The Time in Vegas: Go to the Flamingo, do The Bird
Taking a cue from their old boss, Morris Day and the boys have taken up a residency at a Las Vegas hotel/casino to kick out the jams for a couple of months. Last year, Prince took over the Rio for a few months of very well received shows at his makeshift club, 3121 (complete with his own “jazz cuisine” restaurant).
Well it’s 2008, and after getting back together to jam with Rihanna at the Grammys earlier this year, the boys are ready for more. Starting last Tuesday, and running through August 2nd, the “classic” Time lineup (sorry, St. Paul Peterson) will be performing a series of shows at the Flamingo Hotel/Casino in Vegas. We’re talkin’ Morris Day, his sidekick Jerome Benton, Jesse Johnson, über-producers Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, Monte Moir, and Jellybean Johnson.
Check out this AP article for an interview with the boys. Might be worth a weekend getaway this summer. Who can babysit?
Prince continues to make friends, says “No Way, Norway!”
Our purple friend is at it again. This time, his sights are set on Norway’s C+C Records, who organized a tribute box set made up of 50 artists doing covers of Prince tunes. Tip # 1, C+C Records: next time, don’t contact Prince’s people to try to send him a free copy. Odds are he won’t say “Thanks.”….
In a rare defense of the purple one, how wise is it really to put together a box set of Prince tunes without making any legal arrangements at all? Even if you are giving it away for free?
Eliot at Wired’s Listening Post blog has the story:
Fifty artists who recorded Prince covers in honor of his purpleness’s 50th birthday on June 7 have been slapped with a lawsuit by the short-tempered star, whose lawyers demand that all copies of the tribute, which had reached number eight on Norway’s album charts and received several popular reviews by the Norwegian press, be destroyed.
It’s perfectly legal to record and sell cover songs of someone else’s material, so long as you pay the compulsory licensing fee of about ten cents per song. To sell their five-disc set of 81 Prince cover songs, they would have to remit around $8 per unit sold to Prince under a compulsory mechanical license.
However, Norway’s C+C Records distributed 5,000 of the box sets for free earlier this month, and claim that no one made any money from the giveaway. As a result, they didn’t think they owed Prince anything except maybe a free copy.
C+C Records owner and Prince fan Christer Falck contacted the purple one’s people to try to send one to Prince, and that’s when the trouble began [bold text by Ickmusic], according to the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet (now offline, via Daily Swarm), one of many publications to post positive reviews of the collection.
For now, all 81 songs can be previewed for free on C+C Records‘ website, and some are also available on MySpace in streamable medley form.
When this giveaway first began, there were 5,000 copies of this compilation in circulation. Thanks to Prince’s lawsuit and the publicity it will generate, we expect that number to balloon significantly in the coming weeks.
By the Truckload!
Joining in the celebration of the 50th year of our favorite pasta maven, Coverville just released episode 471: The Prince Cover Story III featuring 46 minutes of funk from the likes of Living Colour, Stina Nordenstam and Kid Creole. You can get it via iTunes or just click here.
Prince’s Big Weekend in SoCal (Coachella, Leno)
Looks like our boy Prince had one his best weekends in a while – since last year’s Super Bowl Sunday at least. Friday night he debuted a new chicken scratch funker called “Turn Me Loose” on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno (vid below). And last night, as Saturday’s Coachella headliner, what does he go and do? Brings out Morris for “Jungle Love” and “The Bird”; brings out Shelia E. for “The Glamorous Life”; and debuts a live cover of – get this – Radiohead’s “Creep”! Wha-wha-whaaat?
I hope the DAT recorders were rolling (don’t tell the purple one!)…
Set List (thanks T.):
The Bird (performed by Morris Day) /
Jungle Love (performed by Morris Day) /
Glamorous Life (performed by Sheila E.) /
Instrumental Jam /
1999 /
I Feel For U /
Controversy (with snippet of “Housequake”) /
Little Red Corvette /
Musicology /
Cream /
U Got the Look /
Shh /
Anotherloverholenyohead /
Creep (Radiohead cover) /
The Arms of an Angel (Sarah McLachlan cover performed by backup singers) /
7 –> Come Together (Beatles Cover) /
Purple Rain /
Let’s Go Crazy[redlasso id=’e5a48730-b64b-4791-ab0e-ceae86507fb4′]
Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti Day!
Is it merely coincidence that today is also the day that was selected to announce that His Royal Badness will be joining the (frankly) lackluster line up of this year’s Coachella Festival? Don’t get me wrong, I’d be stoked to spend a day baking in the middle of the desert but I don’t see shelling out the coin to travel across the country. That said, when will Prince finally put aside his hatred of the East Coast long enough to return for a show or two?
Blind, Sexy Dancers, Peaches and Lap Lap
I saw the Blind Boys of Alabama open for Tom Petty many years back. I wish I was at the Knitting Factory in LA a few nights ago to catch the purple one jumping on stage to jam with them on “I’m a Soldier in the Army of the Lord”.
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=Uzv62BolLMk 336 259]
So a few years ago, British electronic duo 7 Hurtz hooked up with Bitch Lap Lap and Peaches for a version of Prince’s “Sexy Dancer”. Bitch Lap Lap? That’s indie queen Leslie Feist. I guess she used to lurk on stage at Peaches shows back in the day and called herself Bitch Lap Lap (they lived together in Toronto for a spell). I did not know that until tonight. You see, I was doing some exhaustive research trying to figure out who was acting out the Brenda part to Peaches’ Apollonia in the song (the banter mimics an inter-song segue on the Apollonia 6 album. Pre-“Ooo She She Wa Wa” to be exact. Yes, I am a 37 year old married father of two, and I know that.). I searched 7 Hurtz’s MySpace page and the only picture of a female I could find was this one…
After another minute of research, I discovered that the mystery voice was Feist. I hope you don’t mind, though, that I intend to picture the young lady above when listening to this version. In fact, I’ll picture her in both roles…. as twins. Antennaed twins.
The song appears on an album of Prince covers called ‘Controversy: A Tribute to Prince‘. It’s got some interesting versions from some artists I’d never heard of (except for D’Angelo, who does “She’s Always in My Hair”): Blue States, Stina Nordenstam, Kode Nine and Space Ape, to name a few. A reggae version of “Girls & Boys”? This album’s got it.
So give it a listen. Picture the antennaed twins, and go with them to Prince’s house.
7 Hurtz w/ Peaches & Bitch Lap Lap – Sexy Dancer (mp3)
Buy: Controversy: A Tribute to Prince (UK Amazon)
Links: Peaches.com | 7 Hurtz | Feist
Prince and the Boss: Nominations at Tonight’s Grammys
Here are the categories where Bruce and Prince are nominated tonight. [Source: Grammy.com]
The Time + Rihanna = Jungle Umbrella Love? – Watch the Grammys
Here’s a newsworthy item for a Prince geek like me… According to this Billboard article, Rihanna will be joined by none other than the Time for a performance at next weekend’s Grammys.
I’ll be adding my sometimes snide, sometimes cynical, but honest commentary all night in year 2 of my live blogging of the Grammys. Believe me, it works better than barking mean-spirited comments to my wife all night!
There should be some blog-worthy moments, especially if Amy Winehouse shows up. They tried to make her go to rehab and she said Yes Yes Yes – this time around. But she’s expected to be there for the ceremony.
Here’s Morris, Terry, Jimmy, Jesse and the boys throwin’ down on American Bandstand back in ’82-’83 with “777-9311” (quality = shiteous, but fun nonetheless):
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABa-Spd9tUM 336 278]
Stephen Colbert’s Prince Dance
[dailymotion id=x412dv]Thanks Gonzo.
Prince: available for a Bar Mitzvah or Sweet 16 near you
Prince Roger$ Nel$on may not believe in Christmas and birthdays, but he sure makes himself available for the almighty dollar!
How ’bout a U.S. tour, purple guy?
From The Miami Herald’s Scene in the Tropics section…
OK, so now we’ve officially seen it all. And heard it all, thanks to Jeffrey Soffer, heir to the Turnberry throne, who threw himself a 40th birthday spectacular (to the tune of $2 million, we hear) in the Turnberry Aviation hangar Saturday night at Opa-locka Executive Airport. Besides the elaborate open bars, flowing Veuve Cliquot and gourmet food, all tied together in that inimitable, over-the-top Karla Dascal way, Soffer hired Prince — the Prince, his purple highness — to perform a private concert for a few hundred of his closest friends. KC and the Sunshine Band opened. It wasn’t just a quick sampling of Prince’s greatest hits, either. It was a mind-blowing, full-blown concert (he sang Cream, Purple Rain, 1999, U Got the Look, Controversy, Let’s Go Crazy, I Feel For You, Nothing Compares 2 U and several others), featuring marvelous backup singers, dancing twins, a brass band and a legend who seemed to be in his element performing for such an intimate crowd. He also spoke to and made eye contact with fans. At one point, Prince invited dazed and dazzled audience members to join him on stage for a group dance. Spotted in the crowd with the rest of us: DJ Tracy Young; movie director Brett Ratner, who told us that he was working on his next flick — the story of Playboy titan Hugh Hefner; Ingrid Casares with A-Rod; Rony Seikaly; Jorge Perez, and Soffer family friends James Caan and George Hamilton, who joined the elder Soffer, Donald, on stage to wish Jeffrey a fab 40. (The two actors were also spotted at the opening of Michael Mina’sBourbon Steak at the Fairmont Turnberry Isle Resort and Club last weekend.) Meanwhile, Prince, who was staying at The Setai, was also seen with a bodyguard Friday night at Macarena, where he hung out for three hours.