We Go Way Back: Prince & Me

The year was 1984.  I was an eleven year old kid from Staten Island, New York visiting my aunt and uncle in Texas.  It was here that I saw MTV for the first time and got my first visual on some doe-eyed, snake-hipped, shrieking, growling, guitar-playing androgyne called Prince.  At the time, New York City didn't have cable TV and the opportunities to see music videos were few and far between.  A local UHF channel (called U-68) showed mostly British and US alternative, punk and Euro-pop videos (in pre-recorded loops) but videos by Top 40, R&B and soul artists were mostly relegated to WABC-TV's Saturday night show called "Hot Tracks".  I didn't watch that show often and when I did so, I was rarely interested in it for more than a few minutes because WNYW was always simultaneously airing one of their "Movie Greats" from the 1940s or 50s.  As music-obsessed as I was even then, vintage cinema always trumped music video. 

  Comparative to what was available for viewing in the New York area, my first MTV experience was not only liberating but also staggering for the amount (and scope) of videos that I was able to watch and enjoy.  Suffice it to say, on every spare moment of that particular trip, I was glued to its alluring rock-n-roll glow when my family and I were not taking day trips over the border to Ciudad Juarez or to White Sands and Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico.  The Purple Rain movie and LP (and its requisite tie-in videos) had just been released and it seemed that something Prince-related was on MTV every twenty minutes or so.  As was the case with my early childhood Bowie Hypnosis, this enigmatic character in the eyeliner, lace ruffled shirts and Cuban heels grabbed my attention because he seemed to blur (or maybe bridge) the lines between genders, musical stylings, decades of fashion and even race.  It was like the funk in my Dad's Stevie Wonder LPs were being filtered through the pop hooks in the ABBA albums I'd been given by my parents a few years prior... and was that really one of Stevie Nicks' shawls he was wearing?

  Soon after that eye and ear-opening visit to Texas, I followed a pattern that I was also starting to follow with other artists I liked:  I began to take my money to the record store to pick up all available Prince singles, 12-inch remixes (which contained an untouchable string of non-LP B-sides) and older albums that were available.  I scoured newspapers and magazines (Star Hits, Creem and Rockline to name a few) for snippets of what became increasingly rare (and inscrutible) interviews, concert reviews, gossip, or what I considered to be the ULTIMATE scoop: news on a new album.

  The purple-tinted zeitgeist of his 1984 annus mirabilis was only the beginning... It seemed that with each album he released in the ensuing nine years, I was being courted by a whole new gallery of funk, fantasy, fetish and all things forbidden... except fun.

Ever since that moment, my fascination (and sometimes puzzled frustration) with Prince has continued.  Despite his 1990s identity crisis (which was more of a control freak "jiggling the handle" on a contractual loophole than anything) and some of his more bizzarely-edited single, double and triple-album releases, I never find him boring.  At the root of everything I hear him do, there is always this specific heartbeat... a uniquely-timed and unequaled pulse that drives his music in a way that no other artist can match.

His influence on his younger contemporaries has been deep and far-reaching.  As far as I can tell, the closest relative on his musical family tree in terms of musicianship, insight, breadth (and tongue-in-cheek humor) is the multi-talented and prolific Mr. Beck Hansen.  Not only is Beck working from many chapters of Prince's playbook, he also seems to have nimbly sidestepped many of his mistakes.  That said, I'm holding out hope for a musical pairing between the two.  Just imagine the potential supernova of sound that could be created by Beck and Prince if the former had the time, initiative and access to His Royal Highness and if the latter had the willingness to collaborate and relinquish just a little bit of the infamous control that seems to have tamed his tiger in recent years.

I'm ready, guys... Think about it.  'Til then, I'm here.  Fingers crossed... Ears open. 

We Go Way Back: The Cure & Me

My long-standing fascination with The Cure began with their videos.  While I was not (at first) a huge fan of their slightly askew brand of off-kilter pop magic, I enjoyed the homegrown feel of their 3 minute mini-movies.  I'm pretty sure I experienced the "wardrobe over the cliff" comedy of errors that was "Close To Me" and the day-glow-and-dots fantasia of "In Between Days" sometime around 1986.  A year later, I entered High School and the clumsy choreography of the "Why Can't I Be You?" video was all over MTV's late night programming.  I purchased that 7 inch single at Sam Goody as well as their "Standing On A Beach" singles collection (on CASSETTE, no less) but had trouble finding much else in the way of The Cure on CD (or even vinyl).

Enter Cathi Krupsky... At the time, Cathi was a new-ish friend.  She was one of the "cool art room kids".  Her boyfriend was in a band, she wore a lot of black, she puffed Pall Malls (unfiltered) on the smoking lounge at the end of the art wing and was (at the time) making silk screens of fire-breathing dragons.  I brought out my new Cure tape to play in class (a pretty brave move in a room with about 50 percent metal heads) and Cathi said, "Ooh... Let me make you some tapes of their older stuff that you can't really get here yet!"  I hadn't even asked... the music was on offer.  Let's just say that on Monday morning, a batch of several 90 minute Memorex cassettes (with the oh-so-au-courant translucent color block design) containing the band's entire output from 1979 - 1985 lay in my hands.  As has been the case with many other bands that I was discovering around this time, I spent time back-tracking through mail order and downtown NYC's circuit of import record shops... making sure I got everything I could on vinyl (as well as subsequent CD releases... and sometimes re-releases).  

In the Summer of 1989, just after the release of the band's epic masterpiece Disintegration, I became friends with a girl named Liz Everett.  She wasn't really into rock music at the time (having been raised and schooled in the context of musical theatre) but I foisted The Cure (as well as The Smiths, Depeche Mode and Siouxsie) upon her.  Like me, she wasn't totally taken with them at first, but her appreciation for the band would soon grow exponentially.  Another one of her friends took her (on a lark) to a concert on The Cure's "Prayer Tour" about a month later.  From then onward, the topic our conversational patter was completely dominated by... you guessed it... The Cure.  When we were not busy analyzing lyrics, we were trying to figure out where they were staying in New York.  We tried to figure out in which London or New York streets or studios certain photos were taken.  We tried to figure out where they got their clothes and what brand of hairspray they used.  When we weren't geeking on that, we were looking for news (pre-internet, mind you) on any possible bootleg recordings of live shows or... (GASP!) new material that had leaked.  This, of course, from a band that hinted at an imminent breakup every single year. 

Cut to 1990... A year on.  Liz and a friend were following The Cure on the festival circuit in Europe.  On her next visit home, I was gifted with a stack of cassettes with markings like "Roskilde '90" and "Leysin '90".  I was beguiled by tales of backstage gossip and behind the scenes antics as well as a folio of Liz's photos of the band on and off stage. 

Cut to 1991... A year on from that.  Liz and yet more friends were present as the band recorded the Wish album in England.  The stories and photos coming out of this segment of the band's history would be more intimate, more telling and more magical.  Less hearsay and more first-hand accounts and conversations were relayed to me.  I never envied Liz her access to this life, but I wondered what it would have been like to visit that world for a day or two.  What TRULY impressed me was Liz's first "real" band, LeFaye.  They had the honor of opening a few dates on The Cure's next handful of UK dates, even though they were unsigned and largely unknown.  It's important to note the breadth (and also the height) of the arc that Liz traversed in Cure-land within a very short timespan.  Quite unreal.

Though Liz has certainly evolved past these rock star dreams in her adult life and career, I'm sure that there isn't a day that goes by when something in her world isn't colored by the lens of having lived (or at least brushed up against) a dream that so few will ever know.  While this kind of exposure could turn a barely 20-year-old artist into a smug, entitled brat (or a confused, hedonistic and consumptive mess) I always felt that this time brought her a lot of perspective, grace, poise and awareness.  I'm not sure if I've ever actually told her how much I admire her for that point alone, but I think I've covered that now.

Twenty-three years on from that day in the art room, my friendship with Cathi endures and evolves, but she will ALWAYS be the cool chick who opened up a richly-layered catalog of music for me to enjoy, collect, obsess over (at times), share with others and build upon.

Thank you, Cathi.  Thank you, Liz.  Thank you, Cure.

We Go Way Back: Depeche Mode & Me

Some bands are such a part of my consciousness that I almost can't remember a world without an awareness of their songs.  Oddly, the first time I heard Depeche Mode (in the summer of 1984) I enjoyed their single "People Are People", but I wasn't instantly drawn to digging up their other music.  A friend from school (whose older sister was a member of the hipper-than-thou teenage music cognoscenti) kept pushing their music on me... playing it when I was around and asking if I wanted some cassettes of their LPs.  For reasons I am still unclear on, I declined his offer a few times, but maintained that I liked their overall concept.  One afternoon, however, a dubbed cassette of their Black Celebration LP ended up in my school bag.  Upon loading it into my Sanyo dual cassette boombox, I was hooked.  Many trips to import record stores and many orders from mail-order record outfits followed.  I collected every piece of Depeche Mode on black wax or compact disc that I could find.  Throughout this journey into the electronic darkwave and other parts of what came to be known as the world of "alternative music", I realized that people who knew music knew Depeche Mode and respected the trail they were blazing, even if they weren't fans of their work.  Within a few years, their underground hip factor grew into mainstream success as they navigated broader airwaves and filled an increasing number of arenas and stadiums.  Through a 1990s commercial peak, some well-publicized implosions, resuscitations, trips to rehab and a full-on rebirth in the early 2000s, they never seemed to lose steam but only cultivate a more legendary, formidable status as a peerless live act with a solid, ever-growing catalogue of great songs. 

Last year, I had to give myself a reality check with the realization that it was 2009, I was 36 years old and I had YET ANOTHER brand new Depeche Mode album in my hands.  While many other bands that emerged in the 1980s had found themselves essentially rewriting all of their old songs (with the hands of a young, hip and hot producer twiddling the knobs to make it all just current enough) DM was cracking it all wide open with a set of songs that were fresh, new and electrifying.

Thanks, guys... You never let me down.