The End of the Revolution
Prince with Lisa and Wendy, Rolling Stone no. 472, April 1986 by Jeff KatzOld school Prince die hards like me get a bit nostalgic when thinking back to the Revolution days. There was a certain dynamic and chemistry with the lineup – Prince, Bobby Z. on drums, Matt Fink on synth, Lisa Coleman on keys, Wendy Melvoin on guitar, and Brown Mark on bass – that in my opinion hasn’t been matched since. I don’t doubt for a second that every member of Prince’s band is and has been a talented musician. It’s just that the Revolution lineup seemed right. Totally subjective, I know, and it probably has to do with favoring the lineup that was in place when I discovered Prince’s music.
So the last official gig with this lineup took place on September 9th, 1986 in Yokohama, Japan. It was the last show of the Parade tour. Prince pulled out a B-side rarity (“Love or Money”), a heartfelt version of “Sometimes it Snows in April”, a killer jam on “Anotherloverholenyohead”, a preview of “Hot Thing” during “Head”, and so much more.
All in all, the Revolution played one helluva finale.
Prince and the Revolution
Parade Tour
September 9th, 1986
Yokohama, Japan1. Around The World In A Day
2. Christopher Tracy’s Parade
3. New Position
4. I Wonder U
5. Raspberry Beret
6. Delirious
7. It’s Gonna Be A Beautiful Night (Chant)
8. Controversy
9. A Love Bizarre (W/ Sheila E)
10. Do Me, Baby
11. How Much Is That Doggie In The Window – Lady Cab Driver
12. Automatic
13. D.M.S.R.
14. When Doves Cry
15. Little Red Corvette
16. Do U Lie?
17. The Ladder
18. Condition Of The Heart
19. Under The Cherry Moon20. Anotherloverholenyohead
21. Love or $
22. Head
23. Pop Life
24. Girls & Boys
25. Life Can Be So Nice
26. 1999
27. America
28. Kiss
29. Sometimes It Snows In April
30. Purple RainWhat is the Revolution up to these days?
Matt “Dr.” Fink: The Doctor is still in. Matt is active in the Minneapolis music scene, churning out his brand of electro-funk. You can catch up with him on his official site and his MySpace page.
Wendy & Lisa: Wendy & Lisa haven’t slowed down since they parted with the Revolution. They have released several albums, and have played with Prince here and there throughout the years. Just this past weekend at Prince’s 3121 Rio show in Vegas, Wendy and her twin sister Susannah joined Prince for “A Love Bizarre”, and Wendy joined in on acoustic guitar during “Purple Rain”.
You can catch up with Wendy and Lisa’s latest happenings on their official site and their MySpace page. Also, there’s a bunch of W&L stuff on YouTube. Check out this video of Wendy, Lisa, and Susannah singing “Strung Out”.
Brown Mark: Mark is still active in the music industry as a member of Cryptic. You can hear their latest on his MySpace page.
Bobby Z: There’s not much info on the web about what Bobby Z. is up to these days. Can anyone provide an update? G.?
Prince: As for the man, you never know with him. He’s been playing weekends at the Rio in Vegas since November, he tore shit up at the Super Bowl in Feb., and a couple of days ago, his web site was updated with a cryptic flash video showing a quick snippet of Prince standing over a globe with the words “Planet Earth” .. . “Summer 2007”. Album? Tour? Live Earth performance? Who knows, maybe all of the above.
He always keeps it interesting.
Prince in Hotlanta – I Wanna Be Your Lover
Prince:
I Wanna Be Your Lover(mp3) – Live in Atlanta, March 6th, 1980Studio version comes from Prince
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Elisa: Oooh This I Need
If there’s music with Prince’s fingerprints on it, there’s a good chance I have it (well, I never did buy Good Question). This includes Prince’s work with Elisa Fiorillo. He produced about half of her 1989 album, I Am. Elisa also shows up on Prince’s “Partyman” 12″ extended single, she’s the sexy voice in “Love Machine” off the Graffiti Bridge soundtrack, and she sings on two songs from Diamonds and Pearls: “Daddy Pop” and “Walk”.
These days, Elisa lives in Las Vegas, where she’s still in the music business, working on a jazz album. You can catch up with her on her site and her MySpace page.
Regarding Prince, this is what she has to say about him on her MySpace: “And I would also love to get back in touch with Prince again! Now that he is in Vegas and I live here…I would love to reconnect and possibly play at his new club 3121! I would love for him to hear my new album “Labor Of Love”. I think he would dig it! HA!”
You heard her Prince, bring Elisa up on stage for a couple!
Elisa Fiorillo:
Oooh, This I Need(mp3) – from I AmWhatever Happened to Andre Cymone?
February 2014 Update: The Stone – The Return of Andre Cymone
Andre Cymone, to you non-Prince freaks, was Prince’s childhood buddy and the first bassist in Prince’s touring band (before they were known as the Revolution). He left in 1981 to pursue a solo career, which didn’t pan out the way he probably wanted. He released three solo albums: Livin’ in the New Wave (1982), Survivin’ in the 80’s (1983), and AC (1985). AC contained his biggest hit, “The Dance Electric”, written and produced by Prince.
Andre found later success by producing hit albums for Pebbles, Adam Ant, and Jody Watley (whom he was married to). Over the years, I’ve wondered whatever happened to the guy. I did a YouTube search tonight, and found a treasure trove of live Andre Cymone footage posted by his drummer (John “Bam Bam” Morgan) from his 1984 tour. In one of the comments, he mentions about Andre: “Last I heard, Andre was living in N.Y. trying his hand at some kind of tv or movie scripts.”
All three of his albums are out of print, but I’m sure they’re out there somewhere. I have my three vinyl albums nestled safely in their plastic covers, along with any Prince-related records of that era. Vanity’s ‘Wild Animal’? Got it. So come on people, help me track Andre Cymone down. Enough is enough. The Andre Cymone ‘Ickmusic Interview’ needs to happen!
Sept. 20, 2011 Update:
Andre performed at a North Minneapolis Family Day event on August 27th. Here he is on bass with a band that includes former Revolution drummer Bobby Z.
Other clips:
Prince Half Time Thoughts
“During ‘Purple Rain’ a thin, white balloon emerged near the stage, and it appeared as if Prince was performing inside a condom.” – Dave Hoekstra, Chicago Sun-Times (in this article)
Huh?
I guess the human brain will interpret things in many different ways, but did any of you think the white silhouette sheet flapping in front of Prince resembled a condom? Me neither. But that didn’t mean the silhouette episode wasn’t without it’s naughty moments. During that 30 seconds of sheet flappage, we were treated to the signature gee-tar strokin’ we haven’t seen since the closing moments of Purple Rain (the movie), where at the end of “Baby, I’m a Star” he jumped up on one of his giant speakers, grabbed his Telecaster, and stroked away until the crowd was showered in purple funk. Okay, that was disgusting. Sorry. But you remember that, right? Nasty Prince was back on display last night, if only for a brief moment.
Overall, I really enjoyed the performance. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but given all of the factors working against him, he overcame them all and delivered a top notch performance. A great showman like Prince can overcome these things.
- Obviously, the weather played a factor. Performing live in a stadium setting in the driving rain can’t be the easiest gig in the world. Did the rain and moisture do something to the guitar tunings? Maybe. A few of the solos seemed like they were just an inch away from what Prince intended, and that may have something to do with the rain, who knows.
- The overall mix wasn’t very impressive. There were some moments when the guitar was a little overpowering in the mix. It would have been cool to hear the Florida A&M marching band featured more prominently. It sounded really cool from what I could barely hear. All that time and effort put into rehearsals and the end result is you could barely hear them. But a really cool part that I could hear was the 1999 intro before “Baby, I’m a Star”, as the marching band approached the stage from either side. And again, what I could hear of them during “Purple Rain” sounded great.
- The intro into “Let’s Go Crazy” was a little disjointed, but as soon as the band picked it up with “If you don’t like, the world you’re living in”, it whipped right into shape.
- The do-rag was interesting. I wonder if that was a last minute decision because of the rain? It wasn’t working for him, and he took it off during “Purple Rain.” The do-rag always reminds me of a scene from Under the Cherry Moon (wasn’t he vacuuming or something?).
- As for wardrobe, it didn’t hit me until someone at work mentioned it today, that his color scheme, teal and orange, are the colors of the Miami Dolphins, and there he was in Dolphin Stadium. Coincidence??
- This would have been the perfect opportunity for a short James Brown tribute. It certainly could have replaced “Proud Mary”. Can you imagine if Prince hit us with “Sex Machine” or even “I Feel Good”? That would have brought the performance to a whole ‘nother level. I mean, who else on God’s green earth is more qualified and gets the automatic stamp of approval to pay tribute to James Brown?? Nobody. Prince missed a golden opportunity there.
- And let’s talk for a second about seizing another golden opportunity. It doesn’t take a marketing genius to figure out that his “Best of You” cover was going to create some serious buzz and overwhelming demand. I have had hundreds upon hundreds of Googlers hitting my site over the last 24 hours searching for “prince best of you”. Why oh why didn’t Prince make the song available for download immediately after the Super Bowl? You gotta strike while the iron is hot, man. Come on Prince! Seize this Golden Opportunity my man!!
Those are my only semi-gripes. But at the end of the day, it was an amazing performance on the world’s biggest stage. Well done, purple – er – teal one!
Buy Prince’s new single, “Guitar”, on his official site:
http://www.3121.comPrince’s Super Bowl Set List (Final)
So the spoiler set list was right…
We Will Rock You intro
Let’s Go Crazy
1999 (short interlude)
Baby I’m a Star >
Proud Mary >
Baby I’m a Star
All Along the Watchtower (brief) >
Best Of You
Purple RainRIP: here lies where the YouTube and Google videos of the performance were once embedded.
Prince’s Super Bowl Set List (Maybe)
UPDATE: See this post for video of the performance.
The set list was:
We Will Rock You intro
Let’s Go Crazy
1999 (short interlude)
Baby I’m a Star >
Proud Mary >
Baby I’m a Star
All Along the Watchtower (brief) >
Best Of You
Purple Rain==================
Potential Spoiler Alert on the Super Bowl set list (don’t read any further if you don’t want to know what Prince will be playing @ the Super Bowl)…..
I saw a possible set list thrown into a comment on this post (which includes the full Sign o the Times rehearsal shows). No idea if this is true or not, but here’s what it said:
Let’s Go Crazy’
‘Baby I’m a Star’
‘Proud Mary’ (brief)
‘Best Of You’
‘Purple Rain’ complete with releasing of doves. The whole set is actually pretty cool, for being Prince.Also, a TV station blog heard the rehearsal yesterday, and had this to say about it…
The sound was clean, and I can give you a preview of what you will hear on Super Bowl Sunday. “Let’s Go Crazy” is on the play list. And, of course, the big finale will be Prince’s signature song “Purple Rain”. But, wait, it gets even better. As the final song builds, the stadium will shoot off fireworks. Purple fireworks, that will look like they are “raining” down over the sides of the stadium bowl (get it?). For Prince fans, it wil be a great show. Then, there are guys like me who are not really all that taken with the “formerly-named-after-an-unpronouncable-symbol” singer. But, even for me, it sounded pretty good.
So it looks like the set list could be legit. Also, with “Best of You” (cover of Foo Fighters) being supplied to Howard Stern’s show last week (you’ll find the audio from the show in this post), it’s very possible that this could be it. Somewhere in there the Florida A&M marching band is gonna do their thing. Hmm, well, we’ll see soon enough.
Yeah, it’s possible that I’m obsessing on Prince’s Super Bowl moment. But it’s pretty exciting for those of us who have followed the man for 20 plus years. I’ve been hooked since my first viewing of Purple Rain in September 1984. Since then, I’ve ridden along on the sometimes bumpy journey that is being a Prince fan. He’s had his ups & downs, and has made some interesting career decisions along the way, but you can always count on being surprised, and most of the time, rewarded with some of the freshest, funkiest, most unique music around.
So go get ’em Prince. Rock the millions upon millions of people who will be watching. Show ’em what ya got.
Lots of blogs are chiming in on the man’s performance tomorrow. Here’s a few:
Anil Dash: A pre-Super Bowl Prince PrimerWog’s Blog: Excited About the Super Bowl
Don’t Need Anything: His Purple Badness – Rockin’ the Super Bowl
With Prince being the devout Jehovah’s Witness that he has become, we can pretty much guarantee no wardrobe malfunctions tomorrow. The days of this Prince are apparently through …
Prince Week Continues: Acoustic Awesomeness
This MTV special eluded me a few years ago during the Musicology tour.
Cream
I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man
Sweet Thing
Sometimes it Snows in AprilUpdate: like most Prince stuff on YouTube, this one has been removed..
Howard Debuts Prince
Okay, well, it very well may be morphing into Prince week here on Ickmusic. I was pleasantly surprised when I turned on Howard Stern this morning to hear them listening to some new Prince tracks. They were listening to (and talking over, for the most part) two new covers: “All Along the Watchtower” and “The Best of You” (a Foo Fighters tune).
Here’s what it sounded like (click the little Play button):
[audio:prince-howard.mp3]
Sounds pretty cool, though I can’t really see Prince pulling out either of these songs for the Super Bowl performance. But who knows?
Also, as you can see on top, Prince will be releasing a brand new tune called “Guitar” on Friday morning through his web site, 3121.com. An album may not be far behind.
I think Friday is also the day he is scheduled to perform at a press conference. A flurry of activity in the little fella’s world! Sweet!
One Week til Super Bowl Prince
One week to go until Prince does it Super Bowl style. Rumors so far have the Florida A&M University ‘Marching 100’ marching band involved somehow. If you caught the Grammys last year, it’s the same marching band that played with Kanye West. Also in the rumor mill is that Prince will be paying tribute to James Brown in some fashion.
So you may want to check out my Prince forum for a cool little contest I just set up for the big day. Ickmusic / Prince Super Bowl Contest. You’ll need to register if you want to participate.
And as far as I can tell, this is the only Prince song with “Super” in the title. A Black Album classic, extended for your listening pleasure.
Prince:
Superfunkycalifragisexy(extended)Original version appears on The Black Album.