I’ll Hug You With My Legs, Baby

Je vous enlacerai avec mes jambes, baby
Pendant des heures je vais vous étonner, baby
Fleur dans votre bain, amour dans vos draps
Faire l'amour, faire l'amour

Some things just sound better in French don’t they?

I'll hug you with my legs, baby.
For hours I'll amaze you, baby
Flower in your bath, love in your sheets
Making love, making love                                Girls And Boys

Prince knew that.  He packed a lot of knowledge into his Dio-esque frame*, mostly about blending musical genres together in the cultural Cuisinart of his talent, chicks and probably some other stuff that escapes me.  At his best he was untouchable and then some.  Parade is the last LP he cut as Prince & The Revolution and it is not his best, but we really were nearing take off back there in 1986 and it is interesting to listen back to an LP I remember borrowing on tape, but not necessarily owning way back then.

At least partly the soundtrack to his film Under The Cherry Moon,** Parade is a slightly off-kilter mixture of soundtrack elements and hard, taut funk.  The daft psychedelic whimsicality of Around The World In A Day had been jettisoned by this point and whilst Parade does have an interesting palate of sounds it just sits a little better and easier together than that one.

Soundtrack-y stuff first.  I love gentle, interludenous ‘Venus De Milo’, which is a very minor decoration here.  I am equally smitten with the slightly wonky waltz of ‘Under The Cherry Moon’. There aren’t enough waltzes in popular music I always say and this one benefits from some great piano flourishes and a really heartfelt vocal, as interesting things happen quietly almost hidden under the main thrust of the music.

Equally, I would argue that the closer ‘Sometimes It Snows In April’ is a real hidden gem in Prince’s back catalogue, the occasionally claustrophobic synths have been ditched and everything can breathe properly.  There is a touch more emotion and plain-speaking in the lyrics than we’re used to from this quarter too.

Now da funk^.  I do have some time for the arid peaks and beats of ‘Mountains’ – a bit of a baffling choice for a US single, the vocal and horns are good but it just doesn’t slide for me.  The Busby-Berkeley-on-Mogadons of ‘Do U Lie’, really doesn’t cut it with me either and the strident ‘Life Can Be So Nice’ sets out to disprove its’ own titular theory.

That said, ‘Anotherloverholenyohead’ somehow gets the mix right, thrusts and pulses along nicely without ever being anyone’s fave Prince tune and I could say the same for the steeldrum-tastic ‘New Position’, which I also like. There’s something trippy and Art Of Noise like about ‘I Wonder U’ that keeps me coming back to it.

Mixed in with this though are two out and out slices of genius pie, with genius ice-cream on top, served with a shot of genius expresso liqueur on the side.  Take a moment to listen to ‘Kiss’ again, it became such an ubiquitous thing that I really hadn’t either grooved to it, or heard it properly for years.  It still sounds like nothing anybody else ever even thought about, every element, no matter how off-kilter is just perfection, all sparking off/driven by the tautest rhythm I have ever heard.  And that guitar … wowzers. Nobody else was ever this good, it fits the 1537 ideal of perfection – there’s nothing you could add to, or remove from this to make it any better at all.

And it isn’t even the best single on Parade …

That honour falls to ‘Girls And Boys’, which half my time is my favourite Prince song ever; which is a tough accolade to land.  I remember really liking it when it came out as a single.  Again the beats and instrumentation are great, particularly that awesome horny parping^^.  There’s so much at work here, the 4 lady backing vocals, the story (I do love a song with a proper narrative), all manner of French delights, two spoken word bits and that brilliant line about both protagonists having the cutest asses you’ve ever seen.  It is yet another perfectly crafted and sung track, most artists bang along for 20 years without even pitching one.

Hell, the video is great too, although the end freaks my tits off.  I can move just like Prince does in this clip, I was practicing it just now.  True story.

It is difficult to talk about the Revolution in terms of what they brought to the table, because the main man was such a controller.  Unless it required blowing he could play it all himself too and so it is difficult to tell what was what unless specifically credited otherwise.  A true Prince aficionado may tell you differently, and I would defer to their views, but the man cast such a long shadow over everything he did that, voices and brass aside, it may just as well have been a totally solo project.

So there’s Parade, a mix of the great and good, and a couple bits of the comparatively mediocre.  As a unified listening experience it doesn’t quite all hang together, but don’t worry readers after further trials and tribulations the man may have got it right the next time.

Maybe because of this slight unevenness and the fact that it got a bit overshadowed by what was to come Parade never really gets talked about too much.  I think it should do and I think we should all hug it with our legs; metaphorically to avoid damage to the LP cover.

We really lost a talent 1398 days ago.

983 Down.

*ever seen a picture of them together? just saying, just saying.  Umm, if I suddenly disappear you’ll know the feds have silenced me – keep the truth out there!

** a vanity project that tied with Howard the Duck for the worst film category in ’87’s Golden Raspberry Awards. That’s bad.

^as we say in Carmarthen.

^^not to be recommended on a first date, as I once found out to my cost.