My Name Is Prince

Dirty Mind (1980)

by Prince

format: vinyl
Warner Brothers (BSK 3478)

Mastered by Bernie Grundman (more about Bernie later on...basically this means great sound!)

I defy you to put this on your turntable and not move some part of your body. This is Prince's second album and is a non-stop dance party from beginning to end. I know, the synthesizer sounds do make it sound very 80's at times but don't let that stop you from enjoying this great album. Unlike the Prince DVD I reviewed in my Private Screenings blog, this is NOT music for the whole family (especially side two). This is an adults only party. Realizing that anyone of any age could read this blog I will try to keep this as family friendly as possible but consider this a PG-13 column this time.

The album starts off with the title cut and Prince proves that what he is saying is true later on in the album. There is no doubt this album is primarily about S-E-X. There is no getting around this so if you are uncomfortable with explicit talk about that topic, then pretty much avoid Prince altogether until around 2000. I can remember cranking "Head" and "Sister" with my friend while cruising Old Orchard Beach with my friend Wayne Proctor and getting looks of shock from the pedestrians.  Wayne seemed to be the only other person in Windham, Maine who liked Prince other than me. In those days (high school days, that is) everyone in my school loved Southern Rock and OZZZZZZY. Anything else was "gay." Even Bob Dylan...no kidding! (Keep in mind, I didn't discover Prince until around 1984.) I couldn't believe that Prince dared to sing about the things he did. It was really shocking back then. He seemed like a complete freak. This was music I couldn't play at home or my dad would freak out. Compared to Prince, all those Metal bands like Judas Priest and AC/DC seemed like posers. Prince was the real thing and not just a product of the music business.

Prince could  certainly write great pop tunes as well. "When You Were Mine" kills Cyndi Lauper's version several years later. With Prince, the lyrics seem a lot more disturbing. The song is about a guy who spends his time following his ex-girlfriend (and her new guy!) around. He admits that, "I love you more than I did when you were mine." He sings it like he's proud of that.

You want great dance tunes? At your next party cue up "Uptown," "Party Up" and "Dirty Mind." I guarantee the dance floor will be packed. Maybe after midnight just play all of Side 2 and see what happens. I'm not going to describe the lyrics on Side 2. I am a family guy. But the music itself is awesome and there are no breaks between the songs so it's one big party. Proceed directly to Side 2 of 1984 and keep the party going. (More on 1984 in two columns from now.)

Even better, put on some candles, send the kids to the babysitters and enjoy an evening enjoying your spouse...if you know what I mean...this is the perfect soundtrack for this type of thing. Have a private two person party....Ahem...Just make sure you get that a babysitter to the kids. I remember me and Shelli (my beautiful, sexy, Prince-loving wife) were having one of those private Prince parties verrry late at night when suddenly we heard my 7-year old daughter asking, "What are you guys up to?!!" Buzz kill! Take my advice: get the babysitter.

Finally if you are reading this and thinking, "That guy used to be my worship leader! Shame!" well, let me just say that God invented this thing we call sex. I refer you to the country singer Don Williams' immortal line, "Ain't it good that making love is fun."

...and there is also the matter of the Song of Songs as well...

I should also mention the sound quality on this is great. It may be little bass shy at times but just crank it up loud and it sounds great. The sound is very basic and direct. Sounds like Prince in your...um...bedroom. This album doesn't have that processed 80's sound. It's perfect for dance music and the louder you play it, the warmer it gets. I can't vouch for the CD version but I would guess it's not as good. Get the vinyl if you can find it.

By the way tomorrow night I'll be going to a jam session/party/audition for a band that does a lot rhythm and blues and funk. (We're talking Earth, Wind and Fire, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye...) I really hope we will be doing some Prince as well.

NEXT: Prince's Controversy (on CD...talk about buzz kill!)

Primus Doesn't Suck!

Brown Album (1997)
by Primus 
Format: Vinyl
Interscope INT2-90126

We last left Primus in 1993, with the release of Pork Soda, the year they were the headlining act of Lollapalooza. The following year they played the Woodstock '94 Music Festival, which was decidedly not the peace and love fest that the original Woodstock professes to be. The band increased in popularity in the 90's and even appeared on David Letterman and Conan O'Brien. The band wrote the theme song to South Park in 1996 and had a few changes in their lineup, with Claypool being the leader.

Which brings us to the second (and last) Primus album we will review in this column. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by this album. After Pork Soda, I wasn't exactly in any rush to listen to this album again. I must not have listened to it much after I bought it and I didn't remember much about it.

However, this is a great album pretty much from beginning to end. The album is a two-LP set and the title may be a pun on the Beatles' "White Album" and maybe even Prince's and Metallica's "Black Albums," so with that in mind, we are expecting the band will have something to say over the four sides of this LP...and they do!

The album is filled with a lot of varied styles but they are all identifiably Primus, with Les Claypool's bass playing front and center throughout. The album starts off with a "public service" announcement of sorts, "The Return of Sathington Willoughby," which will remind you of Pink Floyd's "In the Flesh" from The Wall. "Fisticuffs" is another tale about a violent person, with typical film noir-esque Primus lyrics. "Golden Boy" features a monster funk riff that will make you want to dance around your listening room. (Pull the shades, please,) This is followed by a nice sonic change of pace, "Over the Falls," which uses acoustic guitar effectively.

The sound throughout this album is raw and honest. It sounds like Primus is playing live in your listening room, which is fine by me. There is a fairly well defined sound stage with some decent depth. Sometimes the speakers seem to distort as they are driven to the brink of what they can handle. This is especially true of the drums. I believe the distorted bass is part of Claypool's sound, but at times it made me wonder if I had blown a fuse in Classe amp. It sounds like the band was playing very loud and overloaded the equipment. Keep in mind, this was in an era when rock was just starting to get away from that horrible processed sound that defines most of the rock recordings from the 80's and 90's. Kudos to Primus for "keeping it real" in the sound department. This keeps both of the albums I've listened to from sounding dated.

The album is great throughout, with interesting lyrics and a completely original style. These guys can play, even though they definately lean to the punk/alternative side of things. You can hear some Nirvana in their generally downbeat lyrics and in Claypool's squirellyvoice. Side 2 features one great tune after another from "Shake Hands With Beef," a funky stomper, to the hilarious "Puddin' Tane," a completely insane Primus-fied country hoedown on mescaline.

Like Pork Soda, as the album goes on, the music gets more experimental, but this time it works, giving the album variety and flow. Primus seems to make albums, not just collections of songs. The changing  textures and sonics keep things from getting monotonous and the album never wears out it's welcome. My favorite song on side four is the funky "Kalamazoo," which reminds me a little of Morphine (the band). You can hear Primus expanding their sound and growing as a band. The penultimate song on the album is "The Chastising of Renegade," another great song about another one of those crazy, dysfunctional, murderous hicks Claypool loves to write about. The album closes as it began with the spoken-word beatnic poem "Arnie," which leaves you on a chilling note. (The song is about a person dumps kerosine on themselves and lights themselves on fire to make a political statement.)

A recurring theme throughout Brown Album, is the disfunction our society seems to create. The album is populated with characters who have been abused by their families and oppressed by authority. This underlying theme is never preachy because the music is so engaging but if you read the lyrics printed on the gatefold jacket, this comes through loud and clear. Like Pork Soda, Primus creates a portrait of a violent, ignorant and deeply flawed United States. But unlike Pork Soda, the lyrics never resort to stupidity in quest of a cheap laugh. We laugh and groove with Primus throughout the album but are left with a bitter taste when we are done.

This album makes me think I should check out some more albums by Primus. From the responses I've gotten on the last blog, the consensus seems to be that Primus' best albums were their first ones and it was all downhill from there, but Brown Album suggests that Primus continued to mature and grow musically as they went on. I know we can't know that from just two albums out of many the band has released but I can at least suggest that if you liked Primus in the early days you might want to check this album out as well. If you do, let me know what you think...

Up next:
We begin our multi-part look at the albums of Prince!

Primus Almost Makes a Classic

I think this photo sums up the problem with Primus.

Pork Soda by Primus (1993)

Format: CD (was also released on vinyl)
Interscope 7 92257-2

Primus is a band based out of San Francisco that have completely unique sound.  They were formed in 1984 by bassist Les Claypool. They went through many personnel changes and in 1989 they released Suck On This, a live album funded by Claypool's dad. They released Frizzle Fry in 1990 and had two "hit" singles, "John the Fisherman" and "Too Many Puppies" and went on tour with Jane's Addiction that same year, further increasing their popularity. They were signed to Interscope records and released Sailing the Seas of Cheese in 1991, which has the popular MTV hits "Jerry Was a Race Car Driver" and "Tommy the Cat." I formed an alternative funk/metal trio called Pinocchio with bassist Jason Grosso (now in Rotors to Rust) and Matt Davison and they were really into these guys as well as Jane's, Fishbone and Red Hot Chili Peppers. During this period Primus toured with U2, Rush (their self-proclaimed idols), Anthrax, Public Enemy, and Fishbone.

Pork Soda:
This album was released during the peak of the band's popularity and debuted at Number 7 on the Billboard Top 10. I have mixed feelings about the album. I hadn't listened to this CD in quite awhile and wasn't really looking forward to listening to it again but I was quite surprised. The first several songs on the CD are great. I began to wonder why I didn't have such positive memories and even thought about going on a Primus spree "for the sake of research" but about half way through I remembered why I hadn't played the album in awhile after all. Read on.

The album starts with the very brief "Pork Chop's Little Ditty," which also closes the album and sets the stage for an album that swings in a lot of stylistic directions. The first full-length song "My Name Is Mud" and is a disturbing song about a murderer who needs to get his victim "in the mud before he starts to smell." We learn that he just got done killing someone over "a common spat" and has hit him in the head with a baseball bat. Not your typical rock lyric. The bass guitar is tuned so low that you can sparsely discern the notes while the guitar provides atmospheric support. The song is like a nightmare in living color as Claypool channels the killer and sonically gives us a view into his mental state. The next track, "Welcome to this World" is just as chilling in its own way. Claypool wines, "Welcome to this world of fools, of pink champaign and swimming pools / Well, all you have to lose is your virginity. / Perhaps we'll have some fun tonight so stick around and take a bite of life. / We don't need feebleness in this proximity." It is as if he is some demonic influence on a young teenager, informing him about the  meaninglessness of life and introducing him to life's hedonistic pleasures. There were a lot of tunes in this period of "hair bands" that celebrated this lifestyle approach but Primus' plea for pleasure is tinged with despair. The crazy chromatic opening lick here suggests the insanity of this approach to life. It's hard to tell if this is supposed to be funny or chilling. The next song, "Bob"  is even more disturbing and perhaps suggests the eventual ending to the journey begun in the previous tune. The lyrics: "I had a friend that took a belt, took a belt and hung himself / Hung himself in the doorway to the apartment where he lived / His woman and his little bro came home from the grocery store. / Only to find him dangling in the apartment where he lived," Again the music seems to be blackly humorous and sickly insane. With these three opening songs we are given dark view of life in sunny California in the early 1990's, a land of glamor, fantasy and dark desires.

I took a trip to Los Angeles, California around this period and was shocked to see the debauchery of the place. Pornography was everywhere you looked and any strange fetish you might have could be easily satisfied for a price. It seemed like paradise after the smog cleared out every morning but there were  not a lot of people walking the streets like New York. Everyone stayed inside their cars. I visited Hollywood expecting glamor and just found sex joints and ugliness. I remember finding Marylyn Monroe's star and seeing it covered with vomit, which seemed to sum everything up for me. The media there seemed to be totally caught up in the glamor of movie and rock stars and there were plenty of "Playboy Mommies" there, to quote Tori Amos. I could understand the alienation and pointlessness that the younger generation was feeling. Nothing seemed real and it was only really great when the sun went down, when you couldn't see what it really looked like.

The beginning of Pork Soda, with these three songs, promises a great album, totally original in style an thoughtful in content. But then, things slowly go down hill from there. It is as if Primus was striving for greatness but then just gave up or ran out of ideas. "DMV" is another nightmare portrait...about waiting in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Not that I can't relate, but this seems a strange turn to take at this point in the album. The song ends with lyrical stupidity that keeps rearing it's ugly head throughout the rest of the CD: "I waited in line near an hour and fifteen. / And if I had my druthers, I'd screw that chimpanzee." Huh, huh, funny...

The album seems to be heading in a new direction with "The Ol' Diamonondback Sturgeon," literally a fishing story, but with some charming mythological quality to it. But then we're back to stupidity again with "Nature Boy" (a man dances naked it his bedroom and "strokes and strokes" his cat...). By the time "Mr. Krinkle" came on, everything started to sound the same and the lyrics are either archaic or just plain too clever for their own good. All flash, no substance. The album hits the bottom with the awful "The Air Is Getting Slippery," which sounds like a reject from the Doctor Dimento Show. Really, by the time you get to "Pork Soda" ( a stupid tribute to stupid people who drink beer all day), it seems like the band is just jamming and trying to fill out the album. I have to admit I enjoyed the long funk workout "Hamburger Train," which I would love to dance to sometime. Shelli? You up for it?

The CD really should have been an EP consisting of the following songs in this order;

"Pork Chop's Little Ditty" (pt 1)
"My Name Is Mud"
"Welcome to this World"
"Bob"

****

"Wounded Knee" (a delightful percussion feature with a gamelan sound)
"Hamburger Train
"Pork Chop's Little Ditty" (pt2)

This would make a classic album on vinyl, with side one being a portrait of Hell in California and side two being a great demonstration of the band's considerable chops and music inventiveness. As Pork Soda stands, it is a victim of the expected long running time for CD's and it overstays it's welcome.
Of course, you can always pick it up and program it yourself.

By the way, the sound quality on this CD is fantastic, with a deep soundstage and an immediate non-processed sound. Much better than a lot of recordings sounded in those dark early digital days. It sound like Primus is in your listening room. Michael Fremer says the vinyl is even better. I bet he's right...

UP NEXT:
Primus' "Brown Album"
Will Primus redeem itself in 1997?

Feel free to leave comments below and disagree with me. I'd love to hear from more of you!

The Pride and the Passion

The Pride and the Passion - soundtrack (1957)

Format: Vinyl: Captitol Records High Fidelity Recording (mono) W873

The Film:

We begin our survey of the Pride record vault with very rare soundtrack recording. The Pride and the Passion was released to theaters in 1957 and is one of those Hollywood epics that were very popular at the time. The film was not the massive success that movies like Ben Hur would be, nor is it anywhere near as great as that film. The film takes place during the Napoleonic wars, specifically when Napoleon was taking over Spain. The film had a triple threat of star power to lure audiences into theaters. Cary Grant plays an English general who needs to get a giant cannon 1,000 miles to a Spanish peninsula. This is not one his better performances and one of the things that stops the film from being great is the acting throughout. Even worse is Frank Sinatra as Miguel, a Spanish hotheaded lunkhead. You'll get a kick out of hearing Sinatra try to mimic a Spanish accent. You won't be impressed but you need to see this performance to believe it. Much better is Sophia Lauren as the sexy and feisty Juana. You can see why many men went gaga over her in the 50's. With her low-cut blouse and hypnotic eyes, she oozes sex, especially in the skinny dipping scene. The film drags a little here and there but over all it is one of those old fashioned adventure stories for the whole family. (No nudity in the aforementioned skinny dipping scene...I think...) Once things get moving and they start lugging that huge cannon, things stay interesting throughout. I'd recommend the film as long as you are not expecting too much out of it. You can get it on DVD in non-anamorphic letterbox format for $8 on amazon. As long as you zoom the picture on a wide screen set it will look just fine. The Vista Vision is slightly cropped but you won't notice it and the Technicolor comes through fairly well. The sound is passable, so that's why you might want to get the soundtrack. You can get it on CD but I bet the vinyl is better although very expensive on the used market.

George Antheil (1900-1959):

George Antheil wrote the music for this film and was a notable composer in his own right, as were many film composers in this period. He was born in 1900 in Trenton, New Jersey (near where my mom grew up). He studied composition with Ernest Bloch in 1919 and wrote his first symphony during that period. He had financial problems here in America so in 1922 he moved to Europe to persue a career as a concert pianist. He was very successful and helped to spread his own music as well. He met Igor Stravinsky in the 1920's and this greatly affected his writing style. He was particularly  interested in Stravinsky's use of polyrhythms. Antheil's compositions reflected his interest in machines and time space theories, especially his Airplane Sonata for piano. He moved to Paris in 1923 and became one of the crowd of great French intellectuals of that period, hanging with such people as James Joyce, Ezra Pound (who championed his music), Eric Satie, Picasso and many others. His music has been compared to the cubist painters, being made up of rhythmically activated blocks and repeating ostinato patterns. A good example of his style would be the chamber piece from 1926 Ballet mecanique, which was originally meant to accompany a film. I think the piece is great and predicts the music of future minimalists like Phillip Glass and John Adams, but the piece was a flop when it was premiered in New York in 1927, although it had been a hit in Paris. This reception in America hurt his career.

Because of this unfortunate event, he changed his style to a "fundamentally American" style in the 1930's and 1940's , probably influenced by the success of Aaron Copland. Pieces like his Fourth Symphony borrow from American folk tunes, something he also does in the soundtrack to The Pride and the Passion. I find his work from the 1920's to be much more interesting and I would highly recommend you check it out. He moved back to America for good in 1933 and began to write for musical theater. He moved to Hollywood in 1936 and made a ton of money writing film scores for 33 movies. His film score writing is the Romantic style of the film score composers of that period.

The soundtrack:

The soundtrack to The Pride and the Passion was written near the end of Antheil's life. Although it does sound like a typical Hollywood movie score, you feel you are in very capable hands and there are some very nice passages throughout the score. The album starts off with the Main Theme, which sounds a lot like Ravel's "Bolero." This music recurs throughout the film every time the huge cannon makes an appearance. The second track is a delightful Flamenco. The whole album might be of interest to classical guitar players because of Antheil's effective use of the instrument. This track is lifted straight from the movie, which will give you a chance to see the types of guitars flamenco players use and the way they use  all five fingers of the right hand to strum the chords. That is, if you can take your eyes off Sophia Lauren...

Like many scores of this period, each character  has his or her own leitmotif. The British Captain's motif (Track 3) uses an English chorale tune to suggest his nationality compared to everyone else in the movie, who is either Spanish or French. Grant's theme is a bit more classical than the others. There are still a few Neapolitan chords to keep our minds in Spain, but this adds a nice variety to the score. "Windmill Camp at Night" is absolutely beautiful and uses the classical guitars to play an ostinato pattern against the spanish-inflected melody. This shows Antheil's command of creative orchestration, even within this rather conservative style. The rest of side 1 is less interesting but is still pleasing in that nostalgic "old Hollywood" way. Antheil continues to quote snippets of folk tunes both Spanish and French throughout. In the film, this helps you keep straight which army is which.

Side 2 is not as good as Side 1. It's mostly cliche Spanish-influenced music for the most part. The second track is wholesale ripoff of Ravel's Bolero and uses many of the same types of modal scales that Ravel used. The track ends with a Hollywood happy ending, which just seems...wrong! I was looking forward to "Miguel's Theme" (you know, Sinatra as a Spaniard). What a disappointment! This theme is just a pleasant, innocent little melody. I guess it show's that Sinatra's character is just a harmless, ignorant Latino, reflecting the racism in Hollywood at the time towards this group. No, Sinatra never breaks into song in the movie...thankfully! Don't get me wrong. I love Sinatra (as you will soon find out when we get the "S" section of my collection), but I'm really glad he didn't sing a flamenco for us!
"The Procession" adds a choir and we get a little bi-tonality at the end, which is nice and looks back a little to Antheil's writing in the 1920's. His writing for choir reflects a French influence in the harmonies, which are not just traditional triadic harmonies. Make no mistake, though. This music will remind you of the music in those Biblical epics popular at the time. Is Antheil's music here suggesting a Christ-like self-sacrifice on the parts of the main characters as they prepare to give their lives for their cause? The record ends with the end titles, which brings back the choir and the Bolero rhythm again to no great effect.

So, do I recommend this album? Like the movie, don't expect greatness and you'll be pleasantly...um, pleased. The best track is "Windmill Camp at Night" and Side 1 stays pretty interesting throughout. I think you will enjoy the soundtrack more if you see the movie. That way, the soundtrack will be sort of a "souvenir" you can "take home" with you after the show, which is all you could take home back in 1957 unless you had a small theater in you cellar and a lot of money. I like the cover, too and the CD is just plain small and pathetic. Anti Vista Vision!

The mono sound is fine and a lot better than the DVD. Again, don't expect a sonic spectacular and you'll be fine. The sound is natural and doesn't sound processed, which is all you can expect. If you have turntable (you do. don't you?!!) and you see it for cheap at a yard sale definitely pick it up. If it's stereo...it's not, so avoid that. The film is mono.

UP NEXT:
And now, for something completely different: A rather brief survey of the music of Primus and an answer to the question, "Does Primus suck?"  

A Message from the Central Scrutinizer...

 This is my second summer project for 2013. I have considered doing this many times but decided against it for several reasons. One time I was going to do it but decided I had better focus on school. Another time I considered it but I was a worship leader at a church and didn't figure it would be wise to open my musical tastes up to scrutiny both spiritual and ascetic.

I have a huge collection of recordings. Anyone who has thumbed through my LPs (and inferior CDs) will tell you that eclectic doesn't begin to describe the situation. I love all types of music. Period. I believe there is great music to be found in every genre and I would be bored if I were forced to stick with one style. As a professional musician myself I play classical guitar, jazz, rock, worship music, singer-songwriter stuff and anything else I like. I play in a big band, a band called Pride and Joy, who do everything from jazz to rock and roll to funk to pop. I play with flautists, violin players and other guitarists in various classical chamber groups. I've played with the Chelsea Symphony in New York City the Tactus New Music Ensemble at Manhattan School of Music. I've lead a contemporary worship team with a full choir at Windham Assembly of God and I've played in pit bands for musical theater groups. I've played on a recording for an opera and I've released two cassettes (what's that?) of my own music. I've played lead guitar for Clay Aikin on two tours and I played classical guitar for George W. Bush and a Russian ambassador. Variety is the spice for me and I have learned that I need to play in a variety of styles to stay fresh.

Some of my favorite artists liked variety and change as well: Miles Davis, Igor Stravinsky, Bob Dylan, Frank Zappa, Neil Young, Eliot Fisk, Bill Frissel, Duke Ellington and Joni Mitchell just to name a few.

SO WHAT IS THIS BLOG?

This blog will be a sister companion to my other blog, Private Screenings with Pride. I will be going through my collection of recordings of records and CDs alphabetically but with a twist: I will be starting with the artists directly after my last name P-R-I-D-E. (I'm not going to review my own music.)
My collection is arranged alphabetically by the last name of the artist and the first name of  a musical organization (or a band). Classical music is generally categorized by the composer's last name, unless the recording features a variety of composers. Then, I categorize it according to last name of the artist. Soundtracks are alphabetized by title, not composer. Nothing against composers of soundtracks, I just can't always remember who wrote what. Plus, some soundtracks feature many different composers, like Saturday Night Fever. You will find this blog to feature a huge variety of music and it will hopefully introduce you to some music you never knew about. I will write about everything in my collection, including the embarrassing stuff. It is definitely a post-modern collection. For example, Bach is right next to Erykah Badu, Joan Baez Patricia Barber and not too far away from the B-52's and Bananarama (oh my...). Some artists will possibly take months to complete and others (like Bananarama) will be quick one-shots. My collection is not some sort of "best of" list. I've got some real stinkers in there. It's also not comprehensive. I'm sure some of you will say say, "You mean you don't own ANY ______ ?!!!" Sorry, I have to be in the mood, you know? This is a personal collection, which I think will make it fun.

In general I always prefer vinyl to CD and I feel no emotional connection with downloads at all. (Plus, the sound usually sucks.)  Everything I will write about is physical media. I will sometimes also comment on sound quality, which has always been important to me, but the most important thing is the music itself.

So sit back and enjoy me as I take a seat in the listener's chair, fire up the Maggies (speakers), drop the needle and take a musical journey...

FIRST UP: The soundtrack to The Pride and the Passion (1957) on mono vinyl.
(I told you this was going to be eclectic...)