22 March 2023

Favorite Albums Project #2: Sign 'O' The Times by Prince

Sign 'O' The Times by Prince

If you're anyone who's familiar with the funk of the '80s, or hell, '80s music in general, there's no doubt that you know who Prince is. Perhaps younger people know him as one of those legends that unfortunately died during the year 2016, but anyone who knows music knows him as a total funk/pop monarch. And the '80s were his hayday, for sure. Prince is one of my favorite musical artists of all time and yet I have to admit that there's a pretty steep dropoff in terms of quality from the earlier stuff to the later stuff. Regardless, he gave us what he gave us, and that's a wealth of excellent music.

Most music fans know Prince for what's considered his masterpiece, 1984's awe-inspiring Purple Rain. For me, there are a many 10 out of 10 great songs on that album, but nothing tops his true opus, which is this album, Sign 'O' The Times. I find that it sustains the greatness of Prince for a far longer time than Purple Rain did. That is, Sign 'O' The Times is one of THE great double albums of all time. For those who don't know, double albums are when the physical release of the album is long enough to call for two whole vinyl records to be produced for each individual album. So this is a ton of music, and a ton of sustained awesomeness. Somehow, for an hour and twenty minutes, Prince takes us on a funk odyssey exploring many different moods and subjects, and it pretty much never lets up or becomes tiresome. It's an exciting ride from start to finish.

Another thing this has over Purple Rain is that it explores far more serious themes, and a variety of them at that. Not only do you get the typical Prince seduction themes, in songs like "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker" and "It", you also get party anthems (like "Housequake") as well as pensive songs about relationships (the fantastic "I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man" and "Strange Relationship"), calls to action (the title track), and even religious contemplations ("The Cross").

Breaking it down a bit further, I adore the instrumentals on these songs. Prince makes excellent use of all the best drum machines and synthesizers of his time to come up with some of the most spine tinglingly fabulous sounds you could ever imagine, and Sheila E, one of the best drummers of all time, backs many of these tracks. Plus, Prince is truly one of the best vocalists of the twentieth century as well, so you're getting an impossibly fun combo here.

I feel the need to mention that when doing a little bit of searching around for a picture of the cover of the album, I found some promotional stills for it that are just too great to not show y'all. So, here they are to close this out:

(Poster for the concert film accompanying the album, which is great too).

(Cover for the Super Deluxe reissue of the album which includes a ton of unreleased treats and bonuses. Definitely worth checking out if you like the album!)

Stills:

21 March 2023

Favorite Books & Stories - March 2023

Here are some stories I've been reading and enjoying in the last two years since I've last posted about my reading habits on here. They are in no particular order. Enjoy!

1. Richard III by William Shakespeare

Of all of the Shakespeare plays I read for my college Shakespeare course, this had by far the most memorable character for me (aside from the ubiquitous Prince Hamlet). Richard is such a fantastic two-faced snake of a villain, you both want to see what he's gonna do and want him to be stopped as soon as possible. We had a good amount of choice in my class as to what we did our big projects on, and I think I did all of mine on this because it's just so good and deep in terms of subtext.

Aside from the main character's reign of terror, there are a whole slew of great female roles who almost all utilize curses in their damning of other characters. There are tons of excellent insults here, aside from the actual curses as well.

While it's not the most historically accurate (reportedly), it's one of Shakespeare's best that I've read and it's hardly ever mentioned.

2. The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare

Now, The Winter's Tale is another sleeper hit in my book with Shakespeare that was actually my favorite from that class. It has some of the most complex tonal shifts of any piece of fiction I've ever read and I think the best ending in all of Shakespeare's work that I've read. At first, I thought it was a simplistic happy ending, but it has a ton of stuff to read into if you really dissect it and its implications.

3. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut might turn out to be one of my favorite authors, and I say this even though I've only read two of his novels-- this, and the legendary Slaughterhouse-Five. While Slaughterhouse-Five has more of a timeless, classic quality, Cat's Cradle is a wacky and bizarre tragic comedy about the end of the world. Slaughterhouse has its funny moments, but overall it's a much more dark piece of science fiction. Cat's Cradle is just ridiculous, and I love it for that. There are many points where I laughed out loud when reading, especially towards the end once the dominos start falling.

Vonnegut also impresses in this novel by creating an entire fictional religion-- Bokononism-- and an entire fictional history of an island nation and its inhabitants-- San Lorenzo. All of this he connects with a fictional character who dumbfoundingly and almost by accident came up with the components needed for the atom bomb. Brilliant stuff.

4. "If the Martians Have Magic" by P. Djeli Clark

This short story, a fantasy sci-fi saga of first contact with aliens and the developments thereafter, was one that I was not expecting to like. I usually want nothing to do with this type of stor-- and I'm not even sure why-- but this story absolutely floored me with how well it was written and how creative its ideas were and how well those ideas were integrated together into an incredibly cohesive world.

5. "Understand" by Ted Chiang

Another sci-fi short story-- this one plays out like a more fleshed out an heady version of the movie Scanners by David Cronenberg. It's about someone who gains amazing intellectual ability through an experimental procedure and what happens when that procedure is given to multiple other people across the US (I believe it was the US-- Maybe Canada). The way it plays out is brilliant and has to be read to be believed. Check this one out in Chiang's famous collection Stories of Your Life and Others.

6. "Biology" by Kevin Wilson

I've never been so emotionally destroyed by a short story. This one's a masterfully crafted story about a high school misfit and his connection with an understanding teacher. It's got some twisted parts, but the core of this story feels totally from the heart and extremely tearjerking at that.

7. Sula by Toni Morrison

This was my first Morrison novel and it makes me want to read everything she's ever written. It details the friendship and toils of a couple of black girls in a fictional town in the Midwest in the early 20th century. There are some amazing unexpected turns and the ending made me so suddenly realize how much I cared for the characters that I cried. Possibly the best ending to a novel I've ever read in that way.

8. Ubik by Philip K. Dick

Wow. This novel by the sci-fi legend Philip K. Dick has a rough start but once it gets halfway through it grabs you and doesn't let you go until it ends, and still it has your hooks in you as you ponder what was real and what was not. It's brilliantly plotted and despite it's sometimes obnoxious character descriptions it has one of the most fascinatingly developed fictional worlds I've ever gotten to experience. Essentially, it's set in a future where people can be placed in "half-life", where they can still communicate with the living after death, and the main character works for a company that hires people with psychic abilities to do corporate espionage on other companies. There are parts of this book that are absolutely terrifying, with how well they describe some of the torments the characters have to face towards the end.

9. Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow

Ragtime is probably the most complete and well thought out portrait of a real time and place I've had the pleasure reading about. It's set in New York City at the turn of the century, tracking the exploits of a plethora of real people-- Harry Houdini, Emma Goldberg, Henry Ford, among others, and mixes in a fictional story around their lives. Not only all this complexity of plotting, but also some really fun and pulse-pounding crime stuff in there too!

10. The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman

I took an entire class on this graphic novel/memoir. It is quite literally the most important book I've read and it is almost limitless in its depth and visual brilliance. It's about the author's father's experience in the Holocaust. Thinking about parts of it make me shiver and get goosebumps at just how effective and terrifying and sad it all is. The ending is absolutely heartbreaking-- even though the father does survive the Shoah, the last scene with him is just... yeah. Very intense.

Favorite Albums Project #1: Year of the Caprese by Cherub

Well, here's an undertaking. I'm gonna be posting some music criticism (and I use that term very lightly, this is very much out of my wheelhouse) for some of my favorite albums. I remember I did something like this on my old defunct Instagram page, and really I just want to update those outdated teenage opinions with some more seasoned ideas from someone who's a bigger music fan than ever. Hope you enjoy.

Year of the Caprese by Cherub

Holy shit guys. This album was my preteen through teen life, and it still remains my personal favorite album to this day. You might think, "What? Some random indie electropop album is your favorite... ever?" Well, the answer's yes. Over all of the most acclaimed albums in the world, this is MY favorite. It's not perfect, but it's my top album because I have such a personal connection to it.

Essentially, when I was a kid, I listened to whatever my parents had on the radio and on CD, which happened to be a lot of oldies. In particular, I remember a funk compilation CD that my parents owned which had all kinds of great music on it, and I think that was the first time I was introduced to the genre that really moves me to this day. Funk is a sort of odd, vague genre, but when I hear it, I know it, and usually I love it.

Year of the Caprese is Cherub's follow up to their awesome 2013 album MoM & DaD, and it steals their big hit off of that last album, which you may have heard if you were into the club scene around ten years ago, "Doses and Mimosas". A ton of people consider Cherub "that Doses and Mimosas band", sadly including the band themselves today (a reference to the fact that that's what their Spotify description says. "We're the Doses and Mimosas band but we do other music too". Kinda depressing to see one of my favorite music duos succumb to a sort of one hit wonder monotony, but oh well.

But this album, along with most of their other absolute bangers, prove that they are much more than "that Doses and Mimosas band"! Something that I totally love about the excellent funky neo-disco grooves of this record are the self aware lyrics that seem to somewhat deconstruct the "party music" that many people reduce this band to having always produced. So much of it has a "crying on the dance floor" quality to it, including the unforgettable "<3 (Heart)", which is one hell of a break-up song. There's some more self awareness in many of the references to relationships (and relations) on the record. As opposed to the typical "fuck yeah I had sex"-type of club music, this seems to have a lot more of a variety of emotion and it feels so much more genuine. The highs feel so blissful (such as on the closer, "Chocolate Strawberries", and the lows are so bitter (such as on the aforementioned "<3 (Heart)".

The instrumentals are so fun by themselves, with their retro-style production, yet this has some great lyrics and vocals. Jordan's low, talkbox-filtered crooning along with Jason's fantastic almost stuttering falsetto is one of my complete favorite combinations of vocals.

I love every single song off this album in its own way. There's not one dud. I hope you love it even half as much as I do friends!