how 'avant-garde' was prince, really?

i think prince and bowie have hundreds more similarities than most people think. but maybe bowie gets all the avant garde props because he did theatre acting and stuff. and well yknow, he's white.

but i know what avant garde means in the dictionary, but in music-crit terms, maybe it means something else.

if anything, prince
had more pressure NOT to buck
black music strictures

but both sure freaked out
the "establishment" and led
their respective times

but if you mean, he went crap once he tried to self consciously pander, then yeah. prince is best as a hybrid artist. i often wonder how he managed to become so shit.

but on the other hand, theres an absolute ton of artists that became shite when they tried to do the opposite: i.e. go 'white' or 'pop' music and crossover.

Oh it's the 1970s all over again. I thought all 6 billion people on this planet had realised this is bullshit?

"A group, as of writers or artists, regarded as pre-eminent in the invention and application of new techniques in a given field; the admirers of such a group or critics acting as its spokesmen."

and if you don't think
that prince has done "abstract" stuff,
well then we must chat

any non-student
(and many students, methinks):
"Apollinaire Who?"

What makes coFlow "avant-garde"?

i meant to link to the thread from the beginning.

Your theoretical students and non-students.

I understand your frustration with the term, but is your objection that the term has been overused to the extent that its meaning is no longer clear? If so, then don't we just need to clear it up? To me, again, "avant-garde" implies early 20th century modern art movements. Bowie has probably been specifically influenced by artists who were a part of the avant-garde. The extent to which his music seems to embody these aesthetics is not something I can comment on offhand. (Your comment about just being a synthesizer and not an innovator is taken, but I don't know if I agree. If someone uses, say, a Surrealist or Dadaist technique for writing poetry now, I don't know if I have problems with calling it "avant-garde.")

If someone uses, say, a Surrealist or Dadaist technique for writing poetry now, I don't know if I have problems with calling it "avant-garde."

are you kidding? What is "leading" or "forward" or "new" or "innovative" or "experimental" about using techniques that were formalized nearly a century ago? Saying something isn't new isn't the same as saying it's bad, quite the contrary I wish people were more aware of this early 20th Century stuff, but claiming it as new is rubbish.

Ah yes, you mean when he made the only music of his career that I actually listen to.

Prince was the fuck out of avante garde for someone who was making hit records...way more than Bowie imo, but then again I've probably heard a lot more Prince than Bowie.

Avant-garde. 'Nuff said.

Don't know the extent to which he is obsessed with money, but I know that he's extremely interested in art and would think that he's probably quite knowledgable about it.

jimi hendrix: another artist that sadly lost it when he tried to self-consciously tried to reach whatever image of 'the black audience' he had in his mind.

-- thesplooge (sploogeyo...)

holy frijoles, fucking stupidest thing posted on ILM ever. Christ.

just to clarify, i never said hendrix wasn't playing music that drew hugely from R&B and blues (ie black music). i never said he was shit after electric ladyland like many people think. i happen to think the BOG album is great, if not perfect. machine gun, power of soul and message to love are three fantastic songs, albeit live, rather than their studio versions. and if anyones heard the BOG versions of the JHE songs, theyre really quite different and great in their own way. i personally, find it almost insulting that a) people either think hendrix should have made all his music in the BOG mould or that taht was his best simply because it ascribed to supposed 'black music tenets'; or b) others that believe hendrix lost it when he tried to supposedly ascribe to so-called 'black music' principles. c) people forget how thirstily he drank from blues and R&B in all his music.

what i meant is not the usual 70s critic shite that 'hendrix was an honorary white guy' or that (my personal favourite) 'hendrix wasnt black, he wasnt white, he was from another planet'; but that in his final years, the recorded output hendrix made that was seemed to be aiming for a funkier, more R&B sound (which hendrix reportedly was trying to do as he was tired of the whole 'rock star' rep he had acquired) was nowhere near what he made earlier.

but if it simply means "cutting edge," prince fits, if only for the way he revolutionized the instrumentation of r&b.

if it implies a distance from popular art, a wilfull difficultly, etc., then neither bowie nor prince quality.

hahahahaha

arguably, he fucked up the instrumentation of R&B. kind of along the same lines, in the allmusicguide review of dirty mind, the review states that that LP begat the sound for funk and R&B of the 80s which is quite wrong. nothing soul/funk wise in the 80s sounded like DM, not even prince's next few records. and DM definitely isnt a soul album. if a white artist made it, it would be called new wave or maybe even post-punk.

"2. "jimi hendrix: another artist that sadly lost it when he tried to self-consciously tried to reach whatever image of 'the black audience' he had in his mind."
trust your guts. if you don't like the SOUND of Jimi's funk moves on BofG (I do) then it doesn't work for you. fine. but speculating on his internal motivation and sense of racial identity seems I don't know presumptious or something."

well im hardly the first to speculate. everyone from greg tate (who from reading his midnight lightning book, has some issues of his own regarding hendrix) to the most famous hendrix bio - scuse me while i kiss the sky - has speculated that hendrix was trying to reach out to his black audience. as i wrote above though, im not talking about the BOG album, most of which i think was generally great. im referring to his recorded work like cry of love/first rays. according to the aleem brothers who were friends of hendrix, he was always wondering what the black community thought of him.

"maybe it was less self-conscious, a return to roots of sorts since he cut his chops with the Isley Brothers. maybe he was really stoned, man, who knows?"

either way, whether you put this down to his performance (generally deflated, unexcited or just plain bored/fatigued), his guitar work (he seemed to be trying to play in a 'tighter' R&B style which im not sure was entirely suited to him, although songs like loverman, look over yonder arent like that), his songwriting (which might have been less noticeable if the performances were better) or whatever, the songs - at least those which have been released - recorded in his final stages were more often than not, far from the standards of his earlier work.

"you're right that 99% of the 70s rock criticism about Hendrix is condescending bullshit. And no, I don't think you're guilty of THAT."

alot of the rock criticism/writing about hendrix is still a bit odd. just look at the recent 'special' in-depth feature on him in uncut. it was pretty damn dreadful.

but yeah, cry of love was basically unfinished. but im pretty sure, or at least id like to think, that if you took the demos of the earlier albums, they would still be better than COL.

if jimi was trying to abandon song-form and go in the way of miles' 70s work a la say, the into of electric ladyland ('and the gods made love'), i dont think the cry of love stuff *was* the culmination of it - it was still essentially song-based. but you're right, we'll never know what he might have done. supposedly theres bootlegs of the 'freeform' jamming he did before he died floating about, but ive never heard them.

As far as Prince is concerned - yeah, he was avant-garde in the early 1980s, because he was the first guy (or one of the first) to suck the funk out of funk, to allow his techno-fetishism and multi-instrumentalist egotism to run totally wild. Yeah, Stevie Wonder before him, obviously, but I feel like Stevie wanted to speak to the people, where Prince mostly wanted to please himself. There's a gentleness in Stevie Wonder's music that's not there in Prince's stuff. Prince is much more hostile. Sexually hostile, spiritually angry, fire-spitting guitar solos all over the place, screechy distorted vocals and masks...Stevie was always Stevie. Prince was trying to hide all the time - behind gadgetry, behind false names, etc., etc. I think forming a band was a real capitulation for him, something he did with great reluctance. If he could have found a way to make the shows one-man-band, he would have done it. Just stood up there playing guitar solos to a DAT.

Dude, Phil. Don't even.

prince is more like a rock artist whereby he hits the ground running, and just keeps going. as for the narcissism, prince has always been a complete ego-maniac. i disagree on the band thing. in the studio maybe, but live, hes always valued the band ethic.

really not sure what to say to your hendrix comments. i will say buddy miles has been lambasted a bit too much, he had his strengths (his drumming on certain ELL songs was well suited), but the interplay between mitch and jimi was a lot of what made the earlier JHE material so amazing.

What I mean by this is that he was less technically skilled than Mitch Mitchell. Think Marky Ramone vs. Neal Peart: two good drummers, two different styles, context is everything. The Band Of Gypsys album and the 2-disc follow-up are amazing, and I think Miles's performance on "Machine Gun" is an equal 1/3 contribution to Hendrix's single greatest piece of music, but he didn't play the complex stuff Mitchell did. And I think it was the combination of Mitchell's complexity and Cox's more fluid, simple (but not simplistic) basslines (plus the added percussionists) that made the final Hendrix stuff as great as it was.

dude, have you heard "adore"?

Prince - I actually like his programming a lot more than the live band on record, it's just his sound and he's good enough at it to make it funky.

that song is really like a blindingly awesome formalist exercise (not completely devoid of "soul", i.e. emotional conviction, but not overbrimming either)--if anything it reminds me of lewis taylor as much as anything. or should i say lewis taylor reminds me of "adore." note that i love both prince and lewis taylor.

>(not completely devoid of "soul", i.e. emotional conviction, but not overbrimming either)

implies a lack of full devotion - to the stake with you! also, get over to the starship trooper thread coz i had a question for you.

Yes, as examples Erotic City//New Position//Tamborine are some of the coldest, most direly funfunky songs ever. Just for starters. That Prince guy just never had it. What were people thinking?!

s/b unfunky

sticking with what youre saying, sometimes i think bowie's station to station is closer to what prince was doing than his purported idol sly stone in many ways (although the debt prince owes to sly, james brown, the parliafunkadelicment thing is quite obvious).

two prince songs that sound inspired by todd to me are reflection on the new musicology album, and circle of amour, on the truth album.

http://www.prince.org/msg/7/96478

When the term was coined by Saint-Simon his concept was of the artist in the vanguard of a socio-political movement. A bit like Shelley's concept of poets as the "unacknowledged legislators of mankind". This was around, what, 1830 and certainly predated modernism by a couple of generations. During the modernist period the term became more associated with art-for-art's sake, a preoccupation with formal innovation, an almost 180 degree twist from the original sense. Subsequently the Surrealists, post-moderns and others thought of themselves as reacting against the avant garde, even describing themselves "post avant garde". This would imply the meaning that Tim seems to prefer but is in itself arguably the result of an ahistorical misunderstanding of the meaning of the term.

"...when Prince began recording for Warner Bros, he abjured the brass sections that dominated groups like Earth, Wind & Fire and Parliament-Funkadelic, opting instead for stacked synthesizer patterns and a spare, cold feel that markedly contrasted with lush, overarranged disco and the wild, thick underbrush of the era's giant funk ensembles; author Rickey Vincent dubbed it 'naked funk.' Getting away from traditional R&B instrumentation is an underappreciated aspect of Prince's crossover success; Prince is also said to have actively disliked the sound of horns early in his career."

-- M. Matos, Sign 'O' the Times

But it does mean SOMETHING, no? And if we're talking about the lasting aesthetic influence of early twentieth century radical modernism, that seems to me to actually cover a fairly wide berth.

This is the sound of one man misunderstanding the influence of Prince on Jam & Lewis (IMO).

and if youre gonna bring up the time, prince wrote, produced, and hell, virtually performed 85% of all their output. jam and lewis had nothing to do with the time's sound except to play keyboards and synths. they left the time because prince wasnt giving them any free reign. well that and the fact that prince was pissed they were producing without him knowing.

Considering Prince produced The Time and Jam & Lewis did many of their productions at Paisley Park, I can't help but think that their style was influenced by the purple one.

Hendrix's last two years of his life are pretty chaotic. Electric Ladyland came out Oct. 68 and he died Sept. 70. I don't think he was legally allowed to put a record out for a year or so because of the lawsuit with Capitol, which was settled by delivering the 'Band of Gypsies' album. Other than the BOG record, everything else was assembled after he died, so keep that in mind when evaluating those later albums. There is still some amazing music in those compilations.

which synth would that sound be made on??

matos and amateur!st prince-theory mildmeld shocker. (now i want to get your book dude!)

I was at the bowling alley today for a company event, and they were blaring top 40 songs on the speakers and showing the videos on the screens above the lanes. In between the hits of the day (actually, more like the hits of five years ago) by the likes of Rihanna and Beyonce and Nelly Furtado, comes the video for "Kiss". And it's not like I've never heard the song or seen the video, but in between the super-tight skeletal arrangement, the freakydeaky falsetto throughout the entire length of the song, the shrieking finale, the barefaced androgyny that makes even Lady Gaga's showboating a trifle in comparison, and of course the unbelievable poppy catchiness, it's like, I appreciate the rest of you guys, and I know you're not trying to do what he's doing, but you can all go take five, alright? This guy is leagues ahead of you despite coming from a quarter century ago, there's a reference to goddamn Dynasty in the lyrics FFS. Actually it may very well be that Prince is not avant-garde at all, maybe the avant-garde-ness lies in his popularity itself, and in the audience that made him popular. Because when I was watching this video, surrounded by coworkers who were raised on the aforementioned hits of the day and are possibly too young to even know this song, the only thing I could think was "how the hell did this guy become big?"

am i to understand that this thread featured two, count 'em two, mentions of

Apollinaire

and yet not one person, not a single one, suggested prince start an all-girl avant garde group called apollinaire 6?

*shakes head*

He became so big at least partly because he had a great ear for things like melody, rhythm, economy etc

he doesn't really have this anymore, the melody aspect particularly

i like ascai's post.

yeah, not sure about Prince being avant-garde -- but I think he was the "best" or most talented or whatever. On those grounds, I see him as bigger than Michael Jackson. Prince was like a baseball player who does everything, everyone loves it, but somehow still seems mysterious and out there. So basically, he's Barry Bonds minus the steroids.

prime era Prince was always pop through and through - this was not a dude who was into Stockhausen and Ornette Coleman or whatever. if he was "avant-garde" it was specifically within the context of his doing unusual things in pop music, which was more by accident and the quirks of his personality than by some deliberate aesthetic design.

what was avant-garde about prince? i love his music, but not sure what cutting-edge quality i'm overlooking.

i find it a bit funny that the definition of "avant-garde" is broad enough to include david bowie but not prince.

― strongo hulkington (dubplatestyle), Sunday, May 30, 2004 12:00 PM (9 years ago)

Still this

this was definitely avant-garde

http://www.wat.tv/video/prince-the-ballad-of-dorothy-3mc01_3mbzf_.html

I don't think David Bowie is "avant garde" either. If he's called that, it's probably more to do with the way modern art co-mingled with pop music starting in the 60s, and Bowie's image being tied up in new fashion, tweaking gender roles (or at least imagery). It would be hard to make any kind of case that his *music* is avant-garde, and my bet is that someone in the future going back and taking stock of Bowie in the context of avant-garde music would find him out of place. However, the sub-text I'm picking up in this part of the thread = some kind of racial thing. And again, I say that looking at his music from a distance makes it easy to see past his skin color and realize his music isn't "avant-garde".

I would call them both ingenious, experimental and sometimes counter-intuitive but avant-garde suggests to me something a bit more than just making unusual pop songs.

i suppose that the early practitioners of noise-rock and hip-hop and rap and rock itself would be avant garde. term's thrown around too easily, tho. you could maybe say "edgy," and get the same vibe without the confusing notion that the artist is making history.

What's not avant-garde about "Batdance"?

Parade is pretty "arty" and it's great, although the more straightforward tracks like "Anotherlover" are cool too

1999 has some weird spots, "Something in the Water" being the best one

yeah, "edgy" or "arty" seem okay.

What's not avant-garde about "Batdance"?

― I got the glares, the mutterings, the snarls (President Keyes), Friday, March 7, 2014

all hail the new king in town.

Wish Prince wasn't so anti-Youtube, or I would post the first cut from the first Prince album, which instantly marks him as a brilliant future-facing genius.

It's the intro to "For You", and it's multitracked falsetto vocals a la Beach Boys "Smile" overture to interstellar love.

http://theweek.com/article/index/257574/speedreads-watch-prince-perform-a-new-song-divulge-his-favorite-breakfast-food-on-arsenio

Everyone's favorite pop enigma and avant-garde selfie-taker Prince quite literally took over Arsenio last night, performing three songs, fielding questions from the audience, and sitting down for a surprisingly serious interview.

Maybe 'avant-garde' just means something that has yet to be commodified.

Prince was like a baseball player who does everything, everyone loves it, but somehow still seems mysterious and out there. So basically, he's Barry Bonds minus the steroids.

― Dominique, Friday, March 7, 2014 11:46 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what the fuck kind of analogy is this hahahaha

haha a baseball one! actually, he doesn't have anywhere near the chip on his shoulder that Bonds does.

oh I dunno, he had a pretty massive chip for at least a couple decades

what the fuck kind of analogy is this hahahaha

― he always came across as a great guy in Kerrang! in the 90s (some dude), Friday, March 7, 2014 9:54 AM Bookmark

^^^I see what you did there

http://eil.com/Gallery/3397b.jpg

i don't know what you think i did there. i really was just remarking on how weird it was that someone's first thought about a musician who sings/produces/plays several instruments is "like a baseball player who does everything" (what does that even mean? did Bonds ever play more than one position on the field?). xp

Everyone needs to chill out and listen to "For You".

well...he actually did start out in center before moving to left. But what I mean was that he did everything you can reasonably ask of a baseball player: played great defense, had speed, was a ridiculously productive offensive player. He wasn't a pitcher like Babe Ruth had been, but he did everything else at a level no other player could do, or for as long as Bonds did it. Just like Prince! They were like guys who were in leagues of their own, and you almost had to approach them with different rules than anyone else (such as, say, intentionally walking Bonds all the time, or expecting Prince to continually turn out records that changed the pop landscape). And in both cases, a lot of people were monumentally let down when these people turned out not to do (or be) what people expected.

there is that one prince bootleg where he does a funk version "4 U philip guston" by morty F and the F-tones

i'm going down to anthony braxton street

prince has seen the future, and it works.

i cd never take the place of ur man ray

Under The (Don) Cherry Moon

ok but was Barry Bonds mysterious?

zbigniew karkowski,
baby you're much too fast,
zbigniew karkowski,
<@> need a luv, that's gonna last

not sure that works as an eye, what do you think?

To me he was, especially not living in SF (or Pittsburg). You never quite knew what his mood was going to be at a press conference, or what was going on his head. Rather, he was one of the few baseball players that you actually *cared about* what might be going on in his head. Sometimes he seemed on the verge of tears, trying to talk to journalists who seemed to delight in setting him off. It wasn't really the exact same character of Prince, but there was something unique about Barry Bonds' personality, let alone his actual baseball performance.

bonds more kanye, prince is maybe eddie murray or ted williams? also player that does everything = five tool player. think better analogy might be magic = mj, bird = springsteen, jordan = prince, len bias = rick james, ray chambers = john mellencamp, hakeem = madonna, danny manning = terence trent d'arby, bernard king = cyndi lauper

lol tom chambers rather

shane victorino is avant-garde. good situationist hitter.

Dock Ellis = Syd Barrett

nah Prince is Curly Neal

thank you based balls

I Would Die 4 Ubu

a bass guitar in ubuweb longing for the funk

i imagine if you were a bass guitar, you would get kinda bummed out by endless henri chopin / stan brakhage streaming

haha

I'm a big fan of Bowie but he synthesized a lot of things that were in gay and theater culture. He was into the discotheque styles as opposed to the concert rock / stoner rock crap that was around back then. Which was cool with some kids.

As for Prince, isn't it part of the culture of funk to be "avant" or "freaky" - yesterday's version of dope? When I was young, I liked new wave and funk because it was cool, it was dope. "Avant-garde" was used by dorks in the music press for groups like Talking Heads. To me, it's like you're telling regular peeps, " don't listen to this shit."

Then again, I'm kind of reactionary. I'm not sure "avant" anything works well in America, because of the whole democratic project. Unless you're a pop artist or ashcan painter.

I feel like Bernard King is Sade