Play In The Sunshine (random topics; babbling brain bubbles) And That Says What?

I came back from Minnesota -seem' like a minute ago- with a real shock of inspiration to DO something HERE on this blarg. And in general.

And yet what happened instead? I know there was a time in the mid 2000s where every blog had to get over the idea that LIFE is unpredictable and we can't always post everyday or as often as we wanted to.

So I'm doing that again? Repeating myself? No, not really.

Good King Stephen says any writer has to read, or they won't write anything worth reading. I have agreed with that sentiment since before I read him saying it.

So I've been reading. A strange quirk, then, that I've ordered and bought and collected, even when streaking through an airport to a changed gate before departure, every Prince commemorative edition magazine I've seen for sale.

And I haven't read a word in any of them. Can't even bring myself to flip through a single page.

I read the newspaper clippings my mother in law sent me. The Strib is always welcome, familiar. I grew up in Anoka, just over the river from Ramsey County, in which one finds Minneapolis.

So not just the Minneapolis Star Tribune was an everyday part of my life, so was KMSP-9 TV which was a true independent station back then and still regularly outperformed the local network affiliate stations with their newscasts and production values of ads, graphics, visuals and bumpers.

KTCA-2 or KTCI-17 were our PBS affiliates, and they occasionally recognized our hometown treasures, Purple ones and other ones, too. But perhaps most significant in this context were the Minneapolis radio stations.

I'm on the record elsewhere and among countless friends as an acolyte, historian, fanatic about KJJO 104 FM and KREV Rev105 Revolution Radio in the 1990s. These were essential elements of my post-high school and post-college life.

I grew up on the saccharine bucolic teenager music of the 1980s. Mainly these trickled through to me via KDWB 101.3 FM and WLOL 99.1 FM. I was ridiculously devoted to Casey Kasem's American Top 40 for a span that seemed endless at the time and yet can still be measured in months, not years, when looking back on it in internet searches now.

Before I had started listening to Prince albums, I knew his music through the radio and Minnesotan culture. These things permeated around me before I knew how to appreciate them in any kind of depth.

So when I did finally recognize the vast ocean of ONE man's music, I became forever enthralled and enchanted when I dove in and drank deep of it.

This is a longwinded way to come back around and say that rather than reading anything posthumous about Prince [which is preposterous since I won't believe he could be dead. He certainly isn't "gone."] I have been sticking to stuff written before this year. Optimistic, shall we say?

I haven't been reading the magazines, the countless publications to attempt to memorialize Brother Nelson. I _have_ however been reading the sh-t out of books written and published in the mindset I remain partial to. He's still alive, he's still potent, he's still creative and full of dynamics.

I've read several books and will read several more.

I just wish that the ONE track in the various permutations of what became Sign O The Times ... Dream Factory and Crystal Ball... a track called "And That Says What?" has not "leaked" or otherwise been shared with the collector community...I keep wishing it finally WOULD.

I really wanna hear "And That Says What?" No surprise, what Prince lover doesn't want to hear more music they haven't heard? And I can't stop at merely calling myself a "fan" since we went through that rough patch in the late 1990s where O(+> made the feeble comparison that "fan is short for fanatic, and we don't want those!" I love his music. Love. (I'm no fanatic, you symbol-named fool.)

What makes this particular "outtake" an itch I can't yet scratch? Why bother whining about this one cut when I've got dozens of songs most people don't even know exist? Bc within the past few years a whole album credited to the jam band Prince was working with at this time HAS become commonly available and shared widely.

[Hell, it's probably on youtube by now, waiting to be sniped down by some wannabe white-hat with websheriff so deeply ingrained it has transcended the concept of "bookmarked" and gone on to replace actual brain cells.]

If I do have any "spooky electric" inside, I could tease my unfocused theory that if anybody did die, perhaps it was the Big Bad Wolf that's been having a tantrum about the internet for the last 10+ years. The BBW I'm referring to this time is the guy who looked and sounded a LOT like Prince, but wasted his time pouting about how youtube never paid HIM (?!?) for videos OTHER people shot and posted there.

The BBW had no respect for shared culture of a new and different kind, made no artistic attempts to stitch together people's cellphone videos and create something truly new from them...no appreciation at all, just megalomaniac struggling for control, spewing hate!??

As much of an asshole as I can be at this point is that I hope the BBW is gone. I hope whatever remains can make peace with the culture of sharing that the internet has revived among humanity.

I hope that reissues, repressings, expanded editions stuffed with bonus tracks, and tens of unreleased albums quickly spiral out of Paisley Park, PRN enterprises, 3rdeyegirl, Tyka's trust, or whoever looks out for the eventual museum The Park was bound to become.

But I'm gonna keep reading as many words as I can get my hands on from before anybody started to treat the phrase Mayte uttered in 1993 "Prince esta muerto" as if it were literal fact. Because I refuse to accept that.

Death has no dominion over the endless power of music. Anything ol' spooky reaper-skullface can do pales in comparison.