Music & Movie Monday—Purple Rain

Now isn’t that clever?

It just occurred to me as I sat down to type this that I could have a double Monday post. 

Gary and Jack are gone for Boy Scout Summer Camp and while it still remains that I have a million things to be working on, I decided to take it easy and sit and watch some TV. 

My new favorite channel is Palladia.  Prior to our getting Dish Network when we moved in here, I had no idea it even existed.  I love it!  It’s kinda a modern version of the original MTV and less hokey-tv than the current VH1.  It’s all videos, concerts, interviews with musical artists, and apparently music-related movies as I caught Prince’s Purple Rain this morning. 

Boy, does that zoom you right back to 1984!

Both the album and movie came out the summer between my junior and senior year in high school, and if that’s not one of your heyday periods, I don’t know what is.  The music holds many, many memories for me during that time.  And it’s especially cool that Gary was into Prince, too, so he gets it.  I remember….

• a group of us friends sitting around at Andy Powless’ house listening intently, trying to make out the “racy” lyrics on the Purple Rain album.  These are reportedly the very ones that led to the use of Parental Advisory stickers on album covers.  I just have to say: Thanks, Tipper Gore and the Parents Music Resource Center, for helping us spot the albums we knew we wanted to listen to the most.

• Steve Gragert doing a super cool Michael Jackson moon walk to When Doves Cry across the auditorium stage for a Student Body President speech/skit.  So very Napoleon Dynamite now that I think about it!  Of the memorable events in our high school days, I bet that one ranks up there as number 1 for many. 

Steve + Prince + moonwalk = very cool!

 

• going on a date with the boyfriend at that time to see Purple Rain at the Flora Theatre.  I think that was the very night I excitedly stood up as the theatre owner announced my name as the door prize winner.  Turned out he called someone else’s name. Diane Ha-well?! How many could there be?  The speech impediment amplified through the bullhorn didn’t help one bit. 

 

• walking out after the show was over and seeing my “old maid” Great-Aunt Rea sitting at the back of the theatre with her boyfriend.  I am not sure who was more embarrassed but I have to think it could have been her, in her 70’s, witness to all this steamy, sweaty, skimpy, slithery, slick move of a movie. 

We never breathed a word.

 

• dancing at the wildly fun sock hops we had following home basketball games in the little gym at FHS.  Yep, Gary was there and we had such good times together!  I have to say Jungle Love as done by Morris Day and The Time in the movie, was one of my most accomplished dances, personally speaking, and no, really, I had no professional training whatsoever.  Something about those 80’s moves and I just meshed.  I will have to add in a video snippet of that just so you can appreciate.  I also did The Bird, but as a dance, it borders on too corny and contrived in my book, so let’s just let that one rest. 

 

• the white scarf Prince wore in the movie is identical to the one Gary wore our senior year and draped around my neck after he topped my head with his fedora and, yes, I still keep the scarf in my top-center dresser drawer.  

 

• Dez Dickerson made a lasting imprint on me, probably from the time I first heard his voice on Prince’s song 1999.  Turns out he left Prince’s band, The Revolution, after going holy in about 1980, no longer feeling ok performing Prince’s raunchier material.  But Dez was briefly seen in the Purple Rain movie with his group The Modernaires. 

 

How many shrimpy shrimps built like Prince could have pulled off the lace and puffy shirts, the button crotch skintights, the dancing and jumping in the high heels, and that mop of shellacked hair that Prince did, all the while seeming like God’s gift to all women on Earth? 

Gotta give the purple dude some credit.  He is good. 

  The closing line in the movie credits:

May u live 2 see the dawn.

Did you know that Prince only composed the songs for the movie?  I guess I mistakenly assumed he wrote the screenplay or had some other role in making the movie, but turns out, no. 

I will say Purple Rain, the movie, these days, seemed to move slow and the female actors were so bad, but the club performance scenes were still enjoyable and reminded me how great a performer Prince is/was.  

Purple Rain, the music, will rock forever, from 1984 on.