Remembering Prince, may he Rest in Power...

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CglmRp4UUAApP0Q.jpg:large)

It's not like he was 80. I think it makes perfect sense to wonder what happened when someone dies at 57 with no known long-term illness or health issues.

About 30 years ago when I was in middle school, I had my first real crush on a girl who was part of the clique that I hung out with. It became clear to me that I was firmly planted in the "friend zone", but for some reason I couldn't move on. Then came the first middle school dance of the year. I made her promise me that she would slow dance with me if the DJ played a particular song. I believe it was the closest I ever got to winning her over, and it felt like heaven. The song was Purple Rain.

That was the first thing I though of when I heard of Prince's passing this morning.

R.I.P. you crazy, talented, freaky little man.

(Sorry for the double/cross post)

http://www.thecurrent.org/ The Current is running a tribute to Prince (local Minnesota station, I think)

Tanglebones wrote:

http://www.thecurrent.org/ The Current is running a tribute to Prince (local Minnesota station, I think)

Dumb fun fact: The current DJ, Mary Lucia, is Paul Westerberg's sister.

Prince was not only a great pop musician and performer but was an unsung genius guitar player.
Also That 2007 Super Bowl performance will likely never be matched.

Personal story. I always told my wife that one of my biggest life regrets was not seeing James Brown perform, when given the chance, before he passed away. A few years ago I started to mention Prince as someone I'd regret similarly if I missed seeing him.

This February my wife purchased tickets (like $400 a piece) to see Prince at the Sydney Opera House for my birthday. It was the greatest concert I've seen.

I feel really really lucky that she did that and I didn't miss seeing him. Speaking purely selfishly. He also didn't seem like someone capable of dying so young. He seemed really healthy and vital. This one really sucks and I feel like there has to be more than natural causes.

imbiginjapan wrote:

Prince was not only a great pop musician and performer but was an unsung genius guitar player.
Also That 2007 Super Bowl performance will likely never be matched.

He also wrote a lot of music for other people. Worked as a producer or helped other people tweak their albums. I don't think people fully comprehend just how much we lost.

imbiginjapan wrote:

Prince was not only a great pop musician and performer but was an unsung genius guitar player.
Also That 2007 Super Bowl performance will likely never be matched.

Yeah. Prince's solo starts at about 3:30, and pretty much owns the rest of the song

imbiginjapan wrote:

Prince was not only a great pop musician and performer but was an unsung genius guitar player....

Tanglebones wrote:

Yeah. Prince's solo starts at about 3:30, and pretty much owns the rest of the song

This. So much this.

Prince was renowned as a multi-instrumentalist. He was considered a guitar virtuoso and a master of drums, percussion, bass, keyboards, and synthesizer....

In lieu of an apparent double post, I present:

The Purple Rain Album
1. "Let's Go Crazy"
2. "Take Me with U"
3. "The Beautiful Ones"
4. "Computer Blue"
5. "Darling Nikki"
6. "When Doves Cry"
7. "I Would Die 4 U"
8. "Baby I'm a Star"
9. "Purple Rain"

I mean...look at it. Or better yet, listen to it!

Nimcosi wrote:

In lieu of an apparent double post, I present:

The Purple Rain Album
1. "Let's Go Crazy"
2. "Take Me with U"
3. "The Beautiful Ones"
4. "Computer Blue"
5. "Darling Nikki"
6. "When Doves Cry"
7. "I Would Die 4 U"
8. "Baby I'm a Star"
9. "Purple Rain"

I mean...look at it. Or better yet, listen to it!

"Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life."

I wanted to share this, Prince's TV debut on American Bandstand with everyone. I would think that many of you haven't seen it. The article sums up the performance perfectly. I was 13 when this aired and I knew I saw something special. I was a huge American Bandstand fan, and this is the only performance I remember with absolute clarity. My love affair with Prince Rogers Nelson was born. A few years later when Purple Rain came out, 1984 me was intent on marrying the man.

Aside from being just damn sexy, he was a musical genius and in his own way, a freedom fighter. My heart is broken right now. RIP sweet Prince. 57 is way too soon.

Jonman wrote:
Stele wrote:

2016 sucks.

OK, everyone's all like "what's happening this year?"

You're aging. That's what happening.

The heroes you grew up with are a generation older that you. That generation is now at the age of peak mortality, when more of them are going to die than at any other time.

FWIW that doesn't seem to be the whole story: Celebrity deaths are on the rise, and will only continue to rise from now on

BBC Radio 4 had a look back over their celebrity obituaries in recent years, and found a startling discovery. In the first three months of 2012, they ran just five celebrity death notices. That number rose steadily in the following years, but the amount of notices that ran in January, February and March in 2016 was still higher than those in 2014 and 2015 combined - with 24 celebrity obituaries counted in total.

[...]

[D]ue to ever increasing number of media upon which a celebrity can be enjoyed, has increased exponentially from generation to generation, meaning the pure awareness of celebrities is an ever increasing field. And as the number of celebrities continues to grow, so too will the number of celebrity deaths.

Tanglebones wrote:

http://www.thecurrent.org/ The Current is running a tribute to Prince (local Minnesota station, I think)

The Current is our local awesome Twin Cities indie station; it's just phenomenally great. And by "tribute", they suspended all regular programming, and are playing every Prince song off every album, in order. I pulled onto the on-ramp to the interstate to so see a Bob Mould show tonight just as they started Purple Rain, and will admit with no embarrassment whatsoever that I started crying the moment "Let's Go Crazy" started. It's like a giant part of the metro area died tonight.

Google's title page got to me. It's all purple and being rained on. I know that's not much, but still.

DSGamer wrote:
imbiginjapan wrote:

Prince was not only a great pop musician and performer but was an unsung genius guitar player.
Also That 2007 Super Bowl performance will likely never be matched.

He also wrote a lot of music for other people. Worked as a producer or helped other people tweak their albums. I don't think people fully comprehend just how much we lost.

OMG! Yes! Yes! Yes! Such an insane shredder on guitar. And the songs he wrote for others... So good.

It's a huge loss to the music loving world, and he left us WAY too soon.

There's a report the flight that he was given a shot to counteract affects of opiates with the incident in the airplane. Geez, if that's true, some people have to start realizing f*cking around with drugs really is stupid and deadly.

They closed off the street in front of First Avenue (the big music club in Minneapolis, also the club in Purple Rain, it's the local music mecca), so thousands of people can get together and just hang out. Then, at 11, they're opening the place up to have an all-night, no cover dance party until 7:00 a.m., just for the hell of it.

One of my favorite things I've seen regarding Prince today.

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MaxShrek wrote:

There's a report the flight that he was given a shot to counteract affects of opiates with the incident in the airplane. Geez, if that's true, some people have to start realizing f*cking around with drugs really is stupid and deadly.

You can legitimately overdose from pain medication (assuming that's why he was given Naloxone) without being a drug addict. Hell, we have an epidemic of pain medication here in the US. For all we know he was sick with something else and in a lot of pain. If this is what killed him it's even more tragic and senseless, though.

I was never all that into Prince, but I think you'd almost have to be willfully blind not to realize what an immense talent the man had. As far as I can tell, he was good at everything. He might be the most hyper-competent musician that ever lived.

I never saw him in concert, but people keep saying that he was better live than recorded, that his shows had energy and life to them that didn't come through on albums. That's rare as hell, and while I can't personally confirm that opinion, I completely believe it.

With the fracturing of modern media (because everything is so trivial to share and copy, gatekeepers have a lot less power), there may never be another musician who has the sheer cultural impact he did, the massive, universal influence. That old saw, "we shall not see his like again"? In this case, that might be true.

imbiginjapan wrote:

Prince was not only a great pop musician and performer but was an unsung genius guitar player.
Also That 2007 Super Bowl performance will likely never be matched.

As I mentioned in the current NFL catch-all thread, my top three Super Bowl performers of all time are Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, and Prince, and now they're all gone.

Radio station on the way home from work today played Prince, MJ, and Whitney back to back.

My co-workers play music off a Sonos box (that's a thing here) and they're playing a Prince streaming station. It's all Prince, Michael Jackson and the Time. One of my co-workers said, "This is all dead people. How sad."

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

They closed off the street in front of First Avenue (the big music club in Minneapolis, also the club in Purple Rain, it's the local music mecca), so thousands of people can get together and just hang out. Then, at 11, they're opening the place up to have an all-night, no cover dance party until 7:00 a.m., just for the hell of it.

It was a chill crowd until the cops started to clear us out.

MaxShrek wrote:

There's a report the flight that he was given a shot to counteract affects of opiates with the incident in the airplane. Geez, if that's true, some people have to start realizing f*cking around with drugs really is stupid and deadly.

Prince was famously a vegan who didn't even drink. Even if he wasn't it'd still be his business and it'd still be a tragedy if that's what ended his life.

I've never been a superfan, but I've always been somewhat aware of Prince's importance. Often it's only when someone passes that you realise how their ubiquity sometimes means you don't realise their influence. Like you don't really appreciate air until it's gone.

While we have lost one of the great creatives, more than anything else I think the importance of Prince is, like Bowie, a lesson that people can still be weird and achieve great things. And that's getting rarer in this focus grouped 21st century.

Everyone is going nuts about playing Purple Rain right now, which I know was a breakout for him but was probably one of my least favorite songs of his that went big.

Let's Go Crazy, Little Red Corvette, Rasberry Beret, friggin' Batdance were all better songs.

This is going to be like when radio stations inexplicably plaid Phil Collins Invisible Touch every other song, isn't it?