Slashdot Mirror
RIP Prince, A Legendary Musician With A Complicated Internet History (networkworld.com)
alphadogg writes: Reflecting on the popular musician's uneasy relationship with the Internet and social media upon the 57-year-old surprising death. In 2010, Prince "famously shuttered his LotusFlow3r.com website," proclaiming that "The Internet is completely over... All these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you." In 2014, The Guardian ran a story titled "Prince quits the Internet," after the singer deleted his social media accounts. He filed a lawsuit against his fans, which was later dropped, for sharing bootlegged copies of his music online. He even banned fans from taking smartphone photos at his concerts in 2013. Prince did seem to open up to the Internet to some degree in the past couple years. Prince's HTNRUN album was posted on Jay Z's Tidal music site last year. In Silicon Valley, Prince is being remembered as a social innovator and a passionate advocate for Black youth," inspiring YesWeCode, Van Jones' initiative to teach 100,000 low-income kids to write code, and hackathons across the country to expose kids in underserved communities to computer science. Bob Brown from Networkworld writes, "News of Prince's death Thursday briefly crashed the TMZ news site. From there, fans flocked to the Internet and social media to mourn this music star who did his darnedest to stay off the grid." RIP Prince.
Seriously, I could never get into the guy. He seemed completely full of himself, and I thought his music was overrated. Can't deny he was talented, though, and lots of people liked him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Now I'm sitting here waiting for Kanye's (undoubtedly controversial) opinion on Prince plastered across every site on the internet.
Doubtless, that no-talent hack will go on at length about how he's ten times more talented than Prince.
I can't say I liked everything Prince did, though I was of an age when Purple Rain was one of the seminal records of my generation, but one thing I'll say about him, that I would say about David Bowie as well, is that he didn't really give a damn about genres or musical forms, and even if some of his experiments were failures, you know it was a damned daring person who refused to be typecast and shoved into a box.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Indeed. His war on the Internet makes him the peculiar counterpoint to a man who died a few months ago; David Bowie. Both incredibly talented men, genre-busting artists, but one recognized the Internet for what it was and embraced it, and the other only saw it as a den of thieves and waged war against it.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
And both end up in the same state, and take just as much of their profits with them to the grave.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Eric Clapton was once asked how it felt to be the world's greatest guitarist. His response: "I don't know. Ask Prince."
If anything, Prince was the opposite of someone with a "major identity crisis". He knew exactly who he was and did not give one single fuck if you didn't like it. Watch his solo on While My Guitar Gently Weeps from his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and tell me if you think he looks like someone who has an identity crisis.
https://youtu.be/6SFNW5F8K9Y
He strolls onstage in the middle of the song, at about 3:25 in the video. And all the other rock stars on stage just give him room and watch with their mouths open. He ends his Citizen Kane of guitar solos by doing the guitar equivalent of a mic drop, except instead of dropping the guitar he sort of just flips it up to air and pimp-walks off the stage like he owns the motherfucker. My guess is the guitar ascended directly into heaven, because it knew it could never top that moment.
That my friends, is how a rock star makes an entrance and an exit.
Prince was the ultimate musical nerd. He not only could play every instrument on his records, but could do all of it better than most people who play those instruments. He was five foot goddamn four inches tall and still managed to be the Jesus of scoring hot babes.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The guy had been sick for at least 2 weeks before he died. Drugs probably could have helped save him, actually.
Oh wait, you're not talking about those drugs though, right? You're talking about the things that the government says are bad for you, like weed. Not drugs like caffeine, aspirin, alcohol, penicillin, lipitor, nexium, plavix, abilify, prilosec, amoxicillin, viagra, zoloft, ambien, hydrocodone, oxycontin, you know the completely harmless non-addictive drugs. You're talking about things like plants and mushrooms, right?
I forget, are Bayer's Heroin and Merck's Morphine on the good or bad list these days? Whatever the government says, right?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
You can say many things about Prince, but "talentless hack" isn't among them.
I think that his fame came more from singing and songwriting, but Prince was greatly underappreciated as a guitarist.
Proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SFNW5F8K9Y
His solo starts at about 3:26. I recommend watching it from the beginning, because it's a wonderful tribute.
His solo is exquisite, in my opinion, at times at the forefront, extending, expanding upon the lyrics and melody while never overwhelming either, and at times also complementing them, moving back and forth until the end.
No showboating, I think, but verve, gusto, pure enjoyment and musicianship. He was asked there to play, and to solo, and he did both masterfully.
Watch/listen it in its entirety, once. Then just listen to it.
As you watch it, note that Prince is not only soloing GREAT, playing well, he's also engaged with the other musicians. He knows the song, knows that he's playing with some of the best musicians in the rock world and is aware of all of that as he plays.
And you can TELL that he's having a blast being there. He's playing his best, and I think that the others in the band recognize it.
As you just listen, note how well what he plays fits, both solo and together with the rest of the band. Clean, complex, precise, not a missed note, nor a note played that doesn't fit the song overall in some way.
At one point he just vanishes, merges back into the song with the band and then emerges again.
Wonderful!
All that being said, I was never a huge Prince fan over the years, but that video gave me a new appreciation of him, when I first watched it, years ago.
As to whether or not his death deserves to be of note on Slashdot? The most relevant justification would be Prince's stance on digital copyright, and I don't care to discuss that.
I made the mistake of doing that in general here, years ago, and I shan't revisit that here ever again.
All that being said: Say what you will of Prince, but don't ever say he was a "talentless hack".
Regards,
dj
It only just hit me today why he did the symbol thing and why it actually makes sense.
It was a stupid trademark fight with his record company fucking him over every time he wanted to use his stage name and the symbol plus "formerly known" was his way of telling them to go fuck themselves.
At the time it just seemed stupid. In hindsight after hearing more about the record industry it actually sounds like it was a good thing to do.
http://www.latimes.com/enterta...
Quote:
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
Just like the king in that ballad who killed his troubadour and was cursed for it by being forgotten since no singer would sing his praise and remind later generations of his deeds, fearing that he will suffer the same fate as the hapless one who the king's wife laid eyes on, Prince will probably suffer the same fate for disallowing video pages on the internet to use his music.
Ask anyone younger than 25 who Prince is. Prince? Who, Prince William? Oh, Prince Albert. Yeah, I got one of those.
But music? What's Prince got to do with music? Never seen any of his videos.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.