Carvin Knowles of "porn-funk" outfit Sex-O-Rama told us about his love for a Prince classic.
Prince
1999 (Warner Bros.)
Carvin Knowles: I have been asked to talk about my favorite album. I don’t have just one, but there is one album that has been with me for years, that shaped my ideas about what music can and should be.
Don’t worry. I won’t hurt you… I only want you to listen to Prince’s 1999 album again. The whole album. Lazy reviewers always call this album “genius.” It isn’t. It’s a hot mess, and if you can’t acknowledge that, you don’t really love the album: you love the idea of the album and that isn’t the same. 1999 is a bumpy ride of unfinished ideas, half-baked concepts and smart-assed “the joke’s on you” moments, all mixed in with a handful of completely brilliant jams and great songwriting. It’s an artist’s laboratory filled with the clutter of creation. It is crazy, funky, sexy, eclectic, weird, and frequently just plain obscene. It isn’t one big genius work but it is the work of a genius.
In the first three tracks, he sets the tone for the whole album.
We all know the opening track, with its fanfare-like synths and fat drums, but under all that, Prince is playing a funky wah-wah groove on his guitar. Through the verses, his voice switches character with each line. And then, near the end, there’s that section with everyone singing “Par-tay” it’s just huge, before it all breaks down into Prince’s unmistakable guitar groove. Next up is the deliberate pop song “Little Red Corvette.” But as synth-pop it is deceptive. The verses are at half the speed of the chorus. And the chorus runs at roughly the same speed 1999, but it somehow feels downtempo and breezy. He’s quietly turning the world on its head. The song is almost entirely without guitars until Dez Dickerson plays that iconic guitar solo. His style is so remarkably different from Prince’s that it gives the song a more ethereal feel, in contrast to the very sexual nature of the Prince’s singing. After that, the quirky and disjointed “Delirious” jumps in to throw us all off-balance. The tempo is fast, the synthesizer riff is absolutely goofy, the musical phrases end like a blues jam that was never there, the drum machines sound particularly mechanical, and the whole thing seems unfinished, which is absolutely perfect for Prince’s absolutely manic performance. In the opening track Prince promised us this album was going to get weird, and Delirious delivers on that promise.
When this album was released, Let’s Pretend We’re Married was a huge hit, so you might not have taken the time to really listen to it for a while. The backing track is structured as a straight-ahead New Wave synth jam but in all those synthesizer parts, you hear the first completely formed Prince keyboard style. It really sounds like one synth and one drum machine until you notice that subtle bell-tone. But this minimalist jam is all about the vocals and all the vocals are Prince being his own filthy self. It is gloriously obscene, then turns religious at the end, just to keep us confused.
By far, my favourite jam on the album is the funk epic “D.M.S.R.” It has Linn Drums, bass guitar, synth bass, a huge lead synth riff and subtle funky guitar. But standing at the centre of it all is Prince flanked by Jill Jones and Lisa Coleman, leading everyone within earshot into a party chant for the ages. Add this track to a roomful of people and the party will be rocking!
But after D.M.S.R. the album goes into uncharted territory. Buckle up, time-travellers because Prince is about to get gloriously weird. First stop on this next leg of the journey into crazy town is “Automatic.” It sounds like Prince is just beginning to figure out how to be Prince. It’s not good but it still manages to be fun. At more than 9 minutes, it is the longest track on the album but don’t skip past it. It doesn’t hold any surprises but after 9 minutes, you’ll start to hear it differently. Then the album gets even more experimental with “Something In The Water (Does Not Compute)” which defies the way we think of pop or rock or music in general, while Prince plays the character of a frustrated incel. It isn’t fun. It’s just wrong, but that is (very apparently) the point. You’re supposed to feel repulsed by the character. It’s one of those Prince songs that nobody talks about, because it’s just too hard to describe.
And then, when the weird stuff is almost too much (and after an intro made of collaged sounds), there is an absolute gem. At first, “Free” just feels like Prince has lifted the burden of the last two songs off your shoulders but this song is more than just a welcome relief. It is a real, honest-to-goodness, anthem to freedom. If you can’t remember hearing it before, put it on your playlist on high rotation. It’s the slow-jam that we all need righ now.
My favourite NSFW song has long been “Lady Cab Driver.” It is a truly great funk jam. The extended bridge that starts with “This is 4 the cab you have to drive for no money at all…” with all its female orgasmic sounds (performed by Jill Jones) takes jabs at Disney and Warner Brothers and the Ultra Rich long before most of us had given them any thought. But beneath all that sexy transgression, lies an amazing jam. The drums on this one are completely real. Prince plays two channels worth of funk guitar and after that infamous bridge, he unleashes his unmistakeable signature berzerk guitar solo. Hidden all through the track are crazy samples of animals and street sounds and an out-of-sync chiming of a clock.
Yes, after that, the album is starting to wind down but there’s still a few surprises left. “All The Critics Love You In New York” is another great dance jam. Here is Prince making us all feel like insiders, then playing his guitar. It has all the things. And it features one of the first recorded mentions of the “Old Skool.” This jam is prophetic of the New Power Generation or 3121. It is so far forward that at first it sounds like it doesn’t belong on 1999…right up until Prince says “he’s definitely maturbating…The album ends with “International Lover” which starts out as a straight-ahead, sexy slow-jam in the funk tradition right up until the “rap” (in the old-skool sense) when he starts talking about the “seduction seven-fourty-seven” and then it’s all about Prince being Prince.
If it isn’t genius, what is 1999? It’s Funk, it’s Pop, it’s New Wave, it’s Prog, It’s Experimental, and sometimes it’s bad, and even the bad parts are brilliant. So listen to it again. And this time, don’t skip anything.
Sex-O-Rama's Invaders From the Pleasure Planet LP is out now.
