the song "I Would Die 4 U".  I always thought of it as a happy song but I'm not so sure in the context of the movie.

The one section about believing goes

I'm not a human
I am a dove
I'm your conscience
I am love
All I really need is to know that
You believe

 

[GrahamS. 803]

9 hours ago, gigi-tastic said:

The worst part is she never actively left him. She pawned her bracelet for his guitar and tells him she's thinking of making a career choice. She was always up front with him and wasn't saying she was going to be sleeping with Morris or even that she liked his music. Just that she thought it was a good job for her and she *might* take it. The Kid is SO jealous and insecure he hit her because she was talking about the possibility of taking a job. That's like your boyfriend going ape shit over you taking a job at Pizza Hut when he's a sworn Dominoes man. And it's not like he helped offer get her any work! Not even as part of his act or at the club.  In fact, of the two Morris was technically the only one to actually help her do anything.  Was he doing it because he was a creep? Yes. But does he hit women who he's seeing? No he technically has his best friend/ butler/ side kick throw them in dumpsters. Is this better? Not really but at least he kept his word? 

 

You guys a man literally threw a woman in a dumpster in this film. I cannot stress that enough

The dumpster scene is insane, but I kinda feel like it’s in there to try to make Prince look good by comparison. At one point, he warns Appolonia  “You don’t know what (Morris) is like!”

BUT, despite the misogynistic scene where he had his buddy dump the woman in the dumpster, Morris treats Appolonia with a comparative amount of respect. he is a creep, but a charming, funny creep who helps her. Prince humiliates her, beats her, kinda forces  her into a date-rapey type of situation (when he “saves” her from Morris on his bike) and seems to expect her to be grateful.

Which she is, which is the other weird thing about this movie, because her character fluctuates between telling him to fuck off (which I liked) and then swooning for him because he played The Beautiful Ones and Purple Rain. Their relationship doesn’t really develop, she just gets misty eyed while watching him perform.

[Cinco DeNio 5290]

4 hours ago, Cinco DeNio said:

I found the two places I was thinking of.  At different points the dad says to his wife "I would die for you" and (paraphrasing) "If you just believed in me".  Just after singing Purple Rain, Prince sings the song "I Would Die 4 U".  I always thought of it as a happy song but I'm not so sure in the context of the movie.

The one section about believing goes

 

 

What makes the song even more strange is the very opening lyric is “I’ll never beat you”. Other lyrics are similarly supportive and he & the band sing along even though there are serious tensions. (I guess that’s what Billy was saying about leaving personal stuff off the stage.)

[GrahamS. 803]

I found this article—from NPR—on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s a good one. I couldn’t copy the link but here’s the article, and there’s a 5 minute NPR story that goes with it. Worth checking out the actual website if you have the time. The NPR story is similar to—but also different than—this article.

Here’s the article.

MUSIC NEWS

'Purple Rain' Taught Me How To Be In A Band

July 26, 201410:00 AM ET

Heard on  Morning Edition

ERIC DEGGANS

FacebookTwitterTumblrPinterestInstagram

LISTEN· 5:285-Minute Listen

"I never wanted to be your weekend lover": Prince and his Purple Rain costar Appolonia Kotero.

Warner Bros./Getty Images

Prince's semi-autobiographical film, Purple Rain, hit theaters 30 years ago this weekend, presenting the world with a bold new model for the contemporary pop artist. NPR television critic Eric Deggans remembers the moment vividly. Hear his conversation with special correspondent Michele Norris above, and read his personal essay on the movie below.

Little compares to that magic moment when you sit down in a movie theater and watch a film that seems as if it's telling your story. That happened to me three decades ago. The film was Prince's pop-funk masterpiece, Purple Rain.

The movie and its soundtrack were milestones for music and media: the christening of Prince as a pop star and the explosion of his uniquely multicultural, genre-bending, sex-drenched form of funky sonic genius.

But for me, nothing before had so fully captured what it was like to perform in a band.

I was a young drummer starting a band with classmates at Indiana University, which would eventually get a short stint as Motown recording artists, playing throughout the Midwest and even in Japan. Watching Purple Rain, before all that would happen, felt a bit like seeing an autobiography, set to the baddest music around.

A band is essentially a marriage with three or four or eight or ten people. It requires you to spend outlandish amounts of time together, sweating to make the kind of art that might move a few hearts and allow you to earn a living besides.

For all its flaws — from the stilted, amateurish acting to clumsy direction and clunky lines — Purple Rain nailed that feeling. As Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman begged Prince to let the band play one of their songs, I relived a thousand other band fights fueled by insecurity, fatigue and immaturity.

Seeing them eventually work it out and blow the roof off of the First Avenue club felt like a special message: You can do this, too.

Purple Rain was special to the world for many other reasons. At a time before YouTube, social media or the World Wide Web, few artists had the power to create multimedia experiences on multiple platforms to speak directly to fans.

Prince, who cultivated a mystique by giving few interviews and revealing little about his life or work, let fans into a fictionalized version of his history on the big screen. And the film, juiced by career-making turns from slick lothario Morris Day and his band The Time, gave Prince-heads a super-sized vision of their idol, tooling around Minneapolis with a tricked-out motorcycle and fiercely ruffled shirts.

Not many years before, the music world was seriously segregated. MTV had to be shamed into playing Michael Jackson videos and the "disco sucks" movement too often felt like a thinly veiled way of saying, "black and brown and gay people suck."

THE RECORD 

My American Dream Sounds Like Prince

But Prince offered a musical world that put genres in a blender. "Let's Go Crazy" married a bouncy '50s-style rock rhythm to a percolating, '80s pop funk beat. "Purple Rain" was a soulful ballad fired up by incendiary guitar solos. "When Doves Cry" was a percussive marvel held together by a spastic drum machine groove and soaring, Prince-ian vocals.

Sitting in an Indiana theater packed with kids my age, I saw Purple Rain as a validation of the musical world I was already seeking out: a glorious, paisley-drenched descendant of Sly & the Family Stone by way of James Brownand Bill Haley's Comets.

Film purists will insist the movie itself is pure shlock. The female lead, Patricia "Appolonia" Kotero, emotes like she learned her lines that morning. Only the masterful Clarence Williams III — the Mod Squad veteran who gives an emotional performance as Prince's abusive father — seemed to have any real acting chops at all.

But when you're on the tip of a cultural revolution, little of that matters. And looking back over 30 years, it's obvious that Purple Rain became a generational manifesto, while providing the largest megaphone yet for one of the greatest geniuses in pop music.

 

[WatchOutForSnakes 807]

On 2/25/2020 at 9:58 AM, gigi-tastic said:

The worst part is she never actively left him. She pawned her bracelet for his guitar and tells him she's thinking of making a career choice. She was always up front with him and wasn't saying she was going to be sleeping with Morris or even that she liked his music. Just that she thought it was a good job for her and she *might* take it. The Kid is SO jealous and insecure he hit her because she was talking about the possibility of taking a job. That's like your boyfriend going ape shit over you taking a job at Pizza Hut when he's a sworn Dominoes man. And it's not like he helped offer get her any work! Not even as part of his act or at the club.  In fact, of the two Morris was technically the only one to actually help her do anything.  Was he doing it because he was a creep? Yes. But does he hit women who he's seeing? No he technically has his best friend/ butler/ side kick throw them in dumpsters. Is this better? Not really but at least he kept his word? 

 

You guys a man literally threw a woman in a dumpster in this film. I cannot stress that enough

Yes! Jerome! That blew my mind.

Also, I've been listening to too much Lizzo lately, so he constantly reminded me of: 

(I bet he's the kind of guy who would throw ladies in dumpsters)

[tomspanks 9039]

On 2/24/2020 at 1:22 PM, WatchOutForSnakes said:

Side note: last summer I went on a tour of Paisley Park and got to see a bunch of his memorabilia from the  movie, including his motorcycle, and a suitcase piano he used to DANCE on!  He was a tiny, tiny human!  

Re: his motorcycle, apparently the seat height was only 30 inches, so I can believe he was a tiny human lol.  Also, that motorcycle had only 27 horsepower (they make Vespas with ~24 hp now).  

Anyhoo, I thought the music was great, Prince's stage performances were electric, but I couldn't get into anything else.  Took me 3 days to get through the movie and even then I kept fast forwarding through the parts where people just stared at each other.

[Cinco DeNio 5290]

10 hours ago, GrahamS. said:

I found this article—from NPR—on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s a good one. I couldn’t copy the link but here’s the article, and there’s a 5 minute NPR story that goes with it. Worth checking out the actual website if you have the time. The NPR story is similar to—but also different than—this article.

Here’s the article.

MUSIC NEWS

'Purple Rain' Taught Me How To Be In A Band 

July 26, 201410:00 AM ET

Heard on  Morning Edition

ERIC DEGGANS

FacebookTwitterTumblrPinterestInstagram

LISTEN· 5:285-Minute Listen

"I never wanted to be your weekend lover": Prince and his Purple Rain costar Appolonia Kotero.

Warner Bros./Getty Images

Prince's semi-autobiographical film, Purple Rain, hit theaters 30 years ago this weekend, presenting the world with a bold new model for the contemporary pop artist. NPR television critic Eric Deggans remembers the moment vividly. Hear his conversation with special correspondent Michele Norris above, and read his personal essay on the movie below.

Little compares to that magic moment when you sit down in a movie theater and watch a film that seems as if it's telling your story. That happened to me three decades ago. The film was Prince's pop-funk masterpiece, Purple Rain.

The movie and its soundtrack were milestones for music and media: the christening of Prince as a pop star and the explosion of his uniquely multicultural, genre-bending, sex-drenched form of funky sonic genius.

But for me, nothing before had so fully captured what it was like to perform in a band.

I was a young drummer starting a band with classmates at Indiana University, which would eventually get a short stint as Motown recording artists, playing throughout the Midwest and even in Japan. Watching Purple Rain, before all that would happen, felt a bit like seeing an autobiography, set to the baddest music around.

A band is essentially a marriage with three or four or eight or ten people. It requires you to spend outlandish amounts of time together, sweating to make the kind of art that might move a few hearts and allow you to earn a living besides.

For all its flaws — from the stilted, amateurish acting to clumsy direction and clunky lines — Purple Rain nailed that feeling. As Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman begged Prince to let the band play one of their songs, I relived a thousand other band fights fueled by insecurity, fatigue and immaturity.

Seeing them eventually work it out and blow the roof off of the First Avenue club felt like a special message: You can do this, too.

Purple Rain was special to the world for many other reasons. At a time before YouTube, social media or the World Wide Web, few artists had the power to create multimedia experiences on multiple platforms to speak directly to fans.

Prince, who cultivated a mystique by giving few interviews and revealing little about his life or work, let fans into a fictionalized version of his history on the big screen. And the film, juiced by career-making turns from slick lothario Morris Day and his band The Time, gave Prince-heads a super-sized vision of their idol, tooling around Minneapolis with a tricked-out motorcycle and fiercely ruffled shirts.

Not many years before, the music world was seriously segregated. MTV had to be shamed into playing Michael Jackson videos and the "disco sucks" movement too often felt like a thinly veiled way of saying, "black and brown and gay people suck."

THE RECORD 

My American Dream Sounds Like Prince

But Prince offered a musical world that put genres in a blender. "Let's Go Crazy" married a bouncy '50s-style rock rhythm to a percolating, '80s pop funk beat. "Purple Rain" was a soulful ballad fired up by incendiary guitar solos. "When Doves Cry" was a percussive marvel held together by a spastic drum machine groove and soaring, Prince-ian vocals.

Sitting in an Indiana theater packed with kids my age, I saw Purple Rain as a validation of the musical world I was already seeking out: a glorious, paisley-drenched descendant of Sly & the Family Stone by way of James Brownand Bill Haley's Comets.

Film purists will insist the movie itself is pure shlock. The female lead, Patricia "Appolonia" Kotero, emotes like she learned her lines that morning. Only the masterful Clarence Williams III — the Mod Squad veteran who gives an emotional performance as Prince's abusive father — seemed to have any real acting chops at all.

But when you're on the tip of a cultural revolution, little of that matters. And looking back over 30 years, it's obvious that Purple Rain became a generational manifesto, while providing the largest megaphone yet for one of the greatest geniuses in pop music.

 

Here's the link.

[GrahamS. 803]

Thanks!

[Cinco DeNio 5290]

I finished Graffiti Bridge.  It's enjoyable but light.  Prince is still a jerk but figures it out at the end.  A friend of mine said he's seen it several times so it's not a bad movie.  Prince wrote and directed it.  Almost makes me wish he had done that with Purple Rain.  It's very spiritually-focused, with Heaven & Hell as big themes.

 

[Cinco DeNio 5290]

Here's my favorite song from Graffiti Bridge.

 

[Cinco DeNio 5290]

Taking nominations for this weekend's side movie.  Maybe Gregory Peck in The Purple Plain?

[Cam Bert 8145]

So I've been having a lot of trouble find the MM and HDTGM movies of late so I'm late to the party with this.

I mean I have nothing new to add  and my review is the same as the rest, great music horrible everything else and I wanted more Morris Day and Jerome. However the movie made me feel gross and uncomfortable with just how aggressive and unapologetic it was towards women. I mean I guess it was the 80s and all but I think even 80 titty comedies have more respect and better treatment of women than this movie. What confuses me is Prince was this sex symbol and all this and yet he comes off as a horrible asshole. I guess we're suppose to forgive him because of his family situation, but really? We never really see him apologize or anything. I dunno. I get why the movie is so beloved it just bummed me out.

[Quasar Sniffer 4174]

Oh man, I wish I knew this existed when we did this movie. A couple of my favorite metal bands, Baroness and Mutoid Man (frequent collaborators and tour buds) teamed up to pay tribute to Prince shortly after he died. This was the result and I LOVE IT. (the intro features some VERY NSFW musings from Ice-T).