Prince - Dirty Mind

(Warner Bros., 1980)

Reviewed by Null.

Prince is a complete douche-bag. Seriously. I may not be telling you anything new but trust me; he is more of a douche-bag than you can possibly imagine. He is a sexist, money obsessed, shallow, religious fanatic, megalomaniac that squanders his incredible talent watching himself jerk-off in front of a mirror while leafing through the children’s illustrated bible. When he finally cums, he does so while humming the national anthem. I am not making this up. It is all documented in his albums. You see, I am very familiar with his work from 1978 to 1988. I have all those albums on vinyl and know them all by heart, for better or worse. When I really started to get into music, I started off with Prince, Led Zeppelin, and the Stones; I studied them to find out how rock music “worked” and how it was all organized and such. Later, I would discover punk rock, which changed my life with its intelligence and humanity. But, I digress, in middle school I listened to a lot of Prince. Whatever Prince has done after 1988 I have absolutely no interest in. As a matter of fact I have very little interest in what he did before 1988 but I can’t undo what has been done and his early catalog will rest forever in my memory.

Recently, I revisited the early Prince records that were tucked away in my CD room. Wow, the worse thing is when he tries to write a “political” song, which only illustrates his complete simplistic, nationalistic, and idiotic view of the world. Then of course, there are the songs where he is having sex with a woman who is screaming while he chants the Lord’s prayer. How someone, somehow, could confuse Jesus’s coming with a penis cumming is beyond me. Keep in mind, this isn’t punk rock satire, he is serious about this shit. Some of the music during his first 10 years is interesting but his intellect is like a bowl of cranberry sauce left on the dining-room table two weeks after Thanksgiving.

However, if one can get past all this stuff, it is interesting that on many of his releases, he plays ALL the instruments, as well as writes, produces, and arranges all his albums. Believe it or not, on his first record he even plays drums, bass, and guitar on a track like he is in a shredding metal band, which makes all his later work that much more disappointing. It was also disappointing when he became an “acceptable” artist, to the extent that you can imagine Barbra Streisand liking some of his stuff. He used to be “dangerous,” long before he and Oprah went to the same pedicurist. Also, I have always thought Prince had a great voice; it is very versatile - somewhere between Aretha Franklin and HR from Bad Brains. While moving through this maelstrom of memory and disgust I came upon Prince’s finest moment: DIRTY MIND.

Dirty Mind was released in 1980. It is his third album and it isn’t until 3 albums latter that he would hit the big time with Purple Rain. When Dirty Mind was released, his famous purple trench coat was grey and it was probably purchased at a thrift store. I am sure he put the spikes on himself, before he had a personal tailor. This is a different Prince, dare I say it, even a dangerous Prince. What makes this album so great is that it is fairly short, containing only 8 songs, the music has a minimalist, post-punk, or even “do it yourself” homemade feel. The keyboards are even kind of new wave. The album also lacks the religious content that pervades his latter releases. Yeah, it might make you want to fuck…but this is the one time where Prince makes you want to FUCK THE SYSTEM.

Let us start with the album cover. Someone once told me that when they bought the album they had to hide the cover so the parents wouldn’t see it. It is a black and white picture of Prince standing in front of a mattress stripped down so the springs are exposed. He is wearing his trench coat, a black Speedo, and black thigh-high leg warmers; that’s it. This is also what he used to wear on stage in 1980.

The album opens with the title track “Dirty Mind,” which has a minimalist pulsating beat. You feel that shit is gonna start drippin’. He explains, “I really wanna lay ya down / in my daddy’s car / it’s you I really wanna drive / underneath the stars.” It is just a simple and brilliant song that sets the stage for the rest of the album. The clean jangly guitar, sweet minimalist new wave keyboards, and driving bass and drums will be a reoccurring theme throughout.

The second track is an undisputed classic: “When You Were Mine.” This track has been covered and made famous by numerous artists. It is a perfect little pop gem and this is the original. With a clean jangly guitar and a great one finger keyboard accompaniment, he sounds like a clean little new wave garage band. He croons, “you didn’t have the decency to change the sheets!”

The next two tracks cool you down before the real funk hits the fan. “Do It All Night” is a smooth little mild funk number about how he wants to, you guessed it, do it all night.

“Gotta Broken Heart Again” is a sweet little R & B number, super smooth like 70’s radio. The little guitar part in the middle is subtle and brilliant. At this point you may be feeling that this album is just “ok” but these last two tracks just allow you to rest before Side 2 makes you go get the funk bucket.

Get out the baby oil and dildos.

Side 2 opens with “Uptown.” Goddamn, shit starts gittin’ good here. Prince is more than proficient with the funk. He plays all the instruments to create a motherfucking super-groove. This is no boring Parliament Funkadelic funk. Each instrument plays into the groove. Now Price usually doesn’t talk to strangers but he decides to give this lady a “little ear.” This is the conversation that transpires:

"What's up new girl?"
"I ain't got time to play."
Baby didn't say too much
She said, "Are you gay?"
Kinda took me by surprise
I didn't know what to do
I just looked her in her eyes
And I said, "No, are u?"
Said to myself, said
"She's just a crazy, crazy, crazy
Little mixed up dame.
She's just a victim of society
And all it's games."
Now where I come from
We don't let society
Tell us how it's supposed to be
Our clothes, our hair
We don't care

Furthermore, everybody is invited to the freak party:

White, Black, Puerto Rican
Everybody just a-freakin’…
Now where I come from
We don't give a damn
We do whatever we please
It ain't about no downtown
Nowhere bound
Narrow-minded drag
It's all about being free

As Prince is popping the bass, I’m thinkin’ “fuck yeah,” I am down with this party….Then just when I think things can’t get any funkier…the next song kicks me in the ass. It is called “Head.” I experience a deep rooted super-controlled salt of the earth mega-funk with this one. It is similar to what I experience when I hear Peter Tosh doing “Reggaemylitis.” Sometimes the funk is so deep I don’t know what to do with my body. I tap the foot and move the head and whisper “fuck” under my breath. But unlike the Peter Tosh song, I am suddenly feeling a little horny. And I am thinkin’ “Goddamn this is some good fucking music!” I start slappin’ the dildo like Prince is slappin’ that motherfucking bass. Again, this simple combo of drums, bass, guitar and keyboard is fuckin’ my mind.

Then I hear the story behind of the superfunk of “Head.”

Basically, Prince meets a woman on the way to her wedding but she ends up marrying him instead when he “cums on her wedding gown”; now “morning, noon and night he gives her Head.” When they first meet she says,

"But I'm just a virgin and I'm on my way to be wed
But you're such a hunk
So full of spunk,
I'll give you Head”

He even goes on to describe how giving head will made your love “turn red.” The instrumental breakdown in the middle turns into some sort of 1950’s Buck Rogers ray-gun orgy. Fantastic!

Then things take a much darker turn. The next track clocks in at just over a minute and a half. It is an up-tempo little rocker called “Sister.” Read these lyrics:

I was only 16 but I guess that's no excuse
My sister was 32, lovely, and loose
She don't wear no underwear
She says it only gets in her hair
And it's got a funny way of stoppin' the juice
My sister never made love to anyone else but me
She's the reason for my, uh, sexuality
She showed me where it's supposed to go
A blow job doesn't mean blow
Incest is everything it's said to be
Oh, sister
Don't put me on the street again
Oh, sister
I just want to be your friend
I was only 16 and only half a man
My sister didn't give a goddamn
She only wanted to turn me out
She took a whip to me until I shout
"Oh, motherfucker shes’s a motherfucker
Can't you understand?"
Oh, sister.

The song is such a catchy little number: it almost sounds like a celebration. Seriously, I don’t even know where to start with this one. First of all, do panties really “get caught in women’s hair” and “stop the juice”?

The line “My sister never made love to anyone else but me” has got to be one of the greatest rock lyrics ever written. But the clincher is when Prince does that diabolical scream that only he can do when he exclaims, “ohhmotherfuckershe’samotherfucker” like it is one big word.

This leads me into a related story. It was sometime around 1985 or so and my stepfather saw the PMRC on a TV show talking about satanic and sexually perverse records that America’s children may be listening to. They held up several Prince albums for the TV viewing audience.

“Doesn’t our son have all those records?”

When my stepfather and mother asked about the records, I told them I would be more than happy to sit down and listen to Prince with them. Even in 8th grade I had a great deal of confidence in my understanding of the complexities within the arts. I had a good defense. I grabbed the Dirty Mind cassette tape and headed for the kitchen for our listening session. I was a ballsy little fucker. My stepfather (picture a mix between John Wayne and Bruce Springsteen / Ford factory worker and dairy farmer) sat chain smoking with a perplexed look on his face as Dirty Mind echoed through our kitchen. He was “OK” with most of it, though he was sure that Prince was gay but, I mean, who doesn’t like getting Head? So I thought they related at least on that level. However, when the song “Sister” finished, my stepfather looked at my mom and said “What the hell was that?” My mother, “the patron saint of the arts,” said, “Don’t you see, he is singing about how terrible incest is, how it messed him up. I could do without the cussing but I think our son understands these things.” My mom kicks ass. That was the end of that; oh, my stepfather didn’t like Prince but my with my mother’s help he realized that he, too, enjoyed sex, swearing, and thought incest was bad as well.

However, later that year my stepfather ripped a Prince poster off my wall, threw me in the closet, and said he didn’t want me to be gay, screaming “He is as queer as a three dollar bill!” -- gesturing wildly at the crumpled Prince poster in his hand. Later, my football star/ Marine brother retrieved the poster from the garbage and returned it to me, saying, “Put that somewhere where he won’t find it.” When it comes down to it, my brother had my back.

Anyway, back to the record.

Things brighten back up for the last track, “Party Up.” This track is the icing on a short and perplexing cake. We come out of “Sister” into a pro-party / anti-war anthem. This is made clear by the opening line, “We don't give a damn / We just want to jam.” Prince does it again with the magic combo of instruments creating space and hand claps that make you wanna fly your freak flag. Fuck the furniture. Fuck the dog. Fuck the man. He sings,

They got the draft,
Uh, uh
I just laugh. Party Up!
Fightin’ war
Is such fuckin’ bore…Party Up!
…Because of their half-baked mistakes
We get ice cream
No cake
All lies
No truth
Is it fair to kill the youth?

He then leans on the keyboards like the phantom of the opera and throws in guitar licks that remind you that he knows exactly what the fuck he is doing. This song makes Kool & the Gang’s “Celebration” seem like a Sunday church downer. The song ends with a breakdown of only handclaps and a repeated chant:

You're gonna have to fight your own damn war

Cuz we don't wanna fight no more
You're gonna have to fight your own damn war
Cuz we don't wanna fight no more
I said we don't wanna fight no more (gonna have to fight your own damn war)
Cuz we don't wanna FIGHT NO MORE!

And it is all over much too quickly.

This little album is a reminder of Prince’s talent and what could have been. He had other songs and albums in the following years that were great and interesting and what not, but this was the summit of his powers, short, concise, disturbing, sexy, and anti-war, in his own simplistic way. He would never be this “dangerous” again, yes, he would be “nasty” but this is the closest to a punk rock record he ever came. Of course, it is not a punk rock record, except somewhere in my little puberty confused 7th grade head.

If you must have a Prince record, get this one. It’s fucking great.