Dirty Mind

So Sidney C. and Theo Dapina.

And if you haven't checked out Theo's Instagram, he dressed up as Prince on the Dirty Mind cover for Halloween, and it was incredible.

The photos were just, like, amazing.

And Law, L-A-W, but I call him Law, but it's really L-A-W, but I guess I get a pass.

But he had it all there.

The only thing where I personally saw Prince grow was as a live performer.

You know, like, if you watch those, like, Dirty Mind videos versus 1999 versus, you know, like, Purple Rain, and then you get to, like, Glam Slam, like, that trajectory of him as a live performer is, like, is truly incredible.

Unbelievable.

I still actually have it.

Now what I know is Dirty Mind.

And it was sitting out and I was like, oh, this guy's named Prince.

And I said, mom, can I buy this? And she's like, sure.

And that just rocked

my world.

Because Dirty Mind was a little rocky, a little more rock in the roll than what people think of.

But when I heard 1999, I played that album over and over.

It's got some really good songs on it, still in the rotation.

All right, 1980s, Dirty Mind.

largely recorded uh in his home basement studio

i mean dirty mind is probably one of my 20 or 30 favorite albums of all time um it's uh not for the faint of heart like there's it's the title is very apt it's got some pretty graphic songs on there um and it's also you know when I want to be a lover got big Prince was kind of like disco.

We sort of like, you know, like a teen idol kind of thing.

And dirty mind is basically like a new wave record, like, you know, punk new wave record.

So it was musically, it was very much like a one 80.

Um, But I think it also and it, you know, didn't really sell well when it first came out either.

He wanted the world.

He spent the next two years releasing fiercely experimental cross-genre records like Dirty Mind in 1980 and Controversy in 1981.

He stripped the music down to raw synthetic funk, combined it with new wave electronics and paired the grooves with explicitly sexual and political lyrics.

Critics raved, but mainstream pop radio held him at arm's length.

So like You Got The Look, I first heard and saw the track on The Chart Show.

It's another great pop rock single with a hint of Bruce Springsteen about it, just like When You Were Mine from Dirty Mind back in 1980.

Prince plays some great guitar on the track along with a great vocal.

It has an infectious melody that is paired with a surprisingly bittersweet emotional core.

Not necessarily the sparseness, but one, it makes me...

It has a connotation for me in terms of very early Talking Heads, very early, specifically the album Dirty Mind by Prince, in terms of this really stripped down, but interestingly stripped down arrangements of a rock band kind of thing.

But the other one, not in sparseness, and I... didn't know where I would mention them, Joy Division.

I think

Yeah, kind of like that.

And I got it on cassette and Side A was Dirty Mind and Side B was Controversy.

Yeah.

I was really excited because I got two albums in one day and it was just like really, really kick-ass albums.

Just like a stylist, different styles of

soul music.

And Dirty Mind was pretty close, but I'd say for me, it's the first real Prince album.

I think Dirty Mind is what got him.

The first broadcast had Janice Ian performing at 17 and in the winter, and Billy Preston performed Nothing from Nothing and Fancy Lady.

in 1981 the rolling stones held a concert at the los angeles memorial coliseum that would normally not be that big a deal except that their opening act that night was an up-and-coming artist by the name of prince He was not exactly what we would say to be a good fit for the Rolling Stones audience, especially during this time, because this was Prince Dirty Mind era, which meant that he went out on stage in a trench coat.

And when he opened up the trench coat, he was wearing bikini briefs.

That did not sit well with the audience.

It had favorites like Masters of the Universe.

In 1980, Prince released one of my favorite Prince albums, Dirty Mind.

This was his third studio album.

Hit number 45, though, on the Billboard Albums Chart in America.

He had a couple of hits beforehand, but that was the album that put out Little Red Corvette and also Delirious.

And of course, 1999.

As far as this album went, though, since it only hit number 45, you're kind of wondering, well, what was on it? Dirty Mind and Uptown.

Those were the only two hits off of this album, if you want to call them hits.