C/D: Prince - Parade

YSI?

Chaki, I will make an arrangement.

(but now we're off subject)

It's a classic. And "Mountains" is a nice song, too (wasn't that a W&L song to begin with?)

(Still classic, obv.)

I love the way the opening three songs fly by in a flash of brilliance. "Mountains" incredible. and yeah, always think of this record this time of year...

My favorite album.

NEEDS MORE POLISH

I haven't read Matos's, but Purple Reign is very good, actually.

however e'eybody otm on how Prince is mental about snow in April, when is there not at least a dusting of snow in the upper Midwest in April - April is like the month when you go "Jesus fuckin' Christ if these cold gusts don't stop frosting my nuts at the bus stop I am going to fucking kill myself" though admittedly that'd make for a much less singable chorus

And Parade, of course = classic

Life can be so nice

& thanks again for that insane 12" kickdown last year, don

"New Position" rocks the balls off the walls, too. Really this entire album is flawless from top to bottom, including the flaws.

(just kidding; always wanted to do that)

Who asked him?

Not a huge fan of Parade as an album, but I know at least one person who includes Under the Cherry Moon in his top 10 films of '86. (Yeah, I link him all the time here.) (And take note of the films around it! Prince as a-g filmmaker shockah?)

ALL THE CRITICS LOVE YOU IN NY

I'm glad the film has gotten some love after all these years, too.

ok, so i've read it. pretty good although I agree with the ciritic on some of his judgements.
so many songs I'd never heard of to look for on P2P !(as I don't think I can find them any other way...)
Has the original version of crystal ball (which became SOTT) emerged somewhere ?
And is graffiti bridge as bad as it seems ?

what is this hahn book of which you are speaking?

is it like the per nilsen books?

i'm RIGHT in the mood for another prince phase.

Ah yes. I remember that song absolutely slaying me following some youthful heartbreak.

Great record. A lot of funky arty weirdness. Need to give it a spin soon.

"mountains" is such an amazing, mighty song ... it's a crime against humanity that it wasn't a bigger hit.

not his best album but prob his 2nd best. the bootleg 'charade' flows a bit better though i think, although i think some of the tracks on there might have come from the sessions after the parade album, not sure right now. but do u lie is one of the funniest/most lovely songs hes ever made.

"Parade" is probably one of his oddest records in that he seemed to want to mash up a bunch of genres (funk, French chanson, Legrand-ish soundtrack romanticism) and managed to create a completely oddball hybrid that pretty much works. I know he kind of disowned it in interviews after the fact but I see it as the peak of his experimental pop phase . LOVE this record and it always sounds too short. I usually play it twice in a row when I do.

I've never really thought Parade as one Prince's great albums, maybe exactly because of it's all-over-the-place nature. There's too many songs that are mere vignettes, attempts to dabble with different genres without fleshing the ideas into proper tunes. The songs which are fully fleshed are great, though: Girls & Boys, Kiss, Anotherloverholenyohead, Sometimes it Snows in April, and especially Mountains (I agree with Eisbaer that this song is amazing, easily one of his ten best singles), but the rest of the album is pretty much skippable.

how can you skip past vignettes? They're too short!

what is Matos' book called?

Sign o' the Times; it's in the 33 1/3 series.

Timothy White -- not my favorite critic, but when he was right he was right -- wrote that Parade had the best segues since Abbey Road.

not to hijack the thread (and there might be another thread out there for this) but which ILXers wrote 33 1/3 books

(Matos did Sign o the times and Douglas Wolk did the James Brown - Live at the Apollo one)

I, how U say?
I wonder U

oh man listening to this is so awesome but it is making me melancholy

holy shit Dan I heard this in the car yesterday,

the "Mountains" extended 12" remix is da bomb.

I think this album is sequenced almost perfectly - by the time I get to 'April' I always think the record as being a good bit longer than it is (in the best sense). I think 'Life Could Be So Nice' is one of his more underrated trakcs of this era - he could pull off songs as catchy as anything at the time yet be absolutely crammed with detail.

Oh someone already mentioned that one - great song anyway. IMO the only thing missing from this album is ''Alexa De Paris'' but I wouldn't know where it would fit.

I actually had to stop playing the album before "Sometimes It Snows In April" came on to keep from crying at work.

Love the use of space in the first 90 seconds of "...Snows..." – that suspense before the piano, guitar, and voice find the melody.

Only '80s Prince album on eMusic at the moment...

The arrangements are awesome (Christopher Tracy's Parade, I Wonder U), but some of the mixing on this album sounds off, like the vocals are waaay too upfront and the rest of the music is buried (Girls and Boys sounds like a karaoke track), and that gated reverb thing he does on the snare hits on this album gets old very quickly.

Overall I think Around the World in a Day (I was inspired to relisten to both by reading the thread on that album) is stronger.

Yeah, I've always had problem with how the album is mixed, the backing tracks sound so dry and thin. That particular sound fits "Kiss", but feels out of place on many other tunes. At first I thought it was only due to the CD mastering, but I bought a vinyl copy and it sounds pretty much the same,

Mm this album gets crazy hype but compared to Around The World... and indeed the 2 previous albums it's really.. cold sounding. Those first 3 short tracks especially are like demos he never got around to finishing, GOOD demos but demos all the same.

foolishness.

otm about the offputting thinness

did this get polled? cause so help me i can't find it if we did it.

Well, lotsa lotsa votes, Kiss Wins, "I wonder you" gets nowt, you know...

Is Prince good?

One of my favorite albums. Did someone mention that the 12" mixes (really extended jams) are universally unbelievable from this great record?

Oh man:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6rcff_anotherloverholenyohead-live-1986_music

Alexa de Paris really should have been on this album

oh yes, the 12 inch of ALHIYH is especially good

was listening to neu! 75 recently and wondering if someone had told prince about neu. his guitar on something like alexa de paris reminds me of see land and sometimes it snows reminds me of leb wohl. or maybe he had been listening to someone else who had been listening to neu.

the first three songs of this album are also the best opening of any prince album btw.

Too right about those first three songs. My personal favorite Prince album. Simon Reynolds recently listed it, though, as one of those records marking the end of an artist's great phase, i.e. jumping the shark:

http://hardlybaked.blogspot.com/2014/11/disappointing-albums.html

I like Reynolds' writing but lots of received opinions in that piece.

"I Wanna Be Your Lover"
"Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?"
"Sexy Dancer"

"Dirty Mind"
"When You Were Mine"
"Do It All Night"

"Controversy"
"Sexuality"
"Do Me Baby"

"1999"
"Little Red Corvette"
"Delirious"

"Let's Go Crazy"
"Take Me With U"
"The Beautiful Ones"

"Christopher Tracy's Parade"
"New Position"
"I Wonder U"

Mmm, nope.

you should've included the ATWIAD opening trio for spice

I actually just forgot that existed in that string.

"Goodbye Cool Career more like."

simon reynolds posted this on his blogspot in 2014

simon reynolds.

never been the biggest fan but i'm kind of amazed to see him posting some "rock rot and rule" shit that makes him sound like a dude whose tastes match exactly with the rolling stone album guide on his fucking blogspot

can't believe he missed bob dylan's self-portrait man what a stinker but bob sure bounced back fast with new morning and by blood on the tracks he was one of the greats again, a real classic

Did actually buy the first or was it second single off this - ‘Drowning’ . Seem to recall the concept was they were going psychedelic. But it just sounds really enervated, all the delicious twitchy tension in I Just Can't Stop It era Beat went slack.

Some speak highly of Special Beat Service - never listened to it.

cool story, author of a dude with a fucking chapter on 2-tone

lol author of a book, i mean

not sure if reynolds has that right about parade (or 'alleged' creative prime). hes right in that parade isnt actually a great 'album', cos it basically loses steam after side one and doesnt really hang together in the 2nd half. but pretty much every song is brilliant, even if they dont sound of a piece. prince has never really been an albums artist in that sense anyway - his albums go all over the place. i dont think consistency or coherence has ever been his strong suit (with a few exceptions obv).

The short series of metronomic rimshots when the opening track transitions into New Position absolutely slays me every time.

hes right in that parade isnt actually a great 'album', cos it basically loses steam after side one and doesnt really hang together in the 2nd half

*looks at side two tracklisting*

uh

if anything i might prefer ride to the end on the second side to the fragmented first half (which is among the reasons this is my favorite prince record, all of these songs that briefly uncoil and then snap back into the fabric of the record)

Side 2 starts with "Mountains" and ends with "Sometimes It Snows in April", like how much fucking steam do you need here

Wasn't gonna say anything about that since I just assumed I wasn't riding on the same wavelength.

to go from "Anotherholenyohead" to "Sometimes It Snows in April" suggests a confidence that borders on the pathological.

erm i never said the songs werent brilliant, they all are (even do u lie), but they dont really sound 'connected' in the way that all of dirty mind does, or even most of sott does (its linked by a similar production aesthetic). on parade, like most prince albums, hes changing not only genre, but aesthetic, production style, etc etc.

now overcast skies never turned me on
but something about the clouds and her mixed

wrong album?

Yeah, Hindu Love Gods!

alfred otm. i get this and around the world in a day mixed up. 'times you have made an ass out of yourself irl with music' X 1000

We all know via Susan Rogers that the opening three tracks were recorded beginning with P sitting down at the kit and drumming straight through them including the segues, right?

The Prince piano album is available on Spotify

We all know via Susan Rogers that the opening three tracks were recorded beginning with P sitting down at the kit and drumming straight through them including the segues, right?

quite right, it was four, duh: https://movingtheriver.com/2016/03/31/princes-parade-30-years-old-today/