Thread by @deejayumb

A Monster #thread on Prince’s album “Parade” by:

@deejayumb - Parts 1 & 2
&
@EdgarKruize - Parts 2 & 3

Part 1 - Parading The Truth
Part 2 - The Songs
Part 3 - Parade Super Deluxe

PART 1 - PARADING THE TRUTH

Prince’s 8th album released in March 86’. His “Avant-Purple” period.

Incredibly, he was only 27 years old when he made this!

His 3rd & final album with The Revolution & what a magnificent work it is, one of my personal favourites in his catalogue.

It’s the first “Prince” album where he works with Clare Fischer & the story goes that he sent CF a cassette tape marked “The Marx Brothers Project” asking him to arrange & record orchestration for the whole album (except Kiss).

I remember it coming out in real time & attending the Parade shows in London in 86’, my first Prince gig.

I have spoken about it in brief before on my thread about the Cocteau Twins.

So you can go back to that thread to read about it.

https://twitter.com/deejayumb/status/1234576527016300545

Prince started working on Parade in mid April 1985.

This was just after the Purple Rain tour had ended & in the month that ATWIAD was released.

Think about this for a minute, in the month of April 1985:

*he started recording his 8th album

*he had just ended the tour of his most successful 6th album

*he was releasing his 7th album

*he was simultaneously juggling 3 mega albums in one form or another.

In that same year he also started working on the Under The Cherry Moon movie (which we won’t discuss here) that accompanied the Parade album.

It was the beginning of a prolific period aptly described as “The Flood” by renowned Prince podcaster/symposium curator @polishedsolid

On Parade, Prince had changed his look & added a palette of brighter colours to his sound.

It is often said he introduced a new minimalist funk, lush & dissonant orchestrations & a cinematic quality combined with classical music, avant-garde & bistro jazz & French chanson.

This album was drenched in European Cosmopolitanism. Indeed it fared better over in Europe than it did in the USA.

He had definitely changed his image.

Out went the the opulent ruffled shirts & lavish new romantic libertine look of Purple Rain.

Also out went the Beatlesesque psychedelic look of ATWIAD that is often associated with that album on the basis of the Raspberry Beret video.

What replaced it was a monochrome look steeped in a 50’s Elvis timeline. Cropped quiffed hair, crop tops that displayed his abs, spliced jackets & button laden pants.

It was an iconic look & one of my personal favourites. He just looked so damn cool.

Not only had he changed his look but also his colour.

It was no longer Purple or the Sky Blue of ATWIAD. He went from Technicolour to B&W.

He only did this 3 times in his career:

DIrty Mind
Parade
Come

Parade came after ATWIAD which was not a huge commercial success like Purple Rain.

ATWIAD was met with critical negativity & disappointing sales as compared to Purple Rain.

Prince received a lot of flak about ATWIAD & this must have been really quite disheartening for him.

Parade is often described as one of the most striking & sonically adventurous moments in his career.

There were many firsts on Parade.

First time Eric Leeds appears on a Prince album

First time there was a lead vocal by someone other than Prince

First time he worked with Clare Fischer on one of his own albums (Family album aside)

First time on his music he had used a 70 piece Orchestra comprising of violins, violas, cellos, basses, woodwind, trumpets, trombones, french horns, tuba, tympani & other percussion.

First time 3 of the tracks featured a full band

First time he laid down a drum sequence on 4 consecutive tracks in a single take

First time he used a foreign language on an album

First time he made a direct reference to Greek history & an indirect one to a Danish Fairytale.

PARADE ALBUM TITLE

Did anything else quite sound like Parade?

A lot of people didn’t think so. The amalgamation of sounds & styles was described as being new & unique.

But what did he mean when he called his album ”Parade”?

How many people have ever deeply thought about the meaning of the album ’title’.

How did it tie into the concept of the album. Did it have anything at all to do with things going on behind the scenes in his private life.

I have read & listened to interviews, reviews & podcasts but I haven’t yet come across any discussion about the title & what it may represent outside of its literal meaning.

It’s possible something is out there that shares the view I am about to discuss but I haven’t seen it.

Taken at it’s most literal sense, “Parade“ means a procession of some sort.

In the context of this album, the obvious meaning would be a procession of people & sound.

On Parade, the continuous drum sequence of the first 4 tracks is a single & continuous procession of sound.

This procession of people is mentioned in the opening track:

“Everyone come behold Christopher Tracy's Parade
The show will proceed, unless it should rain strawberry lemonade”

Many commentators have latched onto the title as a metaphor for Prince parading his new image & funk

Indeed he mentions a “new funk” on the second track “New Position”:

“Honey, forget your past (forget your past)
You've got to try my new funk”

So the clues lay there for this literal interpretation.

“Here I am, I am Prince & I am showing off my new “thang”.

Even though there’s a lot of merit in this interpretation, and it is the most obvious, I believe “Parade” could have been meant something else altogether.

To explain my theory we need to look a little into the background at that time, The NY Times in 86’:

”The public perception of Prince swung from a sly charmer to surly misogynist paranoid between 1984 and 1985 - just as, the year before, Michael Jackson had fallen from boy genius to androgynous eccentric. In Prince's case, a few luridly reported incidents of snooty public..

... behavior combined with overzealous body-guards certainly fueled the backlash. He hardly helped his cause with ''ATWIAD'' album, in which a not very convincing approximation of McCartneyesque Beatles innocence clashed egregiously with his own image of defensive arrogance.”

Further:

“The irony was that his entire early reputation was of an aggressive kid obsessed with explicit sexuality (typical song-themes included incest, fellatio, onanism and bondage). ''Purple Rain,'' aside from being a musically more diverse and...

...assured album than most of his earlier efforts, also represented a softening of that image. Thus the uglier behavior that provoked last year's ''backlash'' might be seen as a reassertion of the ''real'' Prince.”

After the commercial disaster of ATWIAD & press criticism which centred not only on his music but also on his behaviour, critics thought that Prince had a point to prove.

They thought he was proving the point in 86’ with this album where he was parading a new image & a new funk

It was considered as a sort of RESET.

And for all intents & purposes it looked like one & to some it might have sounded like one.

It can’t be denied the album cover felt like a brand new constructed & freshly painted room. It had that freshness & crisp look & feel about it.

The songs on the album felt like a construction of new sounds thickly painted with Orchestral arrangements but given room to breathe with sparse elements in between.

When the Kiss video was first unveiled to the world 2 months before the album release the first thing people went crazy about was that falsetto & then the change of his image.

I remember the hysteria.

He went from being a bit weird to someone who was so damn cool, sexier and more accessible.

Less of a cryptic puzzle & more open & transparent.

So it was widely considered that Parade is about a procession of a new image & sound.

The irony is that Prince was probably at his most cryptic at this time.

He did have a new look but the sound was not that new at all.

When it comes to the meaning behind “Parade” I think it’s a case of:

“The Emperors New Clothes”
(TENC).

TENC is a Danish fairytale by Hans Christian Anderson in which an Emperor is “parading” around in new clothes that the sycophants compliment & pretend to see until an innocent child points out that the Emperor is not in fact wearing any clothes at all.

Instead of accepting this fact, the Emperor continues to parade around upholding the deceit, as for him it is better to appear foolish than to admit being foolish.

The moral behind it being that the bubble of pretence must be burst with “The Truth”.

That bubble is usually burst by innocents, like the child in the TENC fable, whilst the sycophants continue with their lie.

It is easier and less painless to continue the lie & look foolish than to admit being deceitful & foolish.

Shots are being fired at critics and those who are buying into what the critics are saying even though they know it not to be true.

It is the innocent who burst that bubble of deceit, someone as naive as a child to tell it as it is.

Hence the child in “Do U Lie” and the opening statement in the song:

“Les enfants qui mentent ne vont pas au paradis”

“children who lie do not go to paradise”.

So how does this apply to Parade.

So the critics have tried to portray Parade as being Prince’s “new funk” & got everyone else to buy into this.

However, the reality is that it’s not really a ”new funk” at all & the critics know this but they don’t wish to admit to it.

The critics continued with their pretence because it allowed them to praise “Parade” & it avoided having to backtrack & admit that they were wrong about ATWIAD when they said all the negative things about it.

The critics wouldn’t want 2 admit that they were wrong & it would be better to continue the lie & to look foolish than to admit that they were wrong all along.

The reality, and the critics know this, is that Parade is just an extension of what Prince was already doing on ATWIAD

There are many parallels between ATWIAD & Parade.

As @EdgarKruize says

“I figure Parade to be the ‘Yin’ to the ‘Yang’ that is ATWIAD.”

This is indeed the case as the neo-psychedelia of ATWIAD continues on Parade.

Not only this but Prince didn’t first introduce orchestral elements on Parade, he did so on ATWIAD albeit in a more limited sense on tracks like Paisley Park, Raspberry Beret & Pop Life.

He had used Jazz in the past too as there are elements of Gospel Jazz on The Ladder.

Classical music didn’t make its first appearance on Parade, Condition of the 💜 is quasi classical.

The stripped down avant-garde “new funk” is also present on ATWIAD on tracks like Tamborine.

The introduction of international elements too first appeared on ATWIAD (the title track itself).

Cosmopolitanism wasn’t borne on Parade.

So the critics persuaded the public to buy into this long held belief that Parade represented something new.

But this wasn’t the case.

Therein lies the deceit propagated by the critics & deliberately perpetuated by Prince.

Parade is not about a procession of people or a new sound but rather it is a procession about “The Truth”.

Parade is an overblown but more finely executed extension of ATWIAD.

“Parade is the Yin to the Yang that is ATWIAD”.

Parade does add more colour, more texture & is a more abstract painting than ATWIAD but in reality both are sisters with different personalities.

Some of the tracks from both albums are interchangeable.

For example you could quite easily hear Tamborine after New Position or Girls & Boys on Parade.

UTCM could appear on ATWIAD and not seem out of place at all.

You could place Christopher Tracy’s Parade on ATWIAD after the title track & not blink any eye.

Pop Life could easily sit between Mountains & Kiss.

Condition of the 💜 is also a Parade tune through & through, imagine that before or after Venus de Milo.

You could quite easily swap Mountains & America.

Life Can Be So Nice is filled with the neo psychedelia that is so beloved about ATWIAD.

Prince is saying Parade is not that different to what I did on ATWIAD but you all panned me for ATWIAD just a year ago.

Why?

Prince did his first ever full TV interview with MTV in 1985 during the shooting of UTCM in France.

I remember watching this in real time back in the day in the UK on a programme called The Tube.

Here are parts of that video relevant to this discussion:

In this interview he spoke about his projects at the time - ATWIAD which had been released & the new (as yet untitled) album which was forthcoming.

The interviewer said it was being suggested that he had left behind his funk roots.

That he had alienated his black audience by reaching out to a rock audience with Purple Rain and ATWIAD.

Prince wasn’t having any of it & said he never left behind his funk roots & that ATWIAD was a damn funky album & even funkier live.

Prince said he wanted ATWIAD to be listened to, judged & critiqued as a whole.

He then inferred that critics should look at his discography in whole to see that the funk has always been present.

What he said in this interview may help to reinforce my theory about the title for “Parade” being chosen to represent his feelings about the industry who were all locked into this TENC fable frame of mind

Parade could be about a procession of sound but I believe it is more a procession about ”The Truth”.

Prince is “Parading” “The Truth” and that Truth is that Parade isn’t new, it is an extension of what he previously did on ATWIAD & on work prior to that.

Prince never left behind the funk & he never left behind his black audience.

Indeed, he was trying to take his funk and his audience (black audience included) to new places but just in a slightly different way.

Artists are sensitive & when critics unfairly denigrate a work which influences others to share the same opinion, it can get inside the artist’s brain.

So calling the new album “Parade” was Prince’s response to his critics as was writing “Slave” on his face in response to WB.

LIFE

Another aspect of Parade that really hasn’t been given much attention is that it seems to be preoccupied with ”LIFE”.

7 of the songs mention life
CTP
NP
UTCM
G&B
LCBSN
AL
SISIA

And indeed 2 mention Death

UTCM
SISIA

CTP:
“Give what you can, all you can stand, and all of your life will be made”

NP:
“New position, yeah, let's go fishing in the river, the river of life”

UTCM:
“I want to live life to the ultimate high
Maybe I'll die young like heroes die”

G&B:
“Life is precious baby, love is so rare”

LCBSN:
“Oh, life can be so nice
It's a wonderful world, sweet paradise (paradise)
Kiss me once, kiss me twice
Life can be so nice, so nice”

AL:
“I gave my love, I gave my life, I gave my body and mind”

SISIA:
“But sometimes, sometimes life ain't always the way
Sometimes it snows in April
Sometimes I feel so bad, so bad
Sometimes I wish life was never end

Why life?

Life is full of parades.

You’re either a participant, or you are an observer.

You can’t participate in every parade. But neither should you spend your life simply watching the parade.

Life is meant 2 be lived, not observed. Get out there, have fun, & join a parade

But Why life?

Maybe it had something to do with the coda at the end of ATWIAD where he had the conversation with God.

Prince begs for mercy & God lets him live.

So Prince is given a second chance at this thing we call life.

Electric word, “life”.

This seems to preoccupy his mind & thoughts throughout Parade.

He was given a second chance in life on ATWIAD which was his second full album with the Revolution.

On the third & final album with the Revolution “Parade”, he celebrates life throughout it but only to bring death at the end of it.

Was the death of Tracy a metaphor for the the end of The Revolution.

“Tracy died soon after a long fought civil war”

The American civil war was between 1861-1865 & so it’s not about that.

UTCM was set in the 40’s & no civil war then & so it’s not about that.

I think civil war was a reference to the domestic/social dispute between Prince & The Revolution.

A dispute that has its origins in 83’ when Prince decided to ditch the band and take Vanity to the Rolling Stone cover shoot.

So this brings us to the end of Part 1.

Next is Part 2 where both @EdgarKruize & I discuss the individual tracks on Parade.

Thereafter Part 3 will follow & will find @EdgarKruize discussing the possible track list to a Parade Super Deluxe.