I saw Prince perform at Madison Square Garden last night and he was brilliant. That is not a word I use often. Instead of a concert review, I decided to re-post this entry from June 17, 2010.
I interviewed Robert Darden of the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project twice, once in Chicago and once in Waco. Both times, Prince came up. (In case you didn’t know it, I’m a huge Prince fan.)
Here’s an excerpt from the Waco interview:
“There’s a song by Prince called The Cross that the Blind Boys of Alabama covered. His version is good. Theirs is great. But Prince? Yeah, Prince is struggling like we all are, with something, and for a moment he grabs this little bit of epiphany and gets it on vinyl. And it tells me something.”
Here’s an excerpt from the Chicago interview:
“One of the many things that fascinates me about Prince is that he is constantly at war between the sacred and profane, which I think the great artists are in most every field anyhow. And he’ll have a very overtly sexual song on an album right next to one with a very clear, to me anyway, religious yearning and longing and statement. And The Cross, does that, it’s almost like an afterthought on the CD that it comes on. And he does it very simply and very movingly. And then the Blind Boys of Alabama take it and turn it into a more propulsive, more insistent kind of cautionary tale, with a much heavier beat. And there are people that just hated that. And other people like me who found it thrilling, because when you have stuff that skirts the edge of chaos, that’s much more interesting to me. Hell to me would be a Disneyland type world where everything is perfectly arranged and everything is in the exact perfect 4/4 time with the exact predictable chord patterns. Whereas what interests me both as a writer and as a musician is the stuff that’s on this little gray area between heaven and hell, where we most spend our lives anyhow. Trying to work out the hard slog of day to day living. And when I can hear a song where an artist who really struggles there, who admits that life is full of a whole lot more dichotomies than there are certainties, and who tries to do the best they can at each of these little steps along the way. Man that fascinates me, whether it’s a writing, or movie or a piece of music. And that music, The Cross, by Prince, performed by the Blind Boys of Alabama does that as well as anything.”
Here’s 20 seconds of Prince sitting in on a Blind Boys of Alabama concert. Enjoy.
Kimberly
Yeah, Prince is kind of a genius! I can’t believe I haven’t heard this song before.
David Licata
Yep, I’m with you. The guy is a genius. No question.
I don’t know the song either, but I’m pretty sure it’s a Blind Boys of Alabama song. I saw them perform once and it sounds like the number they do when the lead singer goes into the audience, led by a sighted-person, and randomly stops in front of people and sings-preaches to them. He stopped in front of me that night, and it was a profoundly moving experience. I almost dropped to my knees. I’m serious.
Jennifer Chen
Between this clip and the whole Charlie Murphy story about Prince and his post-basketball pancakes, he is truly a cool guy and obviously a very talented musician.
David Licata
Game, blouses!
Tony Tadey
ok, So it will be hard for me not to go on and on about the genius that is Prince, but I will say that there have been many times in his career where his guitar styling have gone back to that full solid tone and straight forward style that could have been found in many churches through out America during those spontaneous late Saturday night jam sessions that fallowed the conclusion of the rehearsal for Sunday’s service…
David Licata
Tony! Good to see you here.
Totally agree. You can definitely hear it in that clip above.
I think one of Prince’s gifts is his ability to synthesize so many musical styles and make it into something original and distinctly “Prince.” That’s what great artists do. I can listen to a Prince album and hear James Brown (of course), Sly Stone, the Beatles, Parliament, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell (one of his faves, apparently) as well as Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Rev. Louis Overstreet and, well, I’m sure you and Bob could name several more.
Check this out. It’s amazing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLfOjQRRL5g
Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see more of you in the future.
David