Jim Connelly

Certain Songs #1658: The Psychedelic Furs – “India”

October 16, 2019 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: The Psychedelic Furs
Year: 1980

What if, the Sex Pistols, but with a saxophone? And an unrelenting drummer who does builds instead of rolls? That was the unlikely recipe for The Psychedelic Furs, whose debut album utterly slayed me when I finally got around to getting it in early 1981, and whose second album . . . well, we’ll get to that soon enough.

Naturally, the U.S. and U.K. versions of the album differ, and naturally, in all cases I’m going with the U.S. version, because it’s the one that I lived with, and I definitely lived with this record, even if I did drop the needle a couple of minutes into the album in order to ignore the slow, near-ambient buildup to the opening track, “India,” which — once it gets going — well and truly establishes their sound.

Certain Songs #1657: Prince – “I Like It There”

October 15, 2019 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Chaos & Disorder
Year: 1996

Chaos & Disorder aka Prince’s Contractual Obligation Record was his final album for Warner Bros records, and as such, was incredibly underpromoted, and as such, went absolutely nowhere on any charts.

Which seems weird now, considering that 1995’s The Gold Experience had broken the top ten as an album and contained the last of his top ten singles, the overly adorned “The Most Beautiful Girl in The World” made it all the way to #3, the last time that happened in his lifetime.

Certain Songs #1656: Prince – “Batdance”

October 14, 2019 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Batman
Year: 1989

. . .

People seem to have forgotten — or perhaps, it’s been scrubbed from history — what happened after the 1989 Batman film was released, even though it caught everybody by surprise. While the media was all worried about violence that might break out after showings of Do The Right Thing, they completely missed the true threat: virginal white males who got all het up by Jack Nicholson’s performance.

This was a cohort who were already pissed off about the casting of “Mr. Mom as Batman” — as if an actor as great as Michael Keaton somehow couldn’t pull it off — but instead of channeling their anger at him, they decided that behaving like the Clown Prince of Crime would be a better tack.

Certain Songs #1655: Prince – “Sign ‘O’ The Times”

October 13, 2019 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Sign ‘O’ The Times
Year: 1987

. . .

It is, of course, a sucker’s game to choose Prince’s best album: some folks like the new wave feel and the fucksongs of Dirty Mind, others the dance dance revolution of 1999 or the rock ‘n’ roll of Purple Rain. And hell, I prefer the psychedelic baroque soul of Parade and the gloss of The Gold Experience.

But then again, there’s Sign ‘O’ The Times, his 1987 double album, which may or may not be the best Prince album, but is absolutely the most Prince album, covering everything he did well: hard funk, swirling pop, glossy ballads, and even added gospel indie rock to his canon in the form of “The Cross.”

Certain Songs #1654: Prince & The Revolution – “Mountains”

October 11, 2019 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Parade
Year: 1986

. . .

Along with “Let’s Go Crazy” and “The Cross,” “Mountains” is probably my favorite Prince song, such a stellar jam that I’m pissed at myself that I didn’t realize how much I loved it until 2016, but better late than never.

Seamlessly blending funky soul and psychedelic pop, “Mountains” is as big-sounding as its subject, riding on top of a massive four-on-the-floor kickdrum that never lets up for even seconds, even as the song changes all around it.

That kickdrum is surrounded by glistening synths and ringing percussion, giving “Mountains” the feel of a magic carpet flying high in the sky gazing down at the world.

Certain Songs #1653: Prince & The Revolution – “Girls & Boys”

October 10, 2019 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Parade
Year: 1986

Please don’t hold it against me that Parade is my favorite Prince album. Sure, I know that objectively, Sign ‘O’ The Times is probably his greatest album and that Purple Rain is his most world-beating, but I love tuneful funky weirdness of Parade.

Sadly, this was a thing that I didn’t realize until after he passed and I started digging into the parts of his catalog I’d missed, and Parade, which doubled as the soundtrack to his film Under The Cherry Moon, the, erm, unsuccessful follow-up to Purple Rain was where I started.

Certain Songs #1652: Prince & The Revolution – “Raspberry Beret”

October 9, 2019 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Around The World in A Day
Year: 1985

After the world-beating career-defining multimedia triumph that was Purple Rain, Prince spent years and years worrying about the follow-up, and when it came out, years later, it was crushed under the weight of expectations.

Oh wait, that’s not what happened at all: instead, he went right back into the studio with The Revolution and ended up releasing Around The World in a Day while the singles from Purple Rain were still lighting up the radio. Changing things up again, the songs on Around The World in a Day explored the psychedelic elements that lurked underneath Purple Rain songs like “When Doves Cry” and “Take Me With U” and brought them to the forefront.

Certain Songs #1651: Prince – “Little Red Corvette”

October 8, 2019 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: 1999
Year: 1982

Despite the fact that both “I Wanna Be Your Lover” and “1999” were strong singles for Prince — landing at #11 and #12 respectively — it was really “Little Red Corvette” that began Prince’s imperial phase: for the next decade Prince singles were far more likely to reach the top 10 than not, an utterly remarkable thing considering how much the scene was changing, and how he was continually mixing things up.

And, of course, in early 1983, “Little Red Corvette” was both inescapable and inevitable, getting ridiculous amounts of airplay on MTV, top 40 radio, and yes, even on college radio, or at least KFSR, where it was obvious to a lot of the DJs that what Prince was doing was as experimental as anything else we were playing.

Certain Songs #1650: Prince – “Partyup”

October 7, 2019 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Dirty Mind
Year: 1980

. . .

It’s now been three and one-half years — and over 1100 posts — since Prince Rogers Nelson ascended away from this particular mortal plane (and yeah, I know that it feels like decades), and ever since that time, there hasn’t been a moment where I didn’t have some Prince music in my mix. Obviously, his estate has helped out with that, raiding his infamous vaults for projects like the reissue of Purple Rain, the solo Piano and a Microphone session, the recent Originals comp, and of course the massive upcoming 1999 reissue.

But even beyond that, there where holes in my knowledge of his music — including his 1980s albums, so I’ve spent a lot of time since April 21, 2016 filling as many of those holes as possible, and while I wrote a bunch of posts after he died, I’ve got a few more songs to discuss, if you don’t mind, starting off with the closing funk jam from 1980’s Dirty Mind, “Partyup.”

Certain Songs #1649: The Primitives – “All The Way Down”

October 5, 2019 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Pure
Year: 1989

. . .

It’s a pretty cardinal rule that for bands where there a band with a great female lead singer and a dude who is mostly responsible for the music that nobody wants to hear the songs that the dude sings. (See “Kiley, Rilo.)

And so as I listened to the CD of Pure over and over again in the back office of the newly moved Video Zone, I was definitely cognizant of this rule, which made me feel a bit weird when I realized that my favorite song on the record was one of the ones that the dude sang.