A documentary on the struggles of the black rock musician and the stigma they face in the black community and the music industry.
Showing posts with label prince and the revolution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label prince and the revolution. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Friday, March 16, 2012
Saturday, January 21, 2012
tHE REVOLUtiON CELEBRAtE LifE with A REUNiON
Courtesy of Kare 11
MINNEAPOLIS - Celebrating the one year anniversary of surviving his near-fatal heart attack, Bobby Z, drummer for Prince & The Revolution, will have a rare reunion performance to benefit heart-health awareness.
The Revolution - Wendy Melvoin, Lisa Coleman, Brown Mark, Dr. Fink and Bobby Z - have not played together since 2003 for Sheila E's Family Jamm.
"Benefit 2 Celebrate Life!" will be presented by Bobby Z and the American Heart Association. It will feature The Revolution, along with heart-health and life-saving information and inspiring stories of survival.
The benefit concert will be at the Legendary First Avenue Main Room on Sunday, February 19 at 8 p.m.
For more information, visit MyPurpleHeart.org or First Avenue Proudly Presents: The Revolution.
Bobby Z was in critical condition after three blocked arteries caused a heart attack in February of 2011. Doctors were able to open his blockages with three stents which has allowed Z to make a full recovery.
(Copyright 2011 by KARE And MYPURPLEHEART.ORG)
“Life is completely different now,” Z said. “Every moment has a new appreciation. I am still overwhelmed by all the thoughts and prayers I received from all over the world. This concert is for the fans. I am so honored and thrilled that The Revolution will join me in this celebration of my recovery. This will be an intimate show with music and stories.”
Wendy and Lisa added, “Our hearts were broken when we heard that our dear friend, and bandmate Bobby Z had had a heart attack. He was the heart, the pulse, the beat of our band. We can't wait to share the stage as one again, and help others in a fight against broken hearts caused by heart disease. The beat goes on!”
“I want to personally thank Prince for his emotional support for me and my family during a very difficult time. That has meant a lot to me,” added Z.
The Revolution is a rock, funk, and new-wave band formed in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1979 by Prince. The Revolution rose to international fame in the mid 1980s with Purple Rain, the album sold more than 16 million copies in the United States alone. The band was one of the most successful music acts of the 1980s. The band achieved two number-one Billboard 200 albums (Purple Rain and Around the World in a Day), six top ten singles on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and won three Grammy Awards. The band officially disbanded in 1986 at the end of the Parade tour.
The Revolution
Wendy And Lisa - Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman are an Emmy® Award winning musical composing duo based in Los Angeles. They both started their careers in one of the most successful rock bands of the 80s, Prince & The Revolution. They continued to work as a duo and released five original albums as well as pursuing a career path in scoring feature films and television.
BrownMark - Mark Brown (BrownMark) spent most of his life in Minneapolis, Minnesota where, in the 80’s, the Minneapolis music scene took America by storm with its unique blend of Rock and R&B. BrownMark grew up with musicians such as Prince, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Morris Day and Alexander O’Neil who laid the foundation for his advancements in his production skills and musical theory.
Dr. Fink - From Berlin dance floors to British airwaves to Grammy Award winning stages in the States, Matt "Dr." Fink's signature sound occupies an irresistible place in music history. Cunningly clad in surgical scrubs as Prince's award-winning keyboardist in The Revolution, this player-turned-producer modestly shrugs when asked if aware of the impact his music has had on the artists and producers of today.
Bobby Z - Robert B. Rivkin, better known by the stage name Bobby Z., is an American musician and record producer, most known as being a member of Prince's band from 1978–1986, and as a member of The Revolution.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
BBC Four Presents: THE ARTIST - PRiNCE: PURPLE REIGN
Episode 2
DURATION: 1 HOUR
A music documentary which explores how Prince - showman, artist, enigma - revolutionised the perception of black music in the 1980s with worldwide hits such as 1999, Kiss, Raspberry Beret and Alphabet Street. He became a global sensation with the release of the Oscar-winning, semi-autobiographical movie Purple Rain in 1984, embarking on an incredible journey of musical self-discovery that continues to this day.
From the psychedelic Around the World in a Day to his masterpiece album Sign O' the Times and experiments with hip hop and jazz.
Prince remains one of most ambitious and prolific songwriters of his generation.
\He tested the boundaries of taste and decency with explicit sexual lyrics and stage shows during his early career and in the 1990s fought for ownership of his name and control of his music, played out in a public battle with his former label, Warners Bros. Records.
Prince is a trailblazer and a leader for all musicians and artists.
He continues to speak and fight for artistic freedom and ownership of one's art (Music Master Ownership).
Prince was the first artist "FREE" or to have the freedom to sell his music/art available on the Internet. He is also pioneer for artists to have their own official websites with merchandise/music available to fans and/or subscribers to purchase, cutting out the middle man with proceeds going directly to the artist.
The most flamboyant and exciting live performers around, and arguably the greatest musician and live performer dead or alive.
Prince remains a controversial and elusive creative force - as much a mystery as ever.
Contributors include Revolution guitarist Dez Dickerson, Paisley Park label president Alan Leeds, hip hop legend Chuck D and Prince 'Mastermind' and UK soul star Beverley Knight.
Some say the greatest of his generation...
There was MJ and then there Prince.
Michael is the greatest entertainer ever. The King Of Pop.
Prince is music. Prince is an artist. Prince is Prince.
It's a rivalry for the history books but it's ridicules to compare them to one another and how they expressed their "art". It's like comparing Picasso to Da vinci. Both are great, the best. But to say who's better? Michael Jackson and Prince used their extraordinary gifts to the greatest of their ability. They were born to do this. Music just comes out of them. Both changed the music industry, the recording industry, broke records and rules, and set the standard at what "artists" can accomplish. All the while changing society with it.
In a world of manufactured celebrities and wannabe's...
they both remained originals.
BBC presents a well-structured film looks at the career of the boy from Minneapolis and how he came to revolutionize music in the 1980s and to present. Via albums such as 1999, Purple Rain, and Sign O' The Times to his sexual and religious lyrics, spectacular stage shows, jaw dropping musicianship, and the funkiest performances ever to hit the stage.
Prince has rarely lacked ambition or imagination. This film captures the highs and lows of Prince’s career and also his battle for utter complete artistic control of his image and his music.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
PURPLE HAZE - PURPLE RAiN
Monday, Aug. 06, 1984
Prince scores across the spectrum
Stumped. For a long minute, anyhow.
When Apollonia asked Prince - and yes, those are their real names, approximately - "Is there anything you can't do?" There was a lingering silence. A tough question to put to such a tyro. More silence. A fast career review was clearly in order. There would be no question of just skipping to the highlights: since 1978, when Warner Bros. Records released his first album when he was 17, for Prince it has been highlights all the way. For You was not the hottest seller in the stores, but the fact that Prince had written, produced and played all the instruments on his first effort got the press making comparisons to Stevie Wonder. There were four more albums and a wonderful grab bag of singles like When You Were Mine and Little Red Corvette. Now there is Purple Rain, a No. 1 sound-track album with a No. 1 single, When Doves Cry, that is the first song since Billie Jean to reach the top slots simultaneously on the pop, black and dance charts. Purple Rain had already sold nearly 2.5 million copies before the movie was released last Friday. This is serious business. So is the movie, a short-circuited psychodrama that grafts snazzy performance footage onto the fictive fever chart of an angst-ridden musician called The Kid and played by Prince himself. The movie has been pulling down real tub-thumper reviews, the sort of hot-seat hype that gives some indication of the way Prince can generate fever and keep the temperature high.
He does it with a peculiar combination of ambisexual eroticism and self-mythologizing. Until Purple Rain, Prince played at being a prisoner of sex who craved a life sentence. Some of his song titles sounded like cuts on a Pigmeat Markham party record (Head, Soft and Wet). If there was a unifying theme to his lyrics—indeed, a governing obsession—it was that carnal knowledge is the ultimate wisdom. Party till you drop, make-out till you molder: self-realization through rutting.
Prince's performing entourage still includes young women attired in flash-happy lingerie. But Prince has dispensed with performing in his leopardskin skivvies, and for the movie camera, dresses up in high-heeled boots, ruffled shirts, brocaded jackets. If anyone notices the similarly suited ghost of Jimi Hendrix floating about, so much the better. Hendrix's classic Purple Haze has left all sorts of echoes around Prince's neighborhood, and not just in the music. Prince has both mastered the Hendrix style and contemporized it; he has become something of a past master at haze in general.
The plot of Purple Rain, which Scenarist William Blinn (Roots, Fame) and first-time Feature Director Albert Magnoli both deny is specifically biographical, nevertheless hews roughly to the broad outlines of Prince's life. (Prince declines all interviews.) Shot entirely in Minneapolis, where Prince Rogers Nelson was born and grew up, and where he became a regent of the local music scene even before that first album came out in 1978, the movie uses everyone's real name for characters - "We've all called Prince 'The K id' for a long time," says Band Member Lisa Coleman and a lot of real locations in and around Minneapolis Prince frequents.
The Kid has also been provided, like his real-life doppelgānger, with a black father and a Mediterranean mother. In the movie, Dad cuffs Mom around a good deal: he is a frustrated musician, which explains these bouts of violent temper; she shrieks and screams a lot, which presumably demonstrates her ethnicity. If women are sexual baubles in Prince's songs, in his movie they are tarnished angels who love to have their wings clipped. Apollonia (the "baptismal name" of Newcomer Patricia Kotero, 22) strips down and jumps into an icy lake to win The Kid's approval. The Kid, arrogant, sensitive, injured and defensively sadistic, realizes he has been thoroughly psyched by his parents. He salves the wounds by dedicating a song to his father, performing a tune written by the young women of the band and fetching Apollonia on his motorcycle for a last, cathartic concert.
On stage is where part Prince really comes out wailing, part Hendrix, part Screamin' Jay Hawkins. If music alone could make a movie masterpiece, then Purple Rain might have a shot. Its score is ecumenical rock, echoing everyone from Hendrix and Sly Stone to Brian Wilson and Earth, Wind and Fire, yet remaining entirely original overall. It may have the best original rock music ever written for a movie.
"He's a ladies' man! Not homosexual. He does love his women!" And a certain phone number - "The hot line." Apollonia says. "That's right by his bed. No one else has the number."
But it was in person that Apollonia popped the question.
The toughie, the one that provoked lingering silence.
Finally Prince had an answer for her...
"Anything I can't do? Yeah. I can't cook."
Reported By: JAY COCKS + DENISE WORRELL
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
PURPLE RAiN
Prince And The Revolution - Live At First Avenue 1983 - Purple Rain
*This performance was recorded and used for the album soundtrack
by: babyboy blue 187
Prince And The Revolution - 1985 Purple Rain Tour - 20 Minutes Of Rain
By: babyboy blue 187
"The Artist" - Rave In2 The Year 2000 - Purple Rain (Gospel Version)
Recorded At Paisley Park Studios
By: babyboy blue 187
Prince - 20Ten European Tour - Milan, Italy 2010 -Purple Rain
*This clip is proof that after 30 years of singing this song. Prince has not lost any of the passion and yet still reaches new heights performing this classic stadium rock anthem.
NOTE: wait for the guitar solo (so much power in this lil' man when he plays his guitar)
By: babyboy blue 187
Prince - Nude Tour 1990 - Purple Rain
By: babyboy Blue 187
Saturday, May 28, 2011
BOBBY Z
Drummer Bobby Z from Prince And The Revolution Shares Recovery Story:
Read more: Prince Drummer Bobby Z Shares Recovery Story http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/dpp/entertainment/music/artists/prince-drummer-bobby-z-shares-recovery-story-may-25-
Robert Rivkin suffered heart attack in February
Updated: Wednesday, 25 May 2011, 11:18 PM CDT
Published : Wednesday, 25 May 2011, 11:17 PM CDT
by Maury Glover / FOX 9 News
MINNEAPOLIS - He’s a Minnesota music legend who played drums with other state greats like Prince, but a recent heart attack nearly cost him the beat that keeps him alive.
Robert Rivkin, better known as Bobby Z, was released from the hospital in February after doctors implanted three stints in his chest. Now, after spending the last few months letting his heart heal, he says he’s doing well on the road to recovery.
“My expression is, ‘I’m back in the saddle, but the horse is a little slower,’” he quipped.
It came as a shock for fans to learn that the man who helped Prince keep the beat as the drummer for his backup band, The Revolution, had suffered a heart attack. Yet, Rivkin said there were signs beforehand.
“There was a build-up,” he said. “We do have denial of our bodies -- especially men -- sometimes.”
Rivkin said it began in late January, when the pains he had been feeling in his neck, chest and elbow -- thought to be due to a pinched nerve after years of drumming -- became too much to bear.
Finally, his wife, Vicki, convinced him to go to the emergency room at Fairview Southdale, where he quickly took a turn for the worse.
“They basically said, ‘Goodbye,’” Rivkin recounted. “Sounds like it was pretty heavy duty. I’m glad I was asleep for it, but I’m glad I woke up from it to see everyone ecstatic and happy. I’ve never seen faces like that. Literally, like they’ve seen a ghost.”
As news of his condition spread, Rivkin’s family heard from former bandmates, including the purple one himself.
“He talked to my wife, Vicki, he talked to my son, Joey,” Rivkin said. “I think there is a connection that we had in the beginning that is very strong. I think the emotions tugged on him pretty good.”
In fact, during a series of sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden, the man who one wrote a song called “Condition of the Heart” dedicated one of his most popular numbers -- “Nothing Compares to You” -- to his ailing friend.
“This song is dedicated to Bobby Z,” Prince said at the show. “There are a lot of people who helped me along the way. He’s one of them.”
Rivkin said the outpouring of love from fans around the world was both unexpected and overwhelming, and it helped him recover.
“It was the wind at my back that pushed me out of the hospital,” recalled Rivkin.
Now that he’s been to the brink of death and back, Rivkin said he’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.
“I wish I could tell you where I went, but I went somewhere and came back -- and that does make you feel like you were part of a miracle or you dodged a bullet,” he said.
Rivkin said he is telling his story to encourage other men his age -- particularly those with a family history of heart disease -- to not ignore those body aches and pains because they could be minor heart attacks.
Rivkin plans to take part in the American Heart Association’s annual heart walk at Target Field a week from Saturday.
Read more: Prince Drummer Bobby Z Shares Recovery Story http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/dpp/entertainment/music/artists/prince-drummer-bobby-z-shares-recovery-story-may-25-
Thursday, April 28, 2011
PARADE
xfm 25 presents classic albums from the year 1986
prince and the revolution
parade - music from the motion picture, 'under the cherry moon'
prince and the revolution
parade - music from the motion picture, 'under the cherry moon'
“Parade” was Prince’s 1986 follow-up to “Around the World in a Day” and the soundtrack to his second film “Under the Cherry Moon”. The album revealed a complex new jazz influenced sound, featuring lush orchestral arrangements (from Clare Fischer) and a very European flavour.
“Parade” featured the number one single, "Kiss" – along with key tracks; “Girls and Boys”, “Anotherlover”, and “Sometimes it Snows in April”. It was also the final album that Prince released with the Revolution.
The series is entitled "25" takes a look back at classic albums released in 1986. We started off the series in January with Metallica's "Master Of Puppets", followed in Feb with Public Image Ltd's "Album", at the end of March the third documentary, is going out, about Depeche Mode's "Black Celebration", and we kick off our documentary about "Parade" from Prince And The Revolution followed by playback of the entire album.
We've conducted a 40 minute interview with Dr Fink - Revolution member legend and all around nice guy, was more than happy to go into detail and answer all the questions we asked. Obviously since the documentary is only an hour long, it'll be edited down to the most relevant stuff regarding the album, but we should be able to upload the entire unedited interview online after the documentary goes out at the end of April.
We've also got Bobby Friction (BBC R1/Asian Network DJ and huge fan) giving his views on the album, we have Bill Oddie talking about their favorite tracks on the album and the story of "Kiss" being created (talking about Mazarati and David Z), Brett Anderson from the band Suede went out of his way to talk about the album for us as he's a huge fan, and we'll hopefully be conducting an interview with Clare Fischer regarding his input on the album..... we touched on some other stuff that happened in 1986 such as Manic Monday being a hit (and credited to Christopher Tracy)...
All in all, this will be of interest to hardcore Prince fans, music lovers, and students as well as casual listeners who might not be too familiar with this classic album.
HiGHER LEARNING
PARADE
Monday, February 28, 2011
TiME MAGAZINE; tHE 25 BESt MOViE SOUNDtRACKS
PURPLE RAiN - 1984
"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life. Electric word, life. It means forever, and that's a mighty long time. But I'm here to tell you there's something else: the afterworld. A world of never-ending happiness where you can always see the sun. Day ... or night."
When an album opens like Purple Rain does, with what sounds like an effeminate preacher's treatise on life as prison and death as release, it's hard to know what to expect from the rest of the thing. And over the course of the subsequent nine tracks, Prince and the Revolution try their hardest to keep listeners both off balance and on their feet. A funk-pop-rock-R&B-psychedelic mashup, Purple Rain is the album that propelled Prince into the pop-music stratosphere. Ostensibly the sound track to the film of the same name — a laughably acted, semi-autobiographical look at a striving Minneapolis musician called simply the Kid — Purple Rain moves from the exciting opener "Let's Go Crazy" to the sweet pop of "Take Me with U" to the sultry experimentation of "When Doves Cry" (the song has no bass line) to the epic closer and title ballad.
Winner of the Oscar for Best Original Song Score (a category that no longer exists), Purple Rain has another place in music history. In 1984 Tipper Gore bought the album for her young daughter Karenna. When Tipper heard the opening line to the song "Darling Nikki" (I knew a girl named Nikki/ I guess you could say she was a sex fiend/ I met her in a hotel lobby/ Masturbating with a magazine), she was appalled, even though it was actually tamer than some of Prince's previous efforts ("Jack U Off" and "Head"). The album prompted the wife of then Senator Al Gore to form the Parents Music Resource Center, dedicated to monitoring objectionable content in pop music; one Senate hearing later (John Denver and Dee Snider testified), "Parental Advisory" stickers began to grace album covers. But as the man formerly known as a symbol understands well, there's no such thing as bad publicity: the ruckus over "Darling Nikki" helped bring the Purple One to the attention of millions of new fans.
Friday, February 18, 2011
tHE GRAMMY WINNERS 2011
Grammy Hall Of Fame - Prince And The Revolution - Purple Rain
Album of the year – Arcade Fire, The Suburbs
Record of the year – Lady Antebellum, Need You Now
Song of the year – Need You Now (Lady Antebellum)
Best new artist – Esperanza Spalding
Best female pop vocal performance – Lady Gaga, Bad Romance
Best male pop vocal performance – Bruno Mars, Just the Way You Are
Best pop vocal album – Lady Gaga, The Fame Monster
Best traditional pop vocal album – Michael Buble, Crazy Love
Best electronic/dance album – La Roux, La Roux
Best solo rock vocal performance – Paul McCartney, Helter Skelter
Best hard rock performance – Them Crooked Vultures, New Fang
Best metal performance – Iron Maiden, El Dorado
Best rock song – Angry World (Neil Young)
Best rock album – Muse, The Resistance
Best alternative music album – The Black Keys, Brothers
Best female R&B vocal performance – Fantasia, Bittersweet
Best male R&B vocal performance – Usher, There Goes My Baby
Best urban/alternative performance – Cee Lo Green, Fuck You
Best R&B song – Shine (John Legend and the Roots)
Best contemporary R&B album – Usher, Raymond v. Raymond
Best rap solo performance – Eminem, Not Afraid
Best rap song – Empire State of Mind (Jay–Z and Alicia Keys)
Best rap album – Eminem, Recovery
Best female country vocal performance – Miranda Lambert, The House That Built Me
Best male country vocal performance – Keith Urban, Til Summer Comes Around
Best country song – Need You Now (Lady Antebellum)
Best country album– Lady Antebellum, Need You Now
Best contemporary jazz album – The Stanley Clarke Band, The Stanley Clarke Band
Best Americana album – Mavis Staples, You Are Not Alone
Best contemporary blues album – Buddy Guy, Living Proof
Best contemporary folk album:
Ray LaMontagne & the Prairie Dogs, God Willin’ the Creek Don’t Rise
Ray LaMontagne & the Prairie Dogs, God Willin’ the Creek Don’t Rise
Best classical album:
Verdi: Requiem (Ildar Abdrazakov, Olga Borodina, Barbara Frittoli & Mario Zeffiri; Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Chicago Symphony Chorus)
Verdi: Requiem (Ildar Abdrazakov, Olga Borodina, Barbara Frittoli & Mario Zeffiri; Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Chicago Symphony Chorus)
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
BOBBY Z - iN OUR HEARTS, THOUGHTS & PRAYERS
Bobby Z, 55, the music producer best known as a drummer for Prince And The Revolution (from 1978-1986) is in critical condition in a Twin Cities hospital after a heart attack.
"He had three arteries that were blocked, and the doctors on Sunday night were able to take care of two of them," Adam Rivkin, his son, told me Wednesday. "They wanted him to get stronger in order to go through the final phase and take care of the third one. He's in critical condition and resting. He needs to build his strength so his heart can work on its own. Now they have him on help. That's why he's in critical condition," said Adam, who sounded as if he was holding it together, although clearly shaken up.
On Tuesday I wrote a blind item about a music icon's heart attack.
"We saw it," said Adam. "It was nice. Everyone [in the family] knows already."
Now that text messages are flying around about Bobby Z's heart attack, Adam said it was OK to write something, even though he could not reach his mother, Vicki Rivkin, by phone to discern what she was comfortable with disclosing.
Bobby Z was selected by Prince for his first tour, according to Wikipedia, because he was a white guy and Prince wanted a racially diverse band.
Get well, Bobby Z.
- the startribune -
________________________________________________________
Prince And The Revolution - AMERiCA
~ Performed live in France ~
~ 1986 ~
"We are sending big love to bobby z and his family. after hearing that he suffered a major heart attack, we are ready to fly to minnesota to be with our brother. please send your prayers and support. we love you bobby! xoxo
- Wendy & Lisa (The Revolution)
Friday, January 21, 2011
PRiNCE AND tHE REVOLUtiON - NOON RENDEZVOUS
PRiNCE AND tHE REVOLUTION
NOON RENDEZVOUS
RECORDED LiVE At fIRSt AVENUE
~ 1984 ~
SONG DEDICAtiON tO MiSS SHEiLA E. fROM PRINCE
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