Considering Prince in the Middle of the Here (Ever Mindful of the Past)

Putting out two albums on the same day is a bold move. Guns N' Roses, Bruce Springsteen, Henry Threadgill and Tom Waits have all flexed that particular muscle. In 1981, Frank Zappa issued three volumes of the aptly titled Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar at the same time. And at the end of September, Prince joined the pack with s solo record and an album by his new band, 3rdEyeGirl.

It's on odd pair of records. Prince has done plenty of multiple releases in the past but never have they been as unbalanced as are Art Official Age and Plectrum Electrum. He has plotted multiple-disc sets that never came to pass (notably Crystal Ball, which ended up scattered across several releases). His sets too big for a single CD date back to 1982 and the double LP 1999, the initial digital issues of which had one song cut so it would fit on a single disc. Much of Crystal Ball ended up on the double LP and double CD Sign 'O' the Times. The 2002 live collection One Nite Alone came in three- and four-CD editions. 2009's Lotusflow3r and MPLSound came packaged with a third CD, Elixer, by protoge Bria Valente. Emancipation (1996) was a triple-CD set. An outtakes collection from 1998, which revived the name and title track "Crystal Ball" (one of his greatest songs) included as a fourth CD the largely acoustic album The Truth, which might well have been remembered as one of his best records had it been put out on its own. A fan club version of Crystal Ball also included a fifth disc of instrumental tracks called Kamasutra. Prince is no stranger to grand gestures.

He's also no stranger to complicating things for himself. From changing his name to a symbol to refusing interviews while waging a battle with his record label, the man has a way of always giving people something other than his music to talk about. And the thing to talk about now seems to be his stripped down rock band: no keys, no horns and he the only male. 3rdEyeGirl has been playing hell out of his old songs for a little while now and it makes sense that he wants them to have some currency. Unfortunately the set of songs he wrote for Plectrum Electrum, the 3rdEyeGirl album, doesn't stand up to the arrangements of old tumes he did for them when he was making them into his own cover band. There's a few solid cuts ("Wow," "Fixurlifeup," "Boy Trouble") but most of the first half sounds like he was writing for Led Zeppelin and most of the second half like TLC, which makes for an inconsistent listen to say the least.

To say there's a few good songs on Plectrum Electrum is almost a given. Every Prince record has at least a few good songs. But Art Official Age, the new album he recorded largely by his lonesome, made me remember what made great Prince records great. The man deals in concept in (public) life and in art. He seems at times to become so enamored with symbolism (right down to his symbol pseudonym) that the reasons – what actually is being symbolized – become less important than the artifice. That might not help his reputation but it doesn't exactly hurt his music. His best records have been comprised of fantastically inventive songs hung on a vaguely constructed storyline, generally an us-versus-them or good-versus-evil setting: the New Power Generation against the forces that want to keep them (that being us) down; the positivity of Lovesexy up against the dark force of the Spookyelectric; the Rainbow Children fighting whoever they (we) were fighting. The stories never quite make sense, but you can't criticize him for that unless you're also going to call Janelle Monae, George Clinton and Pete Townshend to task. If you're going to make a rock opera make sense, you're going to have to write as many words as Neil Peart does.

The skeletal story of Art Official Age concerns Prince waking up after 45 years in suspended animation to find himself in a utopian society. That hardly matters because the story barely figures in to the record (it's primarily delivered in a pair of spoken interludes) but there's something about it being there that gives the man some muscle. He may not be up to much where high concept albums are concerned, but feeling like he's up to something seems to make him dig in and work. Prince can lay down a groove in his sleep. When he's at his best, however (which, at the risk of damning him to past successes, would be the five years after Purple Rain), he's creating complex, multi-layered music. Today, on the heels of a half dozen solid r'n'b albums (each with a few great tracks), he's back to thinking big. Art Official Age is contemporary, complex, intelligent and excellent.

Which raises the question, why did he decide to outshine himself? It's doubtful, of course, that he sees it that way. Plectrum Electrum is a band album; Art Official Age is a solitary effort. Two sides of his coin. But another question arises as well. Why are there versions of the song "Funknroll" on both albums? Is it meant to demonstrate the two approaches? If so, Prince pretty clearly beats out his own band. But maybe he just likes the song. Back in the '80s he released the same version of "When 2 R in Love" (a sappy and masterfully produced ballad) at least three times. It's probably best not to ask questions that won't get answered. Four years after his last record and eight after his last great one, we get one good and another great. As he sings in his latest call-to-arms, "Finally again we meet at last / middle of the here, nevermind the past."

Prince's appearance on Saturday Night Live last weekend led me to finally putting down some thoughts about the records but I included clips from the Arsenio appearance in March primarily because it was a better performance but also because it appears as if Arsenio retained rights to post it. Between P and NBC it's unlikely any links to the SNL spot will stay live long, but at the moment it can be heard via the player above and seen here and here. The full episode can be watched legit here. 

UPDATE: I just saw that Rolling Stone posted the SNL performance which may be more likely to be permanent. 

UPDATED!

George Clinton reading George Clinton.

Neve Campbell Reading Celine.

Italo Calvino reading Italo Calvino.

Gertrude Stein being a painting.

José Saramago being a statue.

I Want To Be a Meme

A couple of months ago, I disabled the Facebook Messenger app on my cell phone. I had heard, from people I trust and don't consider to be alarmist, that the app could turn itself on, activate your phone or camera and record conversations or phone calls. Messenger, it was explained to me, transformed your phone into a surveillance device, and even if it was only interested in consumer behavior, it meant you were being watched.

We all have our lines and this was mine. Although the Messenger plot turned out to be grossly exaggerated, the thought that my pocket computer (this thing that only by an accident of history is called a "phone") could be used against me struck an emotional chord. My phone is my friend and I didn't want my friend turned against me.

I have other friends – flesh and blood friends, not pieces of hardware – who draw the technology/privacy line much closer to home than do I. Some of them won't use Facebook at all, won't do Google searches or carry a cell phone, out of concerns of their privacy being invaded. I understand that. Most of them are a little older (and likely a little wiser) than me. If they hadn't passed puberty by the Summer of Love, they at least remember it. They grew up with a mindset of personal freedom and beating the system.

But I graduated from high school in the auspicious year of 1984. George Orwell's novel of the same name didn't strike me as cautionary when I read it for English class, it just seemed like a foretelling of the inevitable. I grew up under punk and under the mindset not of beating the system but simply surviving it. So while the Messenger rumors unnerved me, I had never really expected much different. At some point in my life, I'd always thought, I would more than likely be required to carry some sort of monitoring device. We all would.

A lot of the punk I was listening to in high school was revolutionary, of course, in the literal sense of preaching political rebellion. But the post-Orewellian songs rang truest to me, the songs that told us that in the scheme of things we were nothing but consumers. We were numbers. If Joe Strummer disparaged the suited class that was "turning rebellion into money," Thomas Franck informed us that we'd been suckered into buying it nevertheless. So explicit has our duty as consumer citizens been made since then that one of the most common things our elected leaders tell us in the face of a crisis is to go shopping. For the love of freedom, keep spending money.

Consumerism as patriotism was engrained in our cultural consciousness after Sept. 11, 2001. In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks 13 years ago, then President George W. Bush addressed the nation in what Time magazine called the "finest, strongest, clearest, several-times-chill-giving speech of his life." And it was a great speech, defining the enemy and promising swift action. It was probably what the country needed to hear. In the conclusion, he turned the tables to say what the country needed to do. "I ask you to live your lives and hug your children," he said. "I ask your continued participation and confidence in the American economy. And finally, please continue praying for the victims of terror and their families, for those in uniform and for our great country." Bush defined the three tines of a better future: God, children and shopping. Buildings can be rebuilt but the economy can't be allowed to collapse. Then New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, looking understandably exhausted, actually put shopping before children on the day after the attacks.

So shopping is our civic responisbility but we're not yet electronically checked to make sure we're meeting the obligation. The Messenger monitoring scare was just a bit of mass paranoia. It will be a relief when that day comes, though, when we don't have to worry about whether it's happened yet or not. In the meantime, however, I still haven't reinstalled Messenger. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's just one final throw against fictional fears.

In truth, I never expected privacy. I never expected individuality. I just want to be a meme. Message me.

FvH/LG

Like stone clapper made of clay, 
long, once again occurs, they say.
Creeping ivy grows, 
the blinds drawn – the room got so yellow!
Ignored the fact that Here it
was Fred! the singer
from the East! The second he began to
play, working down again,
as it sometimes
more is forever at last.
Those things seem – it
lasts all day one day and then they
say: bells until tomorrow. 

My Desert Island Discs

Nausea

"For the moment, the jazz is playing; there is no melody, just notes, a myriad of tiny tremors. The notes know no rest, an inflexible order gives birth to them then destroys them, without ever leaving them the chance to recuperate and exist for themselves.... I would like to hold them back, but I know that, if I succeeded in stopping one, there would only remain in my hand a corrupt and languishing sound. I must accept their death; I must even want that death: I know of few more bitter or intense impressions." 

- Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea (1938)

"Today, you're gonna be sick, so sick. You'll prop your forehead on the sink, say, 'Oh Christ, oh Jesus Christ, my head's gonna crack like a bank.' Tonight, you'll fall asleep in clothes so late. Like a candy bar wrapped up for lunch, that's all you'll get to taste. Poverty and spit, poverty and spit."

- X, "Nausea" (1980)

Idealist Dylan in Town

I'm pretty sure that's the headline for this piece on Bob Dylan I wrote for the Czech newspaper Lidovky, anyway.

Here is the pre-edited text. It was shortened slightly for publication. Much thanks to Pavel Klusák for the opportunity.

***

What do you say about an iconic songwriter who over a career spanning six decades has been as adored and hated about as much as he's given reason to revere or question him? And what do you say when you don't speak the native tongue of the people for whom you're writing, a people who have their own definitions of the political freedoms that said songwriter – whether or not he wants it – is often seen to represent?

Despite being a Bob Dylan fan since discovering his music as an idealistic college student during the American neo-conservatism of the 1980s, I had never seen him in concert before attending his 2 July performance while visiting Prague. I had had plenty of opportunities but never seized them, dissuaded no doubt by how roundly his live shows are disparaged: He's lost his voice (or never had one to begin with), he's lost his mind, he's lost his passion, caring, charisma. Whatever he had that made him rock's first poet and the unwitting spokesman of a generation, according to consensus, he's lost it.

At least in America that's the consensus. I can't speak to his reputation in the Czech Republic, although I can say that the rebel spirit, the outspoken poet, the vagabond intellectual, the ethos of the 1960s, seems more alive here than in my home country. I saw Lou Reed memorial graffiti stenciled on buildings last month in Ostrava; I have not seen that in Reed's and my hometown of New York City. Last summer I missed seeing John Mayall and the Plastic People at the Trutnov Open Air Festival by just a couple of days. I have been impressed watching the films of Jan Němec and his footage of the 1968 Soviet invasion, seeing the brave acts of peaceful resistance of nearly 50 years ago. Maybe it's the romance of travel but the romance of idealism seems alive in the City of a Hundred Spires.

But whether in Prague or Peoria, the inevitable question isn't of politics or pedigree but “how did he sound?” Or more likely, “how did his voice sound?” The fact that he either is or at least once was a genius is never disputed. The question that wants asking is, “How has age ravaged him?”

I went to the O2 Arena to enjoy the show. I was excited. My mind was open but my eyes not too wide. And I will go on the record as saying that he sounded great: Animated and confident, smooth despite the gravel. Dylan is one in a line of American singers (including Reed, Billie Holiday and Tom Waits) for whom expressiveness is finesse, singers who will certainly elicit reactions, who might not sound pretty but who stir the heart.

The concert opened with a sole acoustic guitar in near darkness that led into a full-band shuffle and that unmistakable voice. “I'm a worried man, I got a worried mind” Dylan intoned, singing his Academy Award winning “Things Have Changed” from the film Wonder Boys in a rasp that has only deepened in the 14 years since the movie's release. He followed that up with one of the few “classic” songs of the night. The familiar lines of “She Belongs to Me” – “She never stumbles, she's got no place to fall / She's nobody's child, the law can't touch her at all” (from 1965's Bringing It All Back Home) – flowed easily from the the singer's mouth.

The sound in the arena was impressively clear and the quintet of musicians behind Dylan (guitarists Stu Kimball and Charlie Sexton, bassist Tony Barnier, drummer George Recile and Donnie Herron playing banjo, mandolin, violin, viola and pedal and lap steel guitars) sounded great; slippery but not sloppy, they were there to deliver. It wasn't about ego, and how could it be when you're looking at Bob freakin' Dylan's backside the whole time you're playing? But Dylan, too, was in service of the song, smooth sailing on a well-weathered vessel. Together they floated through the 17-song set with a remarkably steady flow of energy: tempi and volume didn't seem to change and yet the songs never sounded the same. Dylan started “Forgetful Heart,” (from the 2009 album Together Through Life) at the piano – he didn't play guitar the entire night – taking one harmonica interlude while seated and a second standing at the front of the stage. They weren't solos, they were added accompaniment, a part of the flow. The-full-if-not-quite-capacity audience was there with them, affording the same appreciation for “Tangled Up in Blue” and “Simple Twist of Fate” as they did more recent and less heralded songs. Not jumping-out-of-their-seats excitement but certainly an appreciative enthusiasm.

I have been stunned on more than a few occasions to see the way Czech audiences stay in their seats – applauding enthusiastically but rarely yelling and almost never standing, in stark contract to the excitable crowds back home. This held true, with only a handful of people wandering to the floor for a better look, until the opening chords of “Long and Wasted Years” (from 2012's Tempest, it was the last song before the encore) when the floodgates were opened and a rushed if civilized procession filled the aisles in front of the stage. There was an energy, almost an urgency, in the ensuing encore calls – someone even taking it upon himself to sing “Blowing in the Wind” – and the pursuant rush of exhilaration which (as we Americans know) comes from the bum rush, the thrill of the throng.

Dylan and band answered the encore call with the two biggest hits of the night – although to single them out as such would unfairly separate them from the unified flow of the whole of the program. With Dylan at the piano they delivered an arrangement of “All Along the Watchtower” with a gleam that called Dire Straits to mind. And then indeed they launched into “Blowing in the Wind,” or what might more properly be called a new song with the same lyrics, an arrangement underscored by Dylan's quick piano trills and featuring a harp solo – this time it was a solo – which drew the original melody out, teasing it just a little bit more, leaving behind the words that declared so many years ago (though no one seemed to notice) that it wasn't he who held the answers. He was, and is, here just to observe and entertain.