Tag: 1999

#2 Prince: 1999 (Super Deluxe Edition)

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

For a Christmas present, he sent for me to come out on the road to see him, all expenses paid. It was New Year’s Eve in Dallas for the 1999 tour. That’s when I totally got it. I had never seen anybody give so much to an audience. I got weak in the knees. I was by the soundboard and the soundman got me a chair. Then I was literally up screaming with the crowd and dancing, and it was like, ‘Oh, my God. This guy’s incredible.’ That’s when I realized who I was working with.

Audio engineer Peggy McCreary

Oh, I’m sorry, did you forget about my Prince Journey? Did you think that albums on the journey couldn’t possibly finish this high? I regret to inform you that we’ve already entered the greatest run of albums in music history, so we’re likely to see Prince albums populating Necessary Evil’s top five until likely ‘Batman’ in around 2028. Also, it’s my (29th) birthday today, and you’re not going to let me talk about one of the greatest albums ever??

Back in 1982, this must have felt like it. Prince’s fifth album must have sounded like the ultimate and crowning masterpiece of His career. Not just ‘to date’, either, as ‘1999’ is such a comprehensive set of searing yet succeeded ambitions that it would have seemed unfeasible that Prince had anywhere left to go. He seemed to have finally perfected his mission statement: combining His formative ‘Minneapolis Sound’ with rock, reggae, electro pop, and heavy metal guitar screeches to create something entirely new, and to combine it with perfectly crafted pop songs to appeal to the mainstream. Prince had a one off hit song back in ’79 with the peppy I Wanna Be Your Lover, but as He’d grown as an artist and expanded his palate with more experimental and ambitious albums His commercial success had’t matched his critical one. Now, promoted by pop hits like Delirious, the inescapable title track and Little Red Corvette – legitimately one of the most perfect pop songs ever crafted – ‘1999’ provided that proper breakthrough. Despite being a double album, it entered the the US top 10, sold a million copies in only a few months and – despite being released in late 1982 – it’s staying power was enough for it to be the fifth biggest selling album of 1983.

Of course, this was no surprise to Prince, and only exactly what He had planned for.

WE NEED A PURPLE HIGH

5 Ultrasound: Everything Picture (Deluxe Edition)

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

A synthesised orchestra bursts into life. And I mean bursts. If this were in a Disney movie and meant to signify the first buds of spring in some fantasy netherworld ruled by a giant and intimidatingly amiable field mouse, you’d still ask them to tone it down a bit. The orchestra repeats itself for a few bars, as if sweeping its arms across the landscape. Isn’t it beautiful?, it says, this world you believe to know? Isn’t life just idiotically charming when you don’t know any better?? Then, the orchestra stops, to be replaced by a single foreboding organ while the sounds behind it seem to be dripping out the last of their good will. Drip. Drip. Drop. Drip. The droplets seem to both become sparer and start to resemble a ticking clock, winding down to some unknown but anxiety inducing conclusion. The same music that had previously swept its hands in overt astonishment as the landscape that is now starting to melt away, now grabs you roughly by the collar and pulls you forward. It opens a hand to you containing a red pill and a blue pill. Before throwing them both in rage at the still deforming landscape.

“Nah, fuck that”, they say. “That trope has been done to death to such a point where it now somehow represents Men’s Right Activism. There aren’t just two routes anyway, there are an infinite ways to comprehend reality, let me show you them all“.

I’LL SHOW YOU MINE

6 Prince: Controversy

~ Lex Leeson ~ 4 Comments

It’s a long way to the end if I want to jack you off. Year four of my approximately thirty year crusade to revisit and document each Prince album annually. I’ve so far found that His first two albums, unfortunately, really don’t stand up to modern scrutiny, but his third album ‘Dirty Mind‘ was as demonstrative a mark of His genius and as revelatory an LP in 2020 as it was in 1980. That album reached #7 on the year end chart and, fair warnings, we’re going to see a fair few of his following albums do the same, as that masterpiece officially kicked off one of the greatest run of albums any artist has done, ever.

While ‘Dirty Mind’ is much lauded over and intensely debated to this day, and His fifth album frequently joins it on lists of greatest albums ever (as does His sixth. And His seventh. And His eighth. And His ninth. And occasionally His tenth. Probably not His eleventh though), His follow up and fourth album ‘Controversy’ doesn’t get anywhere near the same attention. It seems to be looked upon as merely a transitional point between Prince really nailing down the style and the look on ‘Dirty Mind’ and then later finding the right mix of invariables to make him the biggest star in the world.

LET’s WORK

26 Olivia Rodrigo: SOUR

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

I’m so insecure, I think

That I’ll die before I drink

Brutal

Ha! Trust me, Ms Rodrigo, if I died before I first drank, it would have made a lot of people’s lives easier! Your not missing anything, I promise. Have you ever tried Methyl​enedioxy​methamphetamine though? That’s some good stuff, get it down you.

Christ, it’s a minefield trying to search for Olivia Rogrido photos. Like, is she twelve years old in that one?? I’m I accidentally turning this whole post into paedofodder? There’s also a lot of gifs of her doing something like sticking her tongue out but looped, which I’m pretty sure are just weird masturbation fodder for 40 year old men. OK, not many years until I’ll greatly appreciate all that pandering, but right now it’s still officially gross, OK? Jesus, this woman turned eighteen in February of this year, and this is her life now. Listen, maybe just read my Jordana piece and, like, amplify it.

I guessed you moved on really easily

My Life in Albums (part 1 83-96)

~ Lex Leeson ~ 7 Comments

Yeah, sorry, no more Bumble Rumble. Possibly… ever…? Listen, I’ve pretty much decided that I hate Zero Hour dating- I happen to still believe that I’m relatively attractive, so to have an app on my phone that frequently reminds me that I’m actually not is not good at all for my already inflated yet easily pricked sense of self-esteem. For now, my official stance is that I know that I’m a highly fuckable piece of hunky man meat who could grind genitals with pretty much any woman he wants, but I just choose not to, OK?? The official stance is that I’ve decided to concentrate on the more important things in my life, such as this blog- which has never been more popular- and my actual job- which I’m technically supposed to be doing now*. Remember this blog? It used to be about music, didn’t it? I mean… kinda… Let’s do that again. Basically, it’s time for:

image 241

Just wanted a photo with my eyes in it. Have they always been that colour? More after the jump!!

Continue reading “My Life in Albums (part 1 83-96)” →

21 Christine and the Queens: Christine and the Queens

~ Lex Leeson ~ 4 Comments

Can you believe this is only the second (halfway decent) self titled album released (cough) this year??

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I had, like, a thing for self-titled albums, didn’t I?

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I think it was called Self-Titled Vindication or summat, but it’s been so long now that I can’t quite remember

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christine

Did I use a picture or something?

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Continue reading “21 Christine and the Queens: Christine and the Queens” →