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[Mac Spirit] Prince and Warner Brothers, the Mac web and creative freedom -- a soliloquy 1/18/00
Prologue: I was dreaming when I wrote this (SOMEWHERE IN MINNESOTA) -- Starting in the late 1970s, a diminutive upstart subverted the music industry through the vehicle of a wunderkind fusion of rock and R&B, dance club and funk, topped off with unabashedly blatant sexuality and a sensualized version of Christian salvation. Rock icon Prince* (né 1958 as Prince Rogers Nelson) single handedly brought to the fore a music genre that has been long ago dubbed the Minneapolis Sound. Years ahead of his time, this artistic dervish pioneered the use of the drum machine, synthesizer-produced horn sounds and complex multi-layered, track-recorded instrumentation. This man will arguably go down in the annals of music history as not just a musician known to have mastered at least 27 instruments, but as one of the few people who can be called a workaholic and creative genius (on most of his albums, he played every instrument and supplied every vocal). He was so prolific, that he created and ghost wrote music for music acts: namely, The Time (for whom we now know that Prince played every instrument and sang every vocal on nearly every song on their first two albums -- here merely let the lead singer, Morris Day, come along and sing over his vocals). He then produced songs for people like Sheena Easton, Tevin Campbel and Cyndi Lauper, and spawned a sound that continues to this day, through the likes of ex-Time members Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis (they played keyboards and bass with The Time, respectively). These two went on to be great producers in their own right, producing Janet Jackson's "Control" and "Rhythmn Nation" albums, as well as other artists too numerous to list here. He is certainly one of the most celebrated figures to have emerged from Minnesota's icy hinterlands -- the likes of Jesse Ventura and Bob Dylan notwithstanding. The man is a class act -- I should know, I was in his audience in December 1998, trying to enjoy a wild-and-loose concert and not get high off all of the marijuana that was "firing up" all around me. I have followed Prince's career for a little over 20 years and have been continually amazed at his prodigious output of writings, coupled with an unwavering dedication to his artistic vision. After a decade of introspection, vis á vis his recordings, I have come to realize that I have unconsciously patterned my approach to creative writing with a similarly single-minded devotion to art for art's sake. What I want to do is spend the remainder of this column talking about what I attempt in my Mac web writing -- not the mechanics of writing (since I've already written about that elsewhere) -- but the subjective aspects of The Craft. Please indulge me, since I think this is an important issue, in light of the literally dozens of Mac-related web sites on the internet. I also want to address some issues that my critics have expressed in private e-mail, like:
I'm not arrogant; I'm just opinionated
I write to entertain. In order to do that, I have to be brave enough to say what's on my mind. That's my schtick, for lack of a better term. And my schtick consists of, ahem, calling a spade a spade (maybe this is what has earned the "arrogant" label); for example:
In a nutshell, my attitude towards my attitude
is the following: at least you can see my name, my e-mail address
and (sometimes) my picture next to my column. I stand by my writing,
even the bad stuff. There are some people, however, like that
guy named "P. S. Doff" (sp) over at Mac Opinion, who
hides behind a nom de plume. At least you know whom to
flame when I get you P.O'd... Why the [expletive deleted] do I use profanity?
Me, I like to put in an occasional invective just to make a point. I'm sure that I've already been kicked out of Apple's iReview over my word choice. But I'll get over it. :-)
I can't resist my Muse. I have much to say, and the web is a great medium for putting my thoughts out there for public consumption. But one web site is not enough for workaholic writers like me. One of the things I respected about Prince, both before and after he changed his name to that unpronounceable glyph, is that he long ago stopped trying to produce money-making hit after money-making hit and decided to be an artist first and foremost. Many of the suits at Warner Brothers tried to stop him from being too prolific -- he often put out an album a year, while people like Michael Jackson would ride a single album for three or four years. Prince, however, would crank out so many songs that he'd even have brand new songs on the B-sides of his singles, which were often better than the featured songs. He felt that he had enough fans to assure that he could pay the bills, but also had enough of those same fans devoted enough to allow him to follow his creative impulse -- exemplified by albums that sold well, in spite of the experimental styles and racy lyrics that he ventured into (who else would write songs with titles like "Head," "Jack You Off" and "Pussy Control," and get away with it?). He also felt that his fans wanted as much of his music as he could produce, not unlike the great James Brown, who would sometimes put out a new record every month. To get a taste of this maestro's prolific musical output, check out these samples (you'll need RealPlayer's plug-in). All lyrics are quoted from memory:
Just like Prince and James Brown, I write so much because I feel that enough people read my stuff to justify such a voluminous output -- and my Muse doesn't take no for answer. I write so much because I am a writer. It's in my blood. It's in my genes. It's in my personality. I am a communicator -- not, the Great Communicator, mind you. I say what's on my mind, not to stir up controversy, but to give my point of view. That's what an opinion piece is supposed to be about, isn't it? Some may think I'm doing this just do generate hits -- hell, yes (who doesn't?). But I'm doing this chiefly to express myself. As Sammy Davis, Jr., says in one of his songs, "I've gotta be me." That's all I'm doing, being myself.
The Artist Formerly Known as Prince has continued to cut the edge. For years, he wasn't happy with Warner Brothers, the record company he'd been with since he signed on as the youngest producer and artist at the tender age of 17. He felt that they controlled him too much and that he couldn't be the true artist that he wanted to be. Finally, in 1996, he broke the tie that he felt bound him too tightly and put out a three CD collection of music that quickly went platinum. He then released and sold an album on his internet site, one of the first artists to do so. Prince, or whatever he calls himself nowadays, has never disappointed his true fans. No other musician has so consistently cut the leading edge of new music in such a prolific manner, defining the sound of music and defining himself in the process. That's what I want to do in my Mac writing. Like Prince, the act of artistic creation is both physical and metaphysical. Like Prince, I believe totally in God, but not in church; my writing is a type of worship to me. Like Prince, I use my art to think out loud, to question existence, to challenge my readers. I like to think that I give people food for thought -- even to those who disagree with me. Besides, there are enough bland web sites out there (peopled with equally bland writers) that give you nice, inoffensive writing. That's not my style. The Macintosh is not an inoffensive computer, yet I get the impression that some of my readers would like to see nothing but inoffensive writing on the web. Check out the writing on some of the more popular Mac sites, and you will see what I mean. They all read like press releases, to quote an iReview of a popular Mac site. Hell, many of them are regurgitated press releases -- many aren't even chewed, much less digested and rewritten. Now that I've explained myself, I'd like to get back to writing the things I really like writing about. Fini. Note: I chose to refer to The Artist as "Prince" throughout this column because the spelling for his current name isn't on my keyboard. This column is © 2000 Rodney O. Lain. All rights reserved. The Mac Spirit logo is by Copzilla/Denton's Graphics.
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About Rodney O. Lain A former journalist and college prof, Rodney lives in Minnesota, where he freelance writes part-time and works full-time as a supervisor at a major internet-related company. He has a soft spot for H. L. Mencken, Steve Jobs, Prince, Richard Wright and other well-known status-quo avoiders.
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