Piano & A Microphone 1983
The first truly new-to-most release from Prince’s legendary Vault. This solo piano rehearsal was recorded at Prince’s Kiowa Trail home in Chanhassen in 1983, one of the very few years during his career that an album wasn’t released under any of his many properties.
No doubt you’ve heard some chatter somewhere about some hardcore Prince fanatic being upset over this release. While some of the arguments against do have merit, they have little to do with the content or performance itself. We’ll come back to those, but for now let’s focus on the fact that material from The Vault is actually hitting the market in an official capacity and not as filler on a re-issue.
Though recorded in a studio, this album fits better into the world of live albums. The solo piano and vocal format requires a different approach to the performance, arrangement, dynamics, and sentiment. If you worry about these just being mellow takes of the songs you already know and love, they are going to be different enough to warrant checking out. As where many artists take an acoustic approach to inject a sense of vulnerability that may not have otherwise been there, Prince takes the music into new worlds of experimentation and explores other facets of the emotional spectrum. Gone is the resigned depression from “17 Days,” replaced by an almost manic and pleading desperation. “Purple Rain” had not been formalized in the way we’ve come to know it, and so more liberties are taken during its all-too-brief appearance.
An odd continuity stretches through Side A (the medley), like a snapshot of where Prince was at the time and the ideas he was playing with for the immediate future. A cover of “A Case Of You” by Joni Mitchell, a song that would resurface on his One Nite Alone… album almost 20 years later, appears more-or-less here in the form it would be played on the Purple Rain tour. “Strange Relationship,” inspired by his relationship with Denise Matthews (you know, Vanity), goes into a different place. “17 Days” was originally meant to be part of Vanity 6’s repertoire, with blond bombshell Brenda Bennett singing lead. “Purple Rain” became the title for some movie he was making. The only song that had been released to the public at the time was “International Lover,” and even then it was buried on the last side of 1999.
The inclusion of “Mary Don’t You Weep” is curious. Prince’s take flirts with blues tropes, steering the story away from being a spiritual, but it almost doesn’t matter. His performance is so full of pent-up emotion and uncertainty that the listener feels a longing they didn’t know they had. Was there any significance to the tune segueing from “A Case Of You” or being mixed with “Strange Relationship” ? It could be no deeper than being a song he enjoyed for personal reasons. Prince had yet to face any real friction with Warner Bros., and so had yet to perceive his relationship with the label in slave terms, so any connection there is unlikely.
So how did “Mary Don’t You Weep” become a part of BlacKkKlansman? Having become friends with Troy Carter, the director invited the former Spotify head to a private screening of his upcoming joint. Among the finishing touches it still needed was a moving song to end on. Spike hadn’t invited Carter over with idea of asking him for suggestions, but he had one, anyway. While going through the Vault material, Troy had recently come across Prince by himself at a piano playing an introspective rendition of “Mary Don’t You Weep.” Spike felt like it was too perfect to be a coincidence, hinting that it was orchestrated by purple hands from the great beyond.
The medley ends with the relatively unknown “Wednesday.” For those that aren’t aware, “Wednesday”” was supposed to be in Purple Rain at one point, sung by Jill Jones. When her waitress character’s entire subplot was cut from the film, this song got the ax with it.
Side B (the last two tracks if you end up with a digital version) is going to be entirely new to most. “Cold Coffee & Cocaine” evokes the stage persona crafted for Morris Day, and many speculate that it was an idea intended for The Time. Don’t read anything into the cocaine mention, it was most likely picked for the alliteration of the ‘hard c.’ “Why The Butterflies?” was known as “Mama” for many years in the bootleg community. Prince says ‘Mama’ over and over as he builds the groove, so many traders just assumed that to be a reasonable title. Some have theorized that this was about epilepsy, but as with so many Prince songs we can only really guess. Both of these were sketches of songs to be revisited, but never were. That we know of.
The real treat is going to be the booklet that comes with the deluxe edition. Images taken by Prince’s then go-to photographer Allen Beaulieu accompany the release. Beaulieu’s work captured the bulk of iconic images from those early years, so it would feel off had it been some other image. Some of the Fam have criticized the cover image due to techniques used to lighten the image. The effect has left his right arm looking a bit unnatural. The original, darker images used to float around the web, but the lightened photos set the tone for the music just as well.
For those interested in the history of the time, the booklet includes essays written by those who would have been around at the time. Don Batts, the earliest home studio engineer, was there as Prince was honing his home studio work ethic and skills. Susan Rogers gets a lot of acclaim for being Prince’s engineer leading into his renaissance, but she picked up where Batts left off. Lisa Coleman, one of the pianists he worked with from 1980–1986, was close to Prince for a very long time. personally and creatively. Jill Jones contributing is something of a surprise after her very public reaction to being snubbed in the credits and acknowledgements for Purple Rain Deluxe in 2017. Jill Jones tends to speak passionately, sharing an unfiltered view of how she perceived the world. Anything from the three of these individuals is sure to be a gem.
This album is going to give us a window into Prince’s creative process that many would never have heard otherwise. It cannot be stressed enough how atypical his work ethic really was. Sure, many artists recorded onto cassettes periodically, but Prince had a home recording studio and an on-call engineer to staff it.
So why are there grumblings over this release? Nevermind the ‘What Prince would have wanted’ argument. Not only can we never be certain about it, it’s not an argument anyone can win. But there are other, more valid concerns.
Chief among them is the pre-existing availability. Most of the low-hanging fruit sources disappeared once Piano & A Microphone 1983 was actually announced, but it had been available to those in the know for decades on at least three different bootlegs. The audio quality here is better, but the tape hiss may leave some younger listeners wondering why they didn’t try to clean it up more. The fear that many have is that the Prince Estate is going to just legitimize the content on existing bootlegs. Before you point out that one instance does not make a trend — TIDAL has already done this on a couple occasions - most recently with 3 Nights Live In Miami 1994, though that particular title is no longer available there. I’m neither condoning or attacking the bootleg labels, they simply exist and have since the ’80's. It shouldn’t be a large part of the conversation when deciding what to release, but it should be a part of it.
Then there’s the title. The talking points of lead the narrative towards his career going full circle, that it ended as it began. However, this was recorded around 7 years into it, depending on when you start counting from. At the very least, Prince had five albums loose in the world by then; eight if you include albums he wrote and mostly performed for The Time and Vanity 6. His final tour was titled ‘Piano & A Microphone,’ and more than a few hints had been dropped about a planned live release focusing on it. To many, it feels misleading somehow to to force the connection.
Most importantly, it places an uneven emphasis on the Purple Rain era. Prince’s unreleased catalog was vast. His critics have always claimed that Prince over-sold the amount of work in The Vault based on nothing more than a knowledge of how things are typically done with other artists. Prince once claimed to have a goal of recording a song everyday. Averaged out over a 40 year career, taking into account that there were surely days he was nowhere near a recording studio and the numerous documented days where a whole albums-worth of material was cut to tape … the potential for that number to be safely in 5-digit number-land becomes real. Warner Bros. may only have the rights to the first half of his career, but they could acknowledge the other corners of the catalog before revisiting what Prince once referred to as his albatross.
Troy Carter and his team not having the intimate knowledge of the catalog that many of us in the Fam community do is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because they listen with fresh ears to the works that many of us take for granted, appreciating each performance for its brilliance as they come to it. It’s a curse because they don’t know what else is in there if they haven’t gotten to it yet. Though masterfully played, this was an aimless rehearsal that had almost no impact on Prince’s career. Carter really seems to care about the music, and, more importantly, respecting the man that made it. This may not be the album the devoted fan base was hoping for, but it is certainly not a bad choice. Piano & A Microphone 1983 just confirms to the rest of the world what we the devoted have known for decades — Prince was so good that even his practices were amazing to listen to.
For the casual listener, the one mainly familiar with Prince’s guitar heroics, you are in for a treat. For the long time listener who has delved beyond the accepted commercial catalog, this is likely better quality than any source you have heard before. Whatever else, this musical time capsule is a worthy addition to the official catalog. Listen to this whole record, then the non-album track “Cause And Effect.” It’s not hard to imagine Prince writing the second verse while remembering moments like this from around the beginning of his career. Piano & A Microphone 1983 is a testament to how much of himself was invested in every note he played, regardless of the audience or destination of the recording.
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