Friday, February 15, 2008

I only want to see you underneath the purple rain

My wife had never seen Purple Rain. Wow, I thought, as I put it into our Netflix Queue. We watched it a few days later. She is three years younger than I am. So while I was fourteen when the film was released, she was eleven. Eleven certainly is too young to see this movie. And the impact on my fourteen-year-old self can’t be understated. Think “Darling Nikki.” “I knew a girl named Nikki / I guess u could say she was a sex fiend / I met her in a hotel lobby,” etcetera. I listened to the soundtrack on my Walkman constantly.

While I can’t say that the movie has held up over time, the music totally has. The movie is pretty dated visually—it comes across as a very long form music video—and the presentation of women is certainly troubling. In the end, though, it was great to watch again because what it reminded me of the fact Prince is a crazy good musician.

(A footnote here is that fact that The Time, featured prominently in the movie, reunited to perform at the recent Grammy Awards. This certainly wasn’t a band on my, “I hope they reunite” list. Sheesh, they even had a keytar and the mirror guy who just dances and does his mirror thing. But don’t even get me started about the Grammys.)

And here for your listening and viewing pleasure is Prince playing “Purple Rain” live in 1990. This song won the “Best Original Song” at the 1985 Academy Awards. The next clip is Prince absolutely shredding a guitar solo “While My Guitar Gently Weeps at the Rock and Roll Hall induction of George Harrison.



1 comments:

heather said...

awesome.

Post a Comment