BoxerMJ's Full Review: Parade by Original Soundtrack/Prince & the Revolut...
Prince has (apparently) been quoted as saying "Parade was a disaster. Apart from 'Kiss,' there's nothing on it I'm particularly proud of." This is a decent summary, if perhaps a bit too self-critical. For 1986's Parade, despite what many European critics would like you to believe, is not Prince's best work. It's not even close. Besides the obvious 1999, Purple Rain and Sign 'O' The Times choices, Parade sits somewhere below Around The World In A Day and perhaps even Lovesexy and 1994's Come on the "Best Prince Albums" list. But we're talking about Prince here; between 1982 and 1988 this man delivered some of the most amazing music in a seven year span of time as had ever been witnessed (only the Beatles made more inspiring music in this time span). So to say that this is the worst of that lot is to say that it's more brilliant than the work that most artists were coming up with at the time. As Prince albums go, however, it's uneven, unfocused, sloppy, occasionally embarrassing and occasionally friggin' brilliant.
The brilliant parts pop up in the form of the sort of minimalist funk gems that characterize much of Sign 'O' The Times, the career-defining double album that followed this one. "Kiss," of course, is an absolutely thrilling 3 and 1/2 minutes of pop music. With a blues-esque chord progression against a staccato, skittering drum program as backdrop, Prince sings in his most clear, dead-on-key and high-pitched falsetto. What an ironic twist, especially in the middle of the conservative Reagan-era 80s, for a man to be courting a woman with that voice. But Prince doesn't give a rat's ass what you think about his high voice. He also doesn't care (and probably didn't even notice) that this song crosses musical genres by using blues, R&B and funk touches to spice up the pop atmosphere. This devil-may-care attitude is equally apparent in the most daring move of them all: he's removed any and all reverb from the track. His amazing voice, the scratching, funky guitar, the synth effects and the drums are immediately in your ears, and therefore, in your face. There's no dropout; the instant you hear it is virtually the same instant it's gone. (Check it with headphones, you'll be instantly able to tell how uniquely flat the arrangement is). It makes the collection of each micro-moment of the song like a sped-up rollercoaster ride of funk. It thrills, excites, and something about it is weird and scary, and when it's over, you're breathless. "You don't have to watch Dynasty to have an attitude" Prince suggests. I guess not. What other artist in the 80s would dare to create something as simultaneously familiar and boldly fresh as "Kiss"? It's arguably the best song of his entire career.
Elsewhere, the soulful and playful alto sax and all-girl back-up choir of "Girls & Boys" and the steel drums, James Brown bass line and clever vocal arrangement of "New Position" provide more minimalist funk fun. Fun is a key word here, because, despite some of the misfires, Prince is being experimental with sounds and textures, and it's a saving grace. Remove some of the concepts, however, and some of these songs are just not very good. Case in point: the album's sort of title track, "Christopher Tracy's Parade." Here is a song that's not really a song at all. It's a bunch of flutes and trumpets and strings and some happy chorale type singing, all marching along to the lyrical ideas of "strawberry lemonade" and "goodness will guide us if love is inside us." It sounds like a cute psychedelic homage to the Beatles on paper, but if you were to strip away the fluff, it would just be boring. "I Wonder U" is more adept at creating that particular aural landscape. After the song's intro of eerie chanting and laughter, Revolution gals Wendy and Lisa sing in their unaffectedly lusty voices over Clare Fischer's cool and moody string and horn accompaniment, which itself lays on top of a rolling, deep deep *deep* bass and finger-snaps. Then, towards the middle of the song and out of nowhere, Prince drops in with some funk guitar lifted directly from the James Brown songbook. What's that doing there? Who knows, but the juxtaposition works; here's a song that, had it been developed, could have been amazing. As it is, it underwhelms as a half-baked idea at 1:40 minutes. The best thing about both of these songs is the way Prince strings them along with "New Position" and "Under The Cherry Moon" to create a sort of musical...er, parade of sorts, a four-part suite of psychedelic funk.
European critics loved this album, and it may be easy to see why. There is definitely a Euro-flair on many of the album's tracks, thanks no doubt to shooting of the album's accompanying movie (the painful flop Under The Cherry Moon) in France. The spoken French seduction monologue in "Girls & Boys" is an effective touch, as is the lilting Italian melody and mandolin touches of "Under The Cherry Moon." "Do U Lie?" is like a novelty number with its accordion, Euro-swing beat and Broadway-style vocal. As a showtune, it's very cute. As a Prince song sandwiched between the horn-driven pop of "Mountains" and the masterpiece "Kiss," it's just weird.
The rest of the bunch is a hodgepodge of the good, the bad and the ugly. "Venus De Milo" is an instrumental piece of incidental mood music, another shorty, clocking in at under two minutes. "Life Can Be So Nice" is an annoyingly busy, one-idea piece with an over-produced drum program and an abrupt ending. "Sometimes It Snows In April" is that song's antithesis, a beautiful and quiet acoustic guitar and piano number that finds Prince, in a way that's not entirely far removed from sounding homoerotic, mourning the death of a dear friend. Two of the more conventional pop-funk tracks on side two, "Mountains" and the pain-in-the-ass-to-type "Anotherloverholenyohead," are slightly effective tracks that sound like they were added at the last minute because someone at Warners said "we don't hear a hit." They're both good songs, but they're not great.
You have to hand it to Prince for attempting to create an album so disparate and all-over-the-map in terms of its inter-continental influences. And that's one of the things we like about Prince: he's a master of genre combining. But it's more effective when he does it within the context of his own brand of Minneapolis-pop-funk, as on Sign 'O' The Times...and as on "Kiss." When something as mind-blowingly brilliant as that song sounds out of place on a Prince album, you know there's a problem.
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