mountains

ok, so this is a blast from the past (at least for ray, wendy & i it is, cb, on the other hand, is cringing right now, possibly vomiting as well)....

i realized tonight that i have not been listening to a lot of music lately. that's usually a sure sign that something's a miss in my head... (exhibit one is below, titled "ugg"). music is one of the fundamental aspects of who i am. indeed my earliest memory is of me sitting in my bedroom in the house i lived in before my parents got divorced - sitting in front of a little record player spinning vinyl. whenever i am not spending a lot of time with music, somethings wrong.

music has been my constant companion from childhood (first records: disco duck & black magic woman - i swear!), through adolescence (discovery of prince, siouxsie, depeche and madonna), to college (kate bush, peter gabriel, lloyd cole and miles davis) - on to music school; the the and afghan whigs and an unfortunate bout of queensryche) and all the way up to present day.

the muscians i tended to listen to pushed me to discovering different styles and artists. prince lead me to miles davis and jazz. siouxsie, to punk. peter and kate to world beat. what could be better?

they were (and still are) my constant companions. at work i've become known as the music guy - which suits me just fine, and allows me to foist my current goldfrapp obsession on my audiences in the form of walk-in/out music.

music lead me from the closet (babble, indigo girls & madonna of course) and kept me sane when i was spending obscene amounts of time in the hospital (another story for another day).

which brings me back to "ugg" - i should be more in-tune with my mind. when i don't listen to music, more often than not, it means i'm depressed or in a rut. couple that with an intense addiction to npr and you have one very unhappy 9thwave.

so, while rambling about you tube tonight, i stumbled on this amazing piece of music video perfection - prince & the revolutions 1986 gem: "mountains".

now, prince is, was, always will be the shit. even when he's producing lackluster jams, he has his back catalog to rest on. that allows him to continue to be the shit.

mountains is one of my all time fave prince tunes, and fuck if i don't love this video to pieces. this was right before prince broke up the revolution and remind's me forever of my 16th summer. what a perfect fuckin' summer that was. a summer where the world and your future is full of possibilities - where you can be as self-absorbed as you want to be and nobody bats an eye. a summer where you still have hope and dreams.

the band on this tune, the revolution - shit, i can't say anything bad about the revolution. of course, the band that came after (the sign of the times/lovesexy band) was technically better on a musical level, but the revolution - man, that's the band that built funk if you ask me.

now, this incarnation of the band was actually known in the prince world as the counter-revolution. when prince disbanded the side project 'the family' (the original singers of nothing compares 2 u), the family was more or less folded into the revolution. it became big, bold and a damn near perfect band. backing singers/dancers, extra muscle in the form of miko's guitar and of cousre the horns - every funk band needs it's own real hornsection.

so why do i love this song and video? well for starters, i always dig when prince is playful as he is here. the interplay between him and the girls (wendy and lisa for the uninitiated) always charms me. eric leeds and atlanta bliss on horns never fail to flip my switch, and for better or worse, it's one of the last times we saw the revolution together - so it holds a tender spot for me. bobby on drums (underrated), dr fink on keys (oh that amazing synth sound), the girls, brownmark on bass. not to mention the larger band featuring jerome, miko the boys and susanna (and sometimes sheila). when the revolution broke up in the fall of 86, it was (as far as i was concerned) like the beatles breaking up.

oh and it features one of the women i'd switch for - kristin scott thomas - in the video. she's fuckin' beautiful.

so kick back, bask in the glory of wendy and lisa and prince at their playful best and dig the mountains.

guitars and drums on the 1!

p.s., i can feel my mood shifting already

music heard while writing this post:

duh... mountains over and over and over again.