Prince and the Revolution – Parade

It’s hard to believe this was really this long ago, going on 40 years that Prince was on a level where he could put out a new album every year, write and produce for other acts, and even write, direct and star in his own movies. But that’s the level he was at – and because he was so much sui generis, it just seems like his work exists outside of time. This certainly doesn’t sound like 40 years ago. Outside of the other acts that he developed and promoted, was there anyone else like Prince out there?

This album came out in 1986. It’s really the soundtrack to “Under the Cherry Moon,” a movie written, directed by and starring Prince. It didn’t do great, so it was probably clever to give the album an entirely different title and look, essentially disassociating it from the movie while at the same time capturing the music. “Kiss” was, of course, a monster hit; the other singles from the album didn’t fare as well (and at the same time, Prince was releasing non-album singles as well).

Not ever having seen the movie, the introductory track never made any particular sense to me, and it’s actually hard to imagine how these songs would fit together into a moviescape – because there’s a whole bunch of different styles going on here. So, there’s nothing much about this that feels like a soundtrack album – it’s a great listen.

1986 – living in our lovely little apartment in Syracuse, being young and cute and full of hopes and dreams and things we wanted to do and be. It’s incredible how many of those came true, eventually, at one time or another, and how many more amazing things happened that we never even envisioned at that time. I have such an affection for the two sweet kids we were back when we were listening to this for the first times.

Through the years, though, this didn’t get an exceptional amount of play on my turntable – and that’s certainly because it was overtaken the next year by what I still think is the greatest Prince album ever, and one of the greatest albums of all time.