Yeah well, that came as a complete shock didn't it. As with Bowie, I certainly don't need to wax lyrical about Prince here, it's pretty evident how important he was to so many people, myself included, and how much he will be missed. Even if his recorded output was seriously patchy from the late eighties onward, his live shows were always truly phenomenal, and, as @nessiest pointed out, unlike DB, he's been denied the chance of a glorious final recorded act. So very fucking sad indeed, and combined with the loss the day before of Negativland's Richard Lyons, which will mean less to most, but means a hell of a lot to me, I'm still feeling rather brain-frazzled after three days. Too many heroes gone.
Oddly, I forgot to kick off a vortex last week, and as there were no immediate suggestions, decided to go ahead with regularly scheduled programming, which still stands. However, if you want to do a #purplevortex next week, tweet me and we'll do one. It's up to you guys. Right now things seem a little raw to be paying immediate tribute.
"(Although I was living in Minneapolis in the late seventies as Prince was playing around town as a local, I was into other sorts of music and art. And I remain supremely unqualified to pay tribute in words or with a suitable pick, so I humbly leave that to others. To wit, today's pick is a million miles from the week's devastating news, news that prompted @oatmeal to write on Wednesday, "I'm starting to suspect that George R.R. Martin is the author behind 2016."
So. If we can pretend for 40 minutes that it's just another week and maybe that time travel is a thing... here's what I wrote, for today, last Monday....)
In honor of the recent Record Store Day, this evening's artist was tipped to me in a tiny record store in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo (to define "tiny": to pass another customer, one of you has to briefly walk outside). That store, Ned's, specializes in Japanese noise. But while I was there one evening the owner's daughter happened in and I asked (expecting she had her own taste, not her dad's) if she'd offer recommendations. One of them was these guys, that we're about to hear.
Today's pick is the band's [redacted], released [redacted]. It's lovingly stylized and expertly, deliciously anachronistic. If this is your first time hearing them, I hope you can start to enjoy their brilliant artistry, musicality, and humor half as much as I do."
See you at 8pm BST (GMT+1).
