Prince & The Revolution original vintage shirt single stitch Lenny Kravitz Tupac

Description: "Record contracts are just like--I'm gonna say the word--slavery. I would tell any young artist...don't sign."--Prince "The DM/Controversy era owed a lot to punk in terms of style and substance, to varying degrees."--some dude on Reddit As I get older, I realize that nothing I really loved as a kid was ever completely abandoned, even as I moved on to other interests, and I loved Prince. I can't recall how many times I saw Purple Rain in the theater, but it was definitely more than once, and I couldn't get enough of his music. Back in the mid-80s, an 11-year-old discovered music through FM radio and Mtv, both of which Prince had conquered completely. Within a few years I'd be immersed in punk rock, forever changing the way I would seek out and consume music, but the mid-80s was when I developed a lifelong tendency toward fanaticism, as opposed to being a passive consumer of commercial media. At this time I was heavily into Prince, but I was also very much into Bruce Springsteen and Frankie Goes to Hollywood (new listings for those coming soon, by the way), but I wasn't content with what was being played on the radio; I went into their back catalogues and sought out as much material as I could find: early albums, EPs, obscure singles and B-sides, demo recordings. I read whatever I could get my hands on (even if it was limited to Spin or Rolling Stone: I was as resourceful as I could be at the time). To have been a big Prince fan in '84-'85 was nothing unusual, but I was getting deep into his earlier stuff: Dirty Mind and Controversy were on heavy rotation in my bedroom; though the punk influence obviously eluded me at the time, I can look back and see how seamless my transition really was. "Reddit dude" talks about "style and substance," and he's right: songs like "Sister" and "Ronnie Talk to Russia" owe more to punk, substantively, than any other genre, even though the albums themselves are equal parts funk, punk, R&B, and rock. And in terms of style, not only can you hear it in the music, but you can see it in the artwork. Prince is rocking the same punked-out coat on the covers of both Dirty Mind and Controversy, studs and all, and the adding of the "Rude Boy" pin would indicate that he was at least aware of what was happening in the UK with bands like Madness and the Specials. (Perhaps he just thought it was just a catchy phrase--the idea of being a "rude boy"--but the total package would suggest a more coherent message. I'd have killed for one of those pins.) My own discovery of punk was life-changing, and it happened the same way that it happened for anyone back then: someone whom you trusted sat you down, placed a cassette into the boom box, and told you to get ready. And then boom--nothing was ever the same again. But Prince kept creeping back into my consciousness. It was too late to have seen Bauhaus (though years later they would reform), but I caught Peter Murphy at the Orpheum Theater in Boston (or maybe it was the Wilbur), and for the encore he did this beautiful rendition of "Purple Rain." And then, years later when I'd moved to LA, I went into my local hipster coffee shop in Silverlake, and what I was hearing was both recognizable and otherworldly. "What is this," I asked the barista, jutting my finger into the air, and he explained that it was a Yo La Tengo side project called "Dump," and that the album was a total Prince tribute (if you haven't heard it, the record is literally called "That Skinny Motherf*cker with the High Voice?"--and it's dope). Thus Prince's influence on punk is as undeniable as punk's influence on Prince: a completely recursive relationship, both in terms of style and substance. (Bonus fun fact: if you watch the movie "Green Room" about a ragtag punk band that gets caught up in a murder scene at a white power compound in Oregon, there's a subplot whereby members of the group play "if you could have only one band on a desert island," and one by one they confess their guilty pleasures. At a crucial point in the plot, one of the members blurts out "Prince." Arbitrary? I don't think so.) So when found this shirt, and realized how perfectly it would fit, I knew I was kicking down, a total no-brainer. Whether or not it garners any interest among buyers remains to be seen, but that's sort of secondary; I'm psyched to own it for now. It's beautifully broken in with no flaws at all, an absolute banger. The tag is missing but it's a "Ched by Anvil," which is up there with Screen Stars in terms of vintage-y goodness, fit and feel. And though it's original tour merch, it doesn't promote any particular album (just Prince's penchant for doves, a clear nod to one of his most beloved songs). You can find original promo tees for Purple Rain right here on eBay--that iconic image of the purple one on his customized Hondamatic--but that's a bit too specific for fandom as broad as mine. I guess I'm still a Prince "fanatic" at heart. I'll have to get myself one of those Rude Boy pins, now that they're merely a mouseclick away. I never meant to cause you any sorrow/I never meant to cause you any pain/I only wanted to see you laughing in the purple rain...

Price: 199 USD

Location: Westwood, Massachusetts

End Time: 2024-10-09T04:28:47.000Z

Shipping Cost: N/A USD