Last night I was about to head off to bed but decided to check the Tivo to see if the latest Daily Show was there. I flipped around the channel guide and saw the Tavis Smiley Show. I was a bit suprised since I only know Tavis from his NPR radio program that I listen to in the evenings on occasion. Tavis is insightful, direct, and fun with his guests. And man does he get the guests. Everyone from athletes, to presidential candidates, to musicians.
On the TV show I saw that he was interviewing Prince. Now, I love me some Prince. His music was core to my younger years and holds special place in my heart. More recently his strangeness with that symbol and religion had made me think he’d gone off the deep end.
I eager watched the show. Amazingly, Prince is now a 40-something, articulate and interesting musician. The discussion between Tavis & Prince was great and showed that Prince isn’t such a nutcase that many may seem to think. Tavis even showed a clip from Barbershop where they mocked him and Prince laughed at it. I was impressed that he came across as a mature, intelligent artist rather than a Hollywood nutcase.
He did an acoustic version of a song with Wendy, and then Tavis premiered Prince’s new video, Musicology. His music isn’t the same as the old, but the new video was pretty good.
When the new album comes out, I’m buying.
I thought Prince was off his rocker with the whole symbol thing, but I remember hearing that the whole reason beind that was to get around his contract with Sony. Now that he’s out of said contract he’s gone back to being “Prince”.
You should hear Kevin Smith’s Prince stories on “An Eveneing With Kevin Smith”.
On Chapell’s show this week they had a great “Charlie Murphy’s Hollywood Story” about Prince and the Revolution sharking some homeboys in a game of hoops. Funny stuff.
I can back up the whole artist/symbol shenanigans as legal maneuver… Seems they use it in classes at UCLA Law…
In high school, my first Psycho Girlfriend and I had a dating rule: since I was “the boy” I had to pay for everything. But after she dragged me to Under The Cherry Moon, we added a stipulation. If Prince was somehow involved in a date, then she would have to pay. For example, if we were waiting in line for ice cream and Prince came on the radio, she would pay.
Of course, I quickly realized there was a big difference between having a rule, and actually enforcing a rule.
Prince laughing at himself? Yeah, that’s all show. Weird Al Yankovic has been asking him for years to do parodies of his songs, and Prince keeps refusing, saying it’s beneath him. Sense of humour, indeed.
Didn’t know that Prince did the symbol to get around a contract — that’s pretty damn smart of him. I wonder, did he change his real name to Prince to get out of another contract too?
Man, could I get out of paying my credit-card debt if I changed my name to the money symbol?
The thing with Prince and the symbol was indeed him hacking his way around a contract.
His record contract was owned by some company he didn’t despise, but they went bankrupt, or otherwise became a good takeover target for a bigger record company (Sony, or BMI, or someone). Before they bought the small company Prince changed his legal name to that unpronuncable symbol. He kept it that way until his contract expired. He changed his name back and made a new contract with another company.
As a result the big record company he hated never had Prince as an artist, can’t advertise anything as belonging to him, and can’t trade off of his name.
If you ask me, it was a cool hack.
Close, but not quite. His label was Warner Brothers, and his problems with them had been mounting steadily since befor Sign O’ The Times (1987); mostly it came down to creative freedom vs. marketing concerns. Prince wanted to release all of his music… at his peak, this would’ve been like 2 or 3 albums a year. Warner Bros. saw no way to market/reap profits from such a glut of music. These differences culminated w/the name-change fiasco and several substandard albums—like ‘Come’—released on the WB label to burn off his contract before he started distributing his stuff independently. Now that it’s all behind him, he’s free to use the name Prince again (which, btw, is his actual birth name)
I used to just think that Prince was just another famous gay guy like Jacko (u know y he went to Kmart? during their going-bankrupt sale, their little boys’ pants were half off.)