1999 - Prince (CD 1983)

Every once in a while I hit this mood where the only music I can listen to is Prince. Seeing as I have a large amount of his discography, this does not pose a problem. It also gives me an, I hope, informed opinion on an album that is easier to ooh and ahh over than to make intelligent statements -- or say anything new, really -- about the music.

Let's start with a few basics. The art has shrunk to such a degree when being moved from its original double-album configuration to CD that you can only make out the words "and the Revolution" and "Dirty Boy" if you know where to look, and you won't know where to look until you pull out the vinyl copy from some used record bin and stare at it for a bit. Also, an inside pose of Prince on guitar has been inexplicably removed.

This double-album is a coded way of introducing the Revolution, before they come out in the open on the followup Purple Rain, with the full moniker of "Prince and the Revolution" -- a band mainly noted for the involvement of Wendy Melvoin on guitar and backing vocals, Lisa Coleman on keys and backing vocals. Dez Dickerson also plays a role, on guitar and some vocals, along with a few other members and walk-ons, but that's the gist of the membership for this outing.

The album's beats are concocted solely on programmed drums (no Sheila E. yet, sadly), and Prince gives his all to combat the thick, slightly cold computer sounds with songs worshipping the body, the dance floor, and God. Not necessarily in that order.

Another important thing to note: Prince, barely into his 20s, concocted this album to break through the backlash set by his previous record, Controversy. Critics thought that record sounded too much like his breakthrough third LP, Dirty Mind. Which is a bizarre thing to say, as Dirty Mind is a seminal, all-encompassing masterpiece done dirty demo style, while Controversy severely lacks in the masterpiece department, comprising great songs and dated filler in equal amounts.

One more thing to say before I get into the songs themselves: this IS a double album. Only 11 songs, yes, but some of these songs stretch and stretch and stretch, getting into clinical drum grooves overlaid with the warmth of a band firing steadily. So if you're going to complain that this CD is too ponderous and drawn out, realize it was originally on four sides of vinyl, and then perhaps the spacing of the music will make more sense to you. It's not really an album that is suited to the CD format of condense and squeeze.

This being 1982, Side A opens with 1999, a song about dancing through the night even as nuclear war erupts around you. The track opens with a distorted Prince vocal saying "Don't worry, I won't hurt you. I only want you to have some fun" as a wash of programmed drums sounding like the tide crashing at the beach opens the song. Prince is always a little unsteady and creepy in his distorted monologues, as though he can't make a message without processing his vocals and pitching them out onto oblique snippets of half-thought. Radio stations clip the freaky beginning entirely, which is a shame, because frankly a lot more pop radio listeners could stand to be unsettled.

Anyway, the song is a classic, which is something I'm going to be saying a lot about this album. The perfect lock-step groove accentuated with drums and killer synth work. Prince originally had the track mixed so all of the members of the band were singing the song at once, but a little snafu in the control room led to the song being split up verse by verse between different singers. And what a wonderful mistake it is.

The track ends with either Wendy or Lisa saying "Mommy, why does everybody have a bomb?" as the track simply stops, leaving us with Prince's high falsetto cooing as Little Red Corvette slips into being. A slow, bass-drenched, purring song, with plenty of liquid synth and stuttering, constant beats that makes clothing seem more like an option than a requirement. Weirdly, this top 6 pop single (top 15 R&B) opens with Prince wondering if he's good enough for a one-nighter with this new girl, because she has a pocketful of condoms, "some of them used." But Saturday night makes everything all right, doesn't it, Prince?

After the slow purr and molasses melody of Little Red Corvette, Prince kicks things into high gear with Delirious, which goes all out in terms of melody and drum programming, knocking out crisp, somewhat cold beats one after another. Unbelievably, the band manages to turn this into a tight groove with plenty of spaces, all the better to hear the sound of a packed dance floor.

Side B starts things off with Let's Pretend We're Married, punishing in its computer beat. Just non-stop, until you suddenly feel yourself floating right above the computer thunks. Then a more mellow drum pattern adds accentuation below it, progressing the song further and reaching toward Prince's falsetto plea to a girl -- "Excuse me but I need a mouth like yours to help me forget the girl that just walked out my door. Funny but it seems that you're alone like me. If you are, girl, come see what we can see." Seems mildly suggestive, doesn't it? Well, the song continues in this vein, one time letting slip "baby let's ball" and calling for "hippies" to "dance together."

You think that's the height of it? After a bit, the synth and drums go into an extended breakdown, where Prince turns his lust into outright sex. "I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna eff you." (synth) "I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna eff you. Look here Martian, I ain't saying this just to be nasty. I sincerely wanna eff the taste out of your mouth." When you're wondering if you just heard that, an echoed Prince comes back in and says "Can you relate?" before the song cascades back into the bridge and chorus, as though none of what he said just happened. The song ends with him talking about God and the afterlife. Confusing, confused, effed-up and beautiful. This is why the world would be wise to let more Prince into their diets.

After nearly 7 and a half minutes of that track, we dip into an 8 minute track called D.M.S.R., the last song on the original first LP. It is to Prince's credit that he can make computer freak-downs last 7 and 8 minutes respectively, and keep you riveted to the stereo for the entirety of both. He knows exactly when to let the guitar sing, when to let the vocals do the work, when to fade out all instruments but the drums. He constructs grooves and melodies that last a lifetime, and yet feel like they're going by in a breath. D.M.S.R. is, quite simply, one of the danciest things on this record, but not in a House way. Not in a Techno way. Not in any way I could begin to describe. Just using a repeating drum figure, chunky synth fills, call-and-response vocals and enough guitar to make you wish you could play like that, Prince calls out everybody to the dance floor, to engage in "Dance Music Sex Romance" against an insistent rhythm that makes you want to fall dead dancing. This song also deals with another one of Prince's concerns -- racism. He imagined a world where all colors danced together in Uptown. He called into question the use of race on Controversy. Now, on D.M.S.R., he calls out race after race to come and jump on the dance floor. He also coyly charges musician Jamie Starr of copying his style, while giving a shout out to musical pet project Vanity 6. And claims he "doesn't want to win awards." And yet, mixing his lyrical concerns in the same way he mixes musical styles, it all somehow works. Quite triumphantly.

Wipe the sweat out of your eyes and place the second LP on the stereo now (play along -- in all honesty, I'm playing along too, because I never owned it on vinyl). You're about to be treated to two songs of the most jittery, paranoid, computerized kind, followed by a ballad tempered with humanism. Automatic opens the side (and goes on for 9 minutes) in a drum-beat that feels all over the place until the synth overlays it and shows you how the beats fit together. At the same time, a synth figure creeps around in the higher octaves, and Prince and the girls sing "A-U-T-O-matic" over and over as though they are machines. A song full of sex-laden lyrics, but the beat is so unsettling, you'll be lucky if you catch the words. In fact, the only thing I catch is the strange ending where one of the girls says "I'm going to have to torture you now" and a strange woosh like a machine fills the speakers. So, yes, while the song is 9 minutes long, it sure feels like it's speeding by. The genius of using that beat, I suppose.

Now, if you take Automatic, slow it down in places, speed it up in others, and throw in a whole bunch of sludge, murk and atmosphere, you get Something in the Water (Does Not Compute). The genius of that title is it fuses the organic with the computerized, and this song is fully that. If you thought Automatic had a confusing drum pattern, just try to follow this one. I'm surprised the drum machine didn't break or display a FULL MEMORY message. Even creepier synth work on this one, and a charging bass that pushes the song along, as Prince wonders why all the girls he know treat him so bad. He decides "it must be something in the water they drink." He lets out an unearthly shriek of a falsetto at one point before dipping into the chorus, and it is truly terrifying, hearing something so human and despairing crowing out against a mechanized backdrop. Is this where industrial starts?

No, of course not. Because the next song is Free, a pretty, well-paced ballad which goes into one of Prince's obsessions -- freedom. This is the most organic song on the album. It doesn't go for a groove. It goes for feeling, and the song seems to glow with an extra warmth, having been preceded by two songs of robots mimicking humans. It ends the side beautifully, with Prince calling and oohing out "I am free!" after telling the listener to be free themselves (and also slipping in a few anti-war messages). The structure and feeling of this song would be a handy template to craft the much-superior song Purple Rain off of in 1984. In fact, you can see a lot of influence of 1999 in Purple Rain, the follow-up album. But that's a different topic. And my hands grow weary of typing.

Luckily for my hands, Side D is upon us. Three more songs and this genius creation is over. Lady Cab Driver opens with city sounds that reminds me exceedingly of the Pet Shop Boys' West End Girls. But whereas the Boys' song is concerned with inner angst and class structure, Prince is all about finding a lady cab driver and getting laid that night, all the better to recite his social-conscious poetry on what each thrust means (which goes into a famous interlude where he does exactly that, with the sound of the driver moaning, the sound of the bed squeaking). It is a light, airy melody that is impossible to categorize. It seems to have one hand in the '70s, one far off into a future we still haven't realized musically in mainstream entertainment.

This leads into the strange, strange, STRANGE All the Critics Love U in New York, which is essentially a bass hitting the same few notes over and over as a guitar adds strange picked squalls and a keyboard throws in a few notes for good measure, all to a chugging, loping rhythm. Prince, with a grin on his face you can hear through the words, basically berates hipsters, their musical inability, their hair, their everything. I'm not sure what launched this diatribe, (perhaps being booed off as the opening act at a Rolling Stones concert? -- who the hell thought up THAT combination?) but, true to Prince form, it starts out with a point and then meanders into the truly bizarre. At one point Prince even mimics the sound of a CB radio saying "Yes, we're certain of it -- he's definitely masturbating" before letting out a vacillating falsetto which sounds exactly like a siren and then shouting "Woo!" Um.... all right.

All good things must come to an end, but not for 6 and a half minutes yet! As International Lover comes in on Prince's warp of R&B. Slow and burning, containing the words "Diamond and Pearls" (which would become a 1991 LP title ... and which I may review eventually), the song compares a passionate night with a lover in terms of flying an airliner. Only Prince could make this work, and he does, with lyrics like "We are now making our final approach to satisfaction. Please bring your lips, your arms, your hips into the upped and locked position for landing." A bit egotist? You bet. Unforgettable? Definitely.