I downloaded the full album of covers of ‘Purple Rain’ Spin assembled for the article I mentioned thid morning and it’s a lot of fun. (.ksa 2 woh on u fi drow cigam eht u llet lliw eye)
Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings take on ‘Take Me With U’ is smokin’ hot. It sounds like a lost James Brown classic if James Brown sang like Aretha Franklin. Really. The Riverboat Gamblers had a nice take on ‘Let’s Go Crazy. It reminded me of my old pal Robert Rial mixed with Nick Cave or something.
‘The Beautiful One’s’ sounds like it should have been on the ‘Electro Goth Tribute to Prince’ album Cleopatra put out a few years ago. Which, incidentally, has some really essential cuts on it. Rebecca Romijn’s cover of ‘Darling Nikki’ is so good that even Wulf liked it. No kidding. Everyone who hears it loves it. The cover of ‘Darling Nikki’ here is by Chairlift who also has a female vocalist, but I like Rebecca Romijn’s better.
But I do like the inclusion of the backmasking bit at the end, which I believe is essential to the song and Romijn skipped it. One of the reasons Purple Rain should be considered an important album is because it is one of the the last great records ever produced with the convention of having two sides; contemporary artists have been freed of the mechanical reality of flipping the record that ensured an interruption of the work. The best albums embraced this enforced intermission; think of Sgt Pepper or Dark Side, or countless others, unless, of course, you’re of an age where you only listen to these songs on ’shuffle’. Here the grey beard shakes his fist at Time Itself and tells the kids they don’t know what they’re missing with their newfangled technology that he himself adores and embraces wholeheartedly. The bit of prettily eerie backmasking closing side one, and the spare simple beat of ‘When Doves Cry’ opening side two are effective bits of compositional inspiration that are meaningless in the mp3 age.
The punk mariachi version of ‘I Would Die 4 U’ is spectacular with spicy horns and guitar rhythm crunchiness and a beautiful take on the refrain. This and the Sharon Jones cuts are definitely my favorites, but the rest of the record works fine for what I paid for it. I am struck by the fact that I saw this magazine on the newsstand while in the midst of the media frenzy surrounding Michael Jackson’s transfiguration into a secular god; clearly Jackson is destined, like Elvis and Marilyn or Mickey Mouse and Betty Boop, to gaze in maudlin happiness at mortals from merchandise and sing from mall speakers for decades, perhaps even a century to come.
It is generally uncouth to speak ill of the dead but in this case I must make an exception as I cannot reconcile the glossing over of the monstrous corruption that festered in Neverland. Michael Jackson possessed great glamor, but I use the word in a literal sense; it is as if he magically charmed people with illusions that allowed him to do as he pleased without consequence. He literally announced to the world that he thought it was just dandy to share his bed with prepubescent boys and still managed to portray himself as a victim when authorities investigated.
Twenty five years ago I was frequently told by adults that I shouldn’t listen to that nasty Prince music and asked why I didn’t like that nice Michael Jackson? Probably because they were both black the two artists were frequently and unfairly compared to each other, with Jackson being the paragon of wholesomeness embraced by the mainstream and Prince as the dangerous outsider. In my eyes, Jackson resembled Nosferatu in clown makeup, an artist turned predator who exploited innocence. Purple Rain was a quasi-autobiography that actually painted Prince in flawed terms; he slaps his girlfriend, pisses off his friends, and has a messed up family. He didn’t try to pretend to be something he wasn’t and that’s why the music and film still resonate a quarter of a century later.
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