{"id":19401,"date":"2013-07-01T00:02:31","date_gmt":"2013-07-01T04:02:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=19401"},"modified":"2013-07-01T14:33:23","modified_gmt":"2013-07-01T18:33:23","slug":"thrifty-music-prince-jaccuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/thrifty-music-prince-jaccuse\/","title":{"rendered":"Thrifty Music: Prince, J’accuse!"},"content":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dailymotion.com\/video\/xq70ez<\/a><\/span><\/span>\n

Greetings, fellow seekers of the wild, the weird, the wonderful, and the presumptively worthless! I come before you today with my usual slab of dusty vinyl scrounged from a flea market, featuring not just R&B third-stringers The Moments, but also their platooning labelmates, the Whatnauts! What could be better?<\/p>\n

I’ll tell you what could be better: a full-on R&B conspiracy, featuring a mysterious man in purple who some around here love to hate.<\/p>\n

Our story begins with the Moments and the Whatnauts, heard here collaborating on a great little chune called, simply, “Girls.” The groove is light and frothy, the melody pleasing, the sentiment positive and the singing tuneful, plus — what’s that I hear? A rare R&B deployment of a Mellotron! It’s a winner, and here it is for your enjoyment:<\/p>\n

01 Girls-Part I<\/a><\/p>\n

Up next, the villain in this case, one Prince Rogers Nelson, from his soundtrack LP “Under the Cherry Moon,” with one of my favorite Prince deep cutz, “Mountains”. As soon as I heard the Moments\/Whatnauts number, I raced back to the stereo to play this track. Can you hear why?<\/p>\n

08 Mountains<\/a><\/p>\n

Have you twigged it yet? Here, this should help. First the opening chords to “Girls”:<\/p>\n

01 Girls Opening segment, Whatnauts<\/a><\/p>\n

Now, the opening chords to Prince’s “Mountains”:<\/p>\n

01 Girls Opening segment, Prince<\/a><\/p>\n

Let me make this even more plain. Whatnauts:<\/p>\n

01 Girls Opening chords, Whatnauts<\/a><\/p>\n

Prince:<\/p>\n

01 Girls Opening chords, Prince<\/a><\/p>\n

And, for my coup de grace, the two segments, “stacked” on top of each other:<\/p>\n

01 Girls Opening chords, Stacked<\/a><\/p>\n

What I find remarkable about this coincidence is that both sets of chords are played, a.) in the same key; b.) at the same tempo; c.) with the same general timbre\/voicing; and d.) as an introduction to their respective songs. Now, to be clear (lest Prince’s lawyers be listening in): I don’t really think Prince “stole” his intro to “Mountains” from “Girls.” But I do get a warm fuzzy glow thinking of the possibility that he knew about, and liked, that obscure track enough to pay it tribute at the height of his fame. It’s probably just a coincidence, but my job here is to titillate and tantalize as well as enlighten.<\/p>\n

I look forward to your reponses.<\/p>\n

HVB<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Greetings, fellow seekers of the wild, the weird, the wonderful, and the presumptively worthless! I come before you today with my usual slab of dusty vinyl scrounged from a flea market, featuring not just R&B third-stringers The Moments, but also their platooning labelmates, the Whatnauts! What could be better? I’ll tell you what could be […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[47,126,71],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19401"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19401\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}