Few artists have created a body of work as rich and varied as Prince. During the ’80s, he emerged as one of the most singular talents of the rock & roll era, capable of seamlessly tying together pop, funk, folk, and rock. Not only did he release a series of groundbreaking albums; he toured frequently, produced albums and wrote songs for many other artists, and recorded hundreds of songs that still lie unreleased in his vaults. With each album he released, Prince has shown remarkable stylistic growth and musical diversity, constantly experimenting with different sounds, textures, and genres.

Occasionally, his music can be maddeningly inconsistent because of this eclecticism, but his experiments frequently succeed; no other contemporary artist can blend so many diverse styles into a cohesive whole.

Prince’s first two albums were solid, if unremarkable, late-’70s funk-pop. With 1980’s Dirty Mind, he recorded his first masterpiece, a one-man tour de force of sex and music; it was hard funk, catchy Beatlesque melodies, sweet soul ballads, and rocking guitar pop, all at once. The follow-up, Controversy, was more of the same, but 1999 was brilliant. The album was a monster hit, selling over three million copies, but it was nothing compared to 1984’s Purple Rain.

Purple Rain made Prince a superstar; it eventually sold over ten million copies in the U.S. and spent 24 weeks at number one. Partially recorded with his touring band, the Revolution, the record featured the most pop-oriented music he has ever made. Instead of continuing in this accessible direction, he veered off into the bizarre psycho-psychedelia of Around the World in a Day, which nevertheless sold over two million copies. In 1986, he released the even stranger Parade, which was in its own way as ambitious and intricate as any art rock of the ’60s; however, no art rock was ever grounded with a hit as brilliant as the spare funk of “Kiss.” Read the rest of this entry »

May The Funk Be With You, Always !

This an older interview about the origins of Detroit House and Techno with Mike Clark, Norm Talley,and Delano Smith. It talks about how things got started back in the day, and discusses how instrumental Mojo was in breaking a lot of Detroit’s Dance Music to the world and how influential he was to the DJ’s that helped start it all.

DETROIT BEATDOWN By Dan Bean, Posted on DJ History

Ask music lovers what Detroit means to them and you’ll probably hear mention of Berry Gordy or Norman Whitfield, perhaps George Clinton or Yusef Lateef. Were you to point out that there’s a direct link between these styles and the pared down machine funk of the city’s latter day sound (known by some as techno), you could safely expect puzzled looks from all but the most dedicated fans.

Yet there is a link, forged in the high school social parties of the 70s and the clubs and radio shows of the 80s by a few key figures. These musical visionaries led their dancers and listeners from disco, via hi-nrg and italo through to the earliest drum machine tracks; all the while introducing a dose of the left field influences that help to give Detroit its unique sound.

This sound, or maybe this ‘feeling’, is known as Beatdown and owes a great deal to the eclectic, boundary defying styles of DJs such as Ken Collier and the radio presenter Electrifyin’ Mojo.

The modern inheritors of this style are the present day Beatdown DJs of Detroit. Three in particular have channelled the vision of the godfathers of Beatdown, both through their DJing and the release of documents such as the Detroit Beatdown Volume 1 compilation.

They are Mike Clark, Norm Talley and Delano Smith.

The day after Detroit’s annual electronic music festival we met to talk about the origins of their music, the advent of drum machines and the story of DJing in an era that pre-dated labels such as house and techno. Read the rest of this entry »