Artist: PRINCE
June 7, 1958 – April 21, 2016
Made 40 studio albums with lost album Welcome 2 America as the most recent one,
released last July.
Anniversary album: DIAMOND AND PEARLS – 13th LP Released: 1 October 1991 – 30 years ago Score: #1 in the US and Australia, #2 in the UK
Pitchfork said: “By 1991, Prince’s unsurpassed run of brilliance had ended, but he still
had a lot of great music in him. Diamonds and Pearls had a clutch of future classics along
with some odd experiments… As with all the greatest pop stars, Prince was a master at simplifying life’s most complicated emotions into catchphrases. He encompassed lust, jealousy, fear, spirituality, avarice, the impulse to run away, and the need to strip everything to its core—sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively. The man who believed in everlasting love died alone and childless, adored by almost the entire world. A song like “Diamonds and Pearls” illustrates why. For all the flamboyance and idiosyncrasy, Prince just wanted the same things as everyone else.” Full review here. Score: 8/10.
Turn Up The Volume: “One word. Genius”
Singles/clips: Get Off / Cream / Diamonds And Girls
Four number ones this day in, respectively 1973 – 1979 – 1984 and 1990
Band: GRAND FUNK RAILROAD Who: Hefty famous rockers from Flint, Michigan, United States Active: 1969–1976, 1981–1983, 1996–1998, 2000–present Single: WE’RE AN AMERICAN BAND
The title track from the same-titled LP
Score: Topped the US Singles Chart on
29 September 1973 – 48 years ago today
An infectious ditty, bouncing in your head before it ends. If this, simply irresistible, tune doesn’t do anything for you, you gotta go to your shrink. From Barnett’s new, upcoming album Takes Time, Take Time, out 12th November.
Catchy as hell…
Summer is only over when it’s over. Still time to move and groove to this disco
stomper from the recently released lost Prince album Welcome To America.
Why don’t we all get a tattoo, suggests Frank. I think he’s right, it’s
the only way to really go nuts to this bangtastic jackhammer. From
the band’s 4th longplayer called Sticky, arriving in October.
“I’m not looking for trouble, I’m looking for love / Let me in your hard heart Let me in your pub” sings Amyl over and over again with fervency and tons of gusto, while flamed-up guitars go mental. A blast from new album Comfort To Me, out 10th September.
A queer five-piece from London who play fun, fuzzy garage rock. Their songs are a mishmash of influences all pulled together by a love of loud noises, pop tunes, and
having a good time. ‘Soap And Cigarettes‘ is a stand-out knockout from their brand
new album Hedge Fun.
This ardent 4-piece flames with force on this new riff-roaring ripper. They operate somewhere between Green Day and Weezer, with peppery panache, gusty guitars,
vivid vocals, and a cracking chorus.
Darkwave electricity from Belgium. Haunting and ominous. You can smell Doomsday waiting around the corner. It’s 2021, folks, we need to fix our problems now. This sickly sticky roller coaster is a call to arms.
‘Highway To Hell’ by TOM MORELLO feat. Eddie Vedder and Bruce Springsteen
Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello launches his new album titled The Atlas Underground Fire on 15 October. He invited several friends, like Springsteen and Vedder for a bombastic version of AC/DC’s classic headbanger.
The speedy and steamy title track is one of the fired-up highlights of the new album of this punked-up Brooklyn squad. A zigzagging collection of amplified belters to start and end post-lockdown parties with. More info here.
Wham bam, bloody bam! From the kick-off Money Song booms, bangs and batters. Hefty guitars blare in between and raise your blood pressure on the spot. And when the blissful chorus pops up it’s time to leave your cocoon and let your body do its thing. Don’t wait to boost your stream of adrenalin.
A stunning and shadowy top piece from this duo’s equally stunning
album Participation Mystique. And Tomorrow sounds cinematic,
atmospheric and spacey. Join Lore City on their journey.
Wurlitzer jukeboxes were invented for these 60s inspired humdingers, so they could be played in dark bars downtown were broken hearts gather at midnight. One more thing:
do not mess with SHE/BEAST, she’s not in the mood for fucking assholes and psychos.
And she’s absofuckinglutly right.
Press play…
‘Popstar’s Daughters’ by SHAUN RYDER (Manchester, UK)
The Happy Mondays frontman’s brand new solo album Visits From Future Technology is hip-shaking proof
that he still can fill dance floors. Here’s the trippy and poppy single…
‘All Nations’ by NADINE GAGNE and The Star Nation Collective (British Columbia)
This resonates as a bright sonic light at the end of our troubled world tunnel. Only with togetherness, friendship, mutual respect, equality, harmony and tolerance, humankind can have hope for the future. This tremendously catching chant reflects all that. It’s a joyful, anthem that should be played on radios all over the planet.
“We are all stars, all stars come on now. Rise, rise and shine, gotta stay proud!”
We need songs like these in the restless times we live in. Songs of hope, songs of consolation, songs of inspiration. Shauna wants humankind to fight to see the light
(at the end of the tunnel) again. Her thoughts are embedded in a starry-eyed and
instantly enthralling groove that hops from dreamy pop to hip-swaying rap and back.
Nowhere sounds like a desperation song, but one that has a deeply felt effect on your psyche, on your state-of-2021-mind. This spellbound jam is driven by melancholic guitar lines, reminding me of Interpol‘s electrically-charged drive. Affecting and soul-stirring fever.
An inspiring reverie for the countless girls/women and boys/men worldwide, struggling with the looks of their body when it doesn’t correspond with society’s everlasting sexist perception of how a body should look like, as we all know. Skin is an instantly heartfelt
slo-mo musing, turning after a distorted guitar intro, into a vocal and musical pearl, with touching piano play. I’m sure The Sundays‘s Harriet Wheeler would love it.
‘You Are A Runner And I Am My Father’s Son’ by PORRIDGE RADIO (Brighton, UK)
Porridge Radio‘s leading Amazon Dana Margolin is a fan of Canadian rockers Wolf Parade. Here’s her terrifically gripping rendition of the band’s 2005 composition.
Album: WELCOME 2 AMERICA Info: Recorded in the spring of 2010 and then mysteriously archived
by Prince before its release, the statement album Welcome 2 America
documents Prince’s concerns, hopes, and visions for a shifting society,
presciently foreshadowing an era of political division, disinformation,
and a renewed fight for racial justice. Released: 30 July 2021
NME says: “Much mystery remains as to why, but then again Prince was as
much a perfectionist and as he was prolific. He released 39 albums while he
was still on Earth, but also locked away at least 8,000 songs underground in
his legendary vault at his Paisley Park home and studio in Minnesota. An entire
career’s worth of material from one of the true architects of modern pop remains
unheard – a secret history waiting to be discovered.
‘Welcome 2 America’ is an album that speaks to today’s problems and demands to be heard. It’s better to have it now than never. His name was Prince and he was funky, and it seems he has so much more to tell us.”
Full reviewhere. Score: 4/5.
Single: Hot Summer…
Turn Up The Volume says…
1. This could easily be – to my ears – a lost album from
the 90s, his second-best decade (the 80s still his best).
2. Hard to match by today’s competition (yep, still a genius).
3. Looks like his 2010 vision of America turned really real
when Donald Dumped went to the White House in 2016.
4. I prefer the funky Sly and The Family Stone inspired Prince
to the moody one, so I’ll shake my hips to Hot Summer / Check
The Record / Same Page, Different Book / 10-10 (Rin Tin Tin) / Yes.
SARAH WALK is a Los Angeles based singer-songwriter with
a crystal voice balancing between chanteuses Angel Olsen and Sharon Van Etten.
She recently shared an amazing version of global hit Nothing
Compares 2 U written and recorded by the late great Prince
and made world-famous by Sinead O’Connor back in 1990.
Walk: “I didn’t want to get too inside the other versions that already existed because I wanted to make sure I approached it my own way.”
Her version is wholly affecting with an ongoing magnetic piano
touch, a heavy-hearted orchestration, and her goosebumps
voice. Mesmeric rendition!
Artist: PRINCE Album: DIRTY MIND – his third LP Released: 8 October 1980 – 40 years ago
Pitchfork: “Prince’s ‘Dirty Mind’ starts with the most blatant disco throb in his entire discography on the title cut, and his second-heaviest thump pounds through “Uptown,” which opens Side B. At 30 ultra-tight minutes, a length that allowed for more walloping vinyl, Prince’s sole slow-jam-deficient album is pretty much an unrelenting dance party that pointedly invited New Wavers to boogie down alongside funk bunnies and dancefloor fashionistas. It’s one of the key records that truly initiated the ’80s.”
Full reviewhere. Score: 10/10.
TURN UP THE VOLUME 