Maybe it has been almost 20 years. Sure doesn't feel like it all that much.
I stumbled around Dinkytown Minneapolis during my lunch break. We open our remembery early September 1998, classes at the U starting up again. So many wide-eyed students in the streets that the cars and buses have to hustle around them. The businesses in the area were having a sidewalk sale. Lemming that I am, I ended up digging in the dollar-CD bin outside Disc-Go-Round.
I found "Girl Bros." which I knew to be Wendy and Lisa. This was the first of a heap of more than a dozen discs I grabbed that day. I could spool you off a whole nother blog post about the Tulare Dust comp in this pile, but that's a story for another day, or at least a more No Depression Americana centered theme.
Coincidentally I could also spool off a whole series of blog posts about rare compilations with incredible versions of songs most people have never heard. If only there were an audience for such a thing... /deadpan
I'm sitting here now listening to Blue Scholars' album Cinémetropolis and loving the vibes. Reminds me of CYNE and makes me want to go further down the rabbit hole and further back in their discography.
I should have a list of the comps I've made on cheap CDRs for the car over the years. And the ones I made on cassette and minidisc before that. Might even be worth posting somewhere, if I ever get around to it...
I had been a pretty dedicated Prince addict in the middle of the 1990s. I still am way into him. I've known more than a few people who can discuss the differences between sources for the same content from Neil Young, Led Zeppelin, The Who, and other bands. I'm just the guy who can do that for Prince music.
I've been reviewing sources trying to match the cassette I wore out at college in the 1990s. I had The Beautiful Experience live version of I Believe In You, performed at a live concert broadcast in Europe on Valentine's Day 1994 to celebrate the release of TMBGITW single. Don't get me wrong, they weren't IN Europe.
O(+> and the NPG played for a room of lucky people on the main sound stage at Paisley Park. Where they shot so many of his videos, all of Graffiti Bridge, and what is a big display of four different eras of stage sets now in the Museum it's become.
But relations with Warner Bros being what they were at that time, only us die-hards ever heard The Beautiful Experience live concert at the time. American audiences didn't get to hear or see any of the later 1990s promotional materials that went with the music. The rest of the world got one chance at the time, and nobody who isn't dedicated to preserving their media has seen much of it ever since.
Sure I have "The Sacrifice of Victor" and "The Undertaker"...on laserdisc. Know anybody who can repair laserdisc players? Somebody needs to monetize these assets for the estate and the museum.
But once again I digress... The cassette I played on my walkman at college featured a brutally loud bassline overpowering the rest of the sound during I Believe In You. I grew to appreciate it like that. Thick funky bass that could crush a dumpster made my brains go YUM. I threw my yo-yo and stomped through the snow and sleet with that bumping into my ears all the time back then.
Every 'bootleg' I've found since sounds different somehow. The mix is softer, the vocals and organ are louder than the bass. No big deal. If I exhaust the sources available I'll just process it myself to make it sound like I remember. Until I find that one missing cassette...whenever that is...
Anyway. I Will was a brief song on the record-company kiss-off contractual-obligation album from O(+> called Chaos & Disorder. Despite it having some excellent tracks, most people hardly remember this one. I remember thinking that because I Will blended into the next track, called Into The Light, in a hurried way.
Hurry was no surprise. Everybody wanted the Warner Bros years to be over at that point. So C&D sounded like it couldn't be over fast enough, no matter how many excellent ideas were left stillborn along the brief 45 minute tear through songs rehearsal-style.
On C&D we heard Prince's version of the song, if there's any relation to it, first. That's the point. I had gotten to know C&D like the back of my hand for a while and then had newer music, both from Prince and others replace it in the forefront of my mind. Despite it containing Same December, one of my absolute favorites! Heck, most casual-fan types don't even know there was a video for that song.
When I grabbed that Girl Bros CD I didn't make the connection that their incredible song I Will might even be the same song composition as that half-formed idea on C&D. I just knew I liked it. I liked several of those songs on the Girl Bros. release and played it a lot in that period. Don't get me wrong, I appreciated the whole album, but I kept going back for certain songs. Not just I Will, either.
For some reason I couldn't find the CD when I went looking for it a year ago, it had somehow fallen from my shelf in the half dozen moves I've made since I bought it.
But Wendy and Lisa have an excellent online presence and I gladly bought an expanded digital edition of Girl Bros and some of their other albums in the span of a few mouse clicks. These things don't have to be complicated and they don't have to involve a subscription, either.
I guess I thought I should bring this up. I'd heard O(+> power through a brief verse or two of "eye will" from C&D that became "Into The Light" before it really felt like it started. But when I heard Girl Bros do their song with the same title, I Will, I heard something finished and whole.
I don't even know if there was any shred of a Revolution song that connects these two things.
But if you catch me staring off into the clouds these are the sorts of things I'm probably thinking about...
