206 - Prince - Dirty Mind

I have been a Prince fan since 1999's singles hit the airwaves. When I went hiking on a 50+ mile segment of the Appalacian Trail in high school, I took my Walkman with 2 or 3 cassettes. One of those cassettes was the dual-album of Dirty Mind/Controversy. Dirty Mind is ingrained in my noggin.

Prince was annoyed that supposedly "dirty" funk and disco relied on double-entendre and innuendo. He decided to hell with that and wrote an album that expressed his musical and sexual thoughts with no filter. The music on Dirty Mind explores funk, rock, R&B, and new wave-styled synths. In the lyrics...let's just look at a couple of key song titles - "Head" and "Sister." Having songs that discussed the pleasure of oral sex and the joys of incest was certainly no where close to common when the album came out.

The guitars and keys on "Dirty Mind" could have been stolen from The Cars. Prince shows his pop-craftsmanship with "When You Were Mine." He gets sooooo funky with "Head" and "Do It All Night." He throws a dance party with "Uptown" and "Partyup" (the latter includes an audience-participation chant at the end). And he slows it down to a whispered plead and an ached wailing in "Gotta Broken Heart Again."

The fact that Prince wrote, played, sang, recorded, and mixed the entire album nearly all by himself is a testament to his vision, knowledge, and skills.

Songs I Knew I Liked: "Dirty Mind," "When You Were Mine," "Uptown," and "Partyup"

Songs I Now Like: No new discoveries

Songs I Can Go the Rest of My Life Never Hearing Again: None

205 - Cream - Wheels of Fire

"White Room" is such a classic song. I admire the musicianship, the fantasy lyrics, and the atmosphere so much. It is hard rock, with a blues rhythmic backbone, psychadelic flourishes, and blistering guitar from Clapton. The song is a great example of how the whole can be even greater than the sum of its parts. Next comes the plodding, amped-up blues of "Sitting on Top of the World." It's not a bad song, but each time I start listening to Wheels of Fire I get psyched up and then suddenly bored out of my skull. Sadly, I experience that pattern repeatedly on this album - I get completely hooked on something and then the band shifts to something completely different. This pattern is worsened in the second half with the live tracks; two of which wander horribly for 16ish minutes.

I found myself having greater extreme reactions to the musical decisions on Wheels of Fire than I recall having with any other albums on the Rolling Stone Top 500 Albums list. I will be tremendously annoyed with the music, then they'll suddenly alter what's happening and it becomes one of the best musical moments on the album. In the end, the emotional rollercoaster has become tiresome to me. I'm frustrated with the band more than anything else. It overcomes whatever brilliance is stored on Wheels of Fire.


Songs I Knew I Liked: "White Room"

Songs I Now Like: "As You Said"

Songs I Can Go the Rest of My Life Never Hearing Again: "Pressed Rat and Warhog," "Toad," and the overly-long live version of "Spoonful."