dumb dave's shirt collection; so long Cheri, so long

Yeah, that title ain't great, but it's significant for at least one reason. Maybe someday I'll even tell U what that is...

This started out to be a short blog, actually more of a list. My psyche gums it up on the way out and it gets longer as it goes.

I wanted to jot down what shirts I have related to the Prince collection. I have at least 2 for Ben Folds Five, 3 or more Indigo Girls shirts, and not just bc I knew a guy who bought out the stock of a store that folded once, either.

I bought The Gold Experience t-shirt on release day at the NPG store in Uptown. Midnight sale for the superfans night before release day. A line stretching down the block when we got there, the store not yet open. The security guard at the door hustles us in along a velvet rope. No other purchases possible, just the Gold Bag with the album on cassette or CD, a t-shirt, a gold experience branded phone card ?!?! and I don't recall anything else. Not even a poster. And it was like $50 back in 1995.

And then? Ta-very much for a lovely night, then. No, you're not going back out the front door. Follow the line of refridgerator-sized mild-tempered brothers in immaculate suits as they usher you out the side door into the alley. Thank you for your purchase, please come again, goodnight!

I digress.

The Beautiful Experience t-shirt bought from merch table at the Park one night that summer or early fall, during the Gold Experience tour rehearsal shows (not under the Love 4 One Another banner, probably even before that...) and this was for the semi-private concert back on valentine's day that I had a tape recording of from another European trader. The one with the Salt N Pepa cover. None Of Your Bizness. "Bud Lite" tries to play guitar and gets laughed off the stage...that one. See the "bootleg" called TUBE. The Ultimate Beautiful Experience, remastered by 4DF - 4 Da Funk, the miraculous fan-to-fan never-for-sale "label."

I bought a black shirt with yellow graphic text on it at the NPG store. It said "Pussy Control" and I put it over the driver's seat of my car. Sadly it got sunbleached and stretched to hell when forced to serve in such a manner. I have it in a box of memorabilia somewhere. There's a guy selling one on ebay. For $300!?!? (the shameful manner in which I treated this $20 purchase is another reason for my alternate title, dumb dave.)

The 2004ever purple musicology shirt I bought when StuArt got us FRONT ROW seats at the Xcel Energy Center and StuArt grabbed a drumstick from John Blackwell afterwards.

The black shirt with O(+> in a top hat with the gold symbol guitar leaning backwards. Was that Habibi or was the black one Habibi?!?

I bought a NPG jersey from ebay over a year ago. The blue one, worn but in great shape. The literal NEXT DAY after that I saw a purple one, UNworn, for no more than $20 above what I bought the first one for, so I sucked it up in my post-college-loans-somehow adulthood and bought both. The unworn one will continue to be unworn.

I bought a Free Urself t from the website but can't bring myself to wear it. It's absolutely gorgeous. The only t-shirt I ever bought from the official source that I could ever have imagined Prince actually wearing. It's just a stunning piece of art. (Pics or gtfo!! I hear U shout...and yes. This won't be half the blog without photos of the evidence. I'm well aware of that and already working on it...)

I bought a Piano and a Microphone shirt after the show in Oakland a month or so ago.

I won an ebay auction for a NPG Music Club shirt this morning.

Minutes after placing that bid, my phone rang.

Mom told me my cousin Cheri died when they took her off the machines keeping her alive. Turns out you can't drink your life away without consequences. Like going before your mother and too soon to be remembered by your grandkids?!?! Ain't nothing right about any of that... buck fooze!!

So I'm a little scatterbrained, I find it easy to be moved to tears, and I'm watching "public piano" videos on youtube because I don't play very well and mom isn't here to do it for me.

Life seems to be choosing 2016 to try and convince me it's a fleeting thing, friends. Try and make the most of it...

April 2nd, 1994

I first started collecting Prince music in college. Shinders bookstore sold magazines. Walking through their aisles felt like they carried everything. All sorts of international stuff. Plenty of tmus.

I found the fan-zine called "Uptown" published out of Sweden, with plenty of help from various people in the Netherlands. Shinders sold most of their rarer stuff bagged, sealed. In the bag with the ?7th? maybe 8th or 9th issue of Uptown came two fliers.

One was for the european store selling P memorabilia through the mail.

One was a photocopied sub-fanzine called ? Pheromone ? that itself gave a shout-out and praise to an "internet email list" called simply enough, the Prince Mailing List.

As I began to learn how to use the VAX and GOPHER and FETCH and IRC, ISCABBS and other things available through these magical machines called computers...

one of my first acts with my newly acquired email address was to join the PML.

If you've ever been to prince.org and seen their vociferous-to-the-point-of-absurdity admonitions to NOT ASK FOR, WHERE TO GET, OR HELP OBTAINING ANY "bootlegs" ever ever ever ever ever.

I may have been one of the whiny little teenaged bitches who made them choose to do that.

I shudder to think how pathetic I must have come off back then. But then we all grow up, some of us have further to go in the process. That's all...

I need to tell the WHOLE story. It was the fall of the year I graduated high school, 1993. I joined the PML and began trading tapes with fellow students in Holland and Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Norway.

There's a lot of this story that began with me going to First Avenue the following spring expecting a birthday show with the glam-metal band Extreme in the mainroom.

But when I got there, the doors were chained shut, the place clearly deserted, and no show took place at all.

I felt alone and rejected and pissed off.

If only I knew how many times I'd see Prince shred his guitar, play a keyboard or two, even take a whack at the drums...

I wouldn't have felt so rejected by Extreme's no-show.

The coming years were amazingly excellent. I plan to delve into them in detail right here...

every new beginning...

okay so this will be an amusing mess.

I hope for better, but have finally concluded that all these stories in my head need to be outside it somewhere.

I've dropped scraps and shreds at various places, but this will be the one page to try and remember it all on.

I've been a Prince fan since growing up in Minneapolis with KDWB and WLOL radio playing the "Minneapolis sound" in the 1980s made me one. U Got The Look, The Glamorous Life, LRC, 1999, The Bird, Delirious, I Feel For You, Manic Monday, Raspberry Beret. Mmmmmm.

I remember it started to be more than just a passing thing when the single New Power Generation got regular airplay. I knew Prince songs before, but just the radio ones, and the ones they played at the roller skating rink over in Coon Rapids. This new song felt like it came from inside me somehow.

The lyric, the idea, the ferocity of the performance, all of this spoke to my inner teenager craving rebellion and anarchy. This was also in the timeframe of the first Gulf War, so the idea of "making love and music the only things we're fighting for!" had extra appeal among us budding proto-hippies.

I soon enough bought the Graffiti Bridge soundtrack on cassette and proceeded to wear that thing out. I even made a mark with my fingernail on the little clear window in the middle of the tape so I could know just where to rewind it to and hear SHAKE! by The Time.

I grew to love that tape because of the openly acknowledged awkward relationship with a father figure that the voiceover introduction shared with me. I felt like if Prince could have a weird relationship with his father, or even just The Kid from the movie, maybe I wasn't such a misfit weirdo after all. I mean, look at Prince being awesome. If he came from a messed up beginning and grew up to be okay, maybe someday somehow I'll be okay, too!

The story continues through my appreciation for the Batman soundtrack.

There are plenty of stories to tell.

I just had to get started.

I attended 12-15 or more events at Paisley Park over the years. With the help of numerous references online and offline, I'm gonna try to zoom in on each of those experiences and get them down in text so that I don't forget them, and maybe someone else will appreciate them too. Anything's possible, right?

I also read some of my crappy teenaged poetry at the Neo Manifesto poetry readings at the NPG store in Uptown Minneapolis between 1994-1996. We were there once a month for more than a year. I can remember some of the faces I saw turn out regularly for those events, also.

And of course there are plenty of other memories to pepper in from all sides and angles.

I can't let any more of these memories slip into the past. I have to try and nail them down in words.

Thank you, internet and world at large, for showing me how much we all love Prince.

I intend to do anything I can to add to the celebration.

Peace and B wild!