Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 800

Patrick Wilson’s dark side: “I have a real fascination with prison and crime”

Need an actor to play amoral? Patrick Wilson seems to have cornered the market, having misbehaved on screen as a pedophile in “Hard Candy,” an adulterer in “Little Children” and a family man obsessed with hookers in “Zipper.”

But Wilson can also play noble: Check out his impressive turn as State Trooper Lou Solverson in season two of TV’s “Fargo.”

In his latest film, “A Kind of Murder,” which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, Wilson’s character, Walter Stackhouse, is borderline amoral. Based on Patricia Highsmith’s novel, “The Blunderer,” the film has Walter, an architect who writes crime stories on the side, unhappily married to Clara (Jessica Biel). She has emotional problems and no interest in sex. Before long, Walter becomes infatuated with Ellie (Haley Bennett), a comely singer who lives in the Village. When Clara ends up dead, Walter is suspected of the crime, in part because it mirrors the recent murder of Kimmel’s (Eddie Marsan) wife, which Walter was tracking. As Detective Colby (Vincent Kartheiser) investigates, Walter’s secrets and lies threaten to become exposed.

Wilson excels at playing characters who should be upstanding leading-man types, but who are often masking a quiet desperation. As Walter, he feels a palpable sense of guilt, maintaining his innocence even as he gets deeper into trouble.

The actor chatted about “Murder” at the festival.

You play a writer in the film. What do you like to read?

I’m a part bookstore owner, and husband of a novelist and writer, but I don’t read a ton. I have eight scripts on my iPad that I’m scrolling through. I didn’t grow up reading much. The last book I read was Nick Offerman’s “Gumption.” To be quite fair, I was hosting him at the bookstore, Word, in Jersey City. I read music books… rock and roll biographies fascinate me.

Do you have an interest in crime or murder like Walter does?

I do. That I can talk about! I’ve seen every episode of “The First 48” and “Lockup Raw.” I have a real fascination with prison and crime. “Making of a Murder,” “Jinx,” “The Staircase.” I remember shooting a scene for “The A-Team” with Liam Neeson. We were in a prison, the only maximum security prison in BC, and during a lunch break, the warden came up and said, “Do you want to walk through with me?” And everyone else said, “No,” but I was like, “Yeah, I do.”

My wife was like, “Why are you fascinated by that?” And I said, it’s because I’m staring at a man no different than me. And yet he’s killed several people. He’s very nice to me—he recognized me from movies—but he has this complete other side to him. And that does fascinate me. And the flip side is Lou Solverson. He’s a straight-up kind of guy. You shake my hand, and I’m gonna believe you. Whether that’s naiveté or extreme optimism…

What can you say about playing characters on both sides of the law—Walter in “A Kind of Murder” vs. Lou on “Fargo”?

I am interested in the dark side because my parents are still together; they have been married for 50 years. I have a very strong belief in family, and a strong family relationship. I’ve lived a nice life. I like to discover those sides of me that I don’t have…. I liken it to traveling down the highway in your car and thinking, “I could drive this car off that bridge. I could. I could with the wheels…” A number of things make us not to do that, but some people do that. That’s a lot of what’s in “A Kind of Murder”—wanting to be involved in something like that.

Where does all this come from? Have you had trouble with the law?

No, and I think that’s probably why. There’s a real fine line… I used to be fascinated with Kurtz and the violence that is within men. What makes that guy that different than me? Which is similar to Walter, I think.

Patrick tells Ellie "there's nothing straight up about me!" What can you say about the character's secrets, lies and self-deception?

I think what separates Walter from Kimmel is that Walter is unsatisfied as a writer, as a husband, as a lover. He’s not a parent. He doesn’t feel valued, or important, or that he can make a difference. He’s drifting. He’s convinced he’s worked out how Kimmel has murdered his wife.

Do you gravitate to playing amoral characters, or just tend to get offered them more?

I look for guys who sort of belie the look. You have to understand your type and use it to show the flip side. That’s why I’ll gravitate to [playing] good or bad characters… Lou was in some way a real departure. He’s so solid—the kind of guy you want to be. I’ve tended to play guys who have a real weakness that you do not want to be.

As your career began, you frequently played characters who were sexy, objects of desire, but now you seem to be moving away from those kinds of parts to play more complex characters, like Walter, who project their desires on others. Can you talk about this shift in your career?

There’s no grand plan. Whether it’s the things you get offered or that appeal to me. The only conscious effort I have is to try not to retread the same old ground. When I did “Zipper,” because I’d done so many different love scenes, and showed a lot of skin, I felt that this was probably it for a while. It doesn’t get much dirtier, or more exposed than that. I’ve satiated that for a bit.

Can you talk about the themes of guilt and doubt in the film? This has much to do with Walter being suspected of murder, but also there’s guilt and doubt in his relationship with Clara…

Absolutely. Like most men, he wants to fix [his relationship]. If I’m nice to her, or more intimate with her, and have sex more, it will fix itself, but she has her own issues.

“A Kind of Murder” is a period piece. What observations do you have about getting into the mindset of the character, doing research on the era and the costumes? Walter tucks his sweaters into his pants! How do these elements inform your character/portrayal?

It’s awesome! Every time you play someone who is falling apart, it’s nice to try to put them together as much as you can. It’s playing the opposite. In this era, this style, there’s a specific look. When you are looking at a lot of those old photos—the tucked-in sweater, the high-waist pants, the very clean-cut, cropped hair—that’s someone trying to hold onto an image of the ’50s as the ’60s are on the rise. That’s why with the film was set a few years later than the book… it’s a different era. 

How do you find the sympathy or humanity in a character like Walter? How do you identify with him?

I don’t play words like “sympathy” or “emotional.” You have to remain active. You have to show him trying to succeed. I don’t really care if you like me or don’t like me, it’s do you care? You do that by actions. You show him trying to be a better husband, even if he fails.

So with the success of “Fargo,” are you looking for more projects like that, or to do something of your own?

Absolutely. But the bar is set pretty high. “Fargo” was a dream job for a number of reasons, mostly the writing, the time, the support, the direction, the cast—that rare combo of critical and commercial success. I’m certainly looking, and I get offered a nice amount, and I’m very thankful for that, but it’s hard. There’s a big difference between “Fargo,” an episodic miniseries, and a true series that you’re signing on to for several years, and a network show. It’s a much bigger difference that even two years ago. I have a few projects in mind—I’m writing a movie I want to direct and be in. There’s a Florida Western that I’m writing with my brother. I have lots of little passion projects.Need an actor to play amoral? Patrick Wilson seems to have cornered the market, having misbehaved on screen as a pedophile in “Hard Candy,” an adulterer in “Little Children” and a family man obsessed with hookers in “Zipper.”

But Wilson can also play noble: Check out his impressive turn as State Trooper Lou Solverson in season two of TV’s “Fargo.”

In his latest film, “A Kind of Murder,” which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, Wilson’s character, Walter Stackhouse, is borderline amoral. Based on Patricia Highsmith’s novel, “The Blunderer,” the film has Walter, an architect who writes crime stories on the side, unhappily married to Clara (Jessica Biel). She has emotional problems and no interest in sex. Before long, Walter becomes infatuated with Ellie (Haley Bennett), a comely singer who lives in the Village. When Clara ends up dead, Walter is suspected of the crime, in part because it mirrors the recent murder of Kimmel’s (Eddie Marsan) wife, which Walter was tracking. As Detective Colby (Vincent Kartheiser) investigates, Walter’s secrets and lies threaten to become exposed.

Wilson excels at playing characters who should be upstanding leading-man types, but who are often masking a quiet desperation. As Walter, he feels a palpable sense of guilt, maintaining his innocence even as he gets deeper into trouble.

The actor chatted about “Murder” at the festival.

You play a writer in the film. What do you like to read?

I’m a part bookstore owner, and husband of a novelist and writer, but I don’t read a ton. I have eight scripts on my iPad that I’m scrolling through. I didn’t grow up reading much. The last book I read was Nick Offerman’s “Gumption.” To be quite fair, I was hosting him at the bookstore, Word, in Jersey City. I read music books… rock and roll biographies fascinate me.

Do you have an interest in crime or murder like Walter does?

I do. That I can talk about! I’ve seen every episode of “The First 48” and “Lockup Raw.” I have a real fascination with prison and crime. “Making of a Murder,” “Jinx,” “The Staircase.” I remember shooting a scene for “The A-Team” with Liam Neeson. We were in a prison, the only maximum security prison in BC, and during a lunch break, the warden came up and said, “Do you want to walk through with me?” And everyone else said, “No,” but I was like, “Yeah, I do.”

My wife was like, “Why are you fascinated by that?” And I said, it’s because I’m staring at a man no different than me. And yet he’s killed several people. He’s very nice to me—he recognized me from movies—but he has this complete other side to him. And that does fascinate me. And the flip side is Lou Solverson. He’s a straight-up kind of guy. You shake my hand, and I’m gonna believe you. Whether that’s naiveté or extreme optimism…

What can you say about playing characters on both sides of the law—Walter in “A Kind of Murder” vs. Lou on “Fargo”?

I am interested in the dark side because my parents are still together; they have been married for 50 years. I have a very strong belief in family, and a strong family relationship. I’ve lived a nice life. I like to discover those sides of me that I don’t have…. I liken it to traveling down the highway in your car and thinking, “I could drive this car off that bridge. I could. I could with the wheels…” A number of things make us not to do that, but some people do that. That’s a lot of what’s in “A Kind of Murder”—wanting to be involved in something like that.

Where does all this come from? Have you had trouble with the law?

No, and I think that’s probably why. There’s a real fine line… I used to be fascinated with Kurtz and the violence that is within men. What makes that guy that different than me? Which is similar to Walter, I think.

Patrick tells Ellie "there's nothing straight up about me!" What can you say about the character's secrets, lies and self-deception?

I think what separates Walter from Kimmel is that Walter is unsatisfied as a writer, as a husband, as a lover. He’s not a parent. He doesn’t feel valued, or important, or that he can make a difference. He’s drifting. He’s convinced he’s worked out how Kimmel has murdered his wife.

Do you gravitate to playing amoral characters, or just tend to get offered them more?

I look for guys who sort of belie the look. You have to understand your type and use it to show the flip side. That’s why I’ll gravitate to [playing] good or bad characters… Lou was in some way a real departure. He’s so solid—the kind of guy you want to be. I’ve tended to play guys who have a real weakness that you do not want to be.

As your career began, you frequently played characters who were sexy, objects of desire, but now you seem to be moving away from those kinds of parts to play more complex characters, like Walter, who project their desires on others. Can you talk about this shift in your career?

There’s no grand plan. Whether it’s the things you get offered or that appeal to me. The only conscious effort I have is to try not to retread the same old ground. When I did “Zipper,” because I’d done so many different love scenes, and showed a lot of skin, I felt that this was probably it for a while. It doesn’t get much dirtier, or more exposed than that. I’ve satiated that for a bit.

Can you talk about the themes of guilt and doubt in the film? This has much to do with Walter being suspected of murder, but also there’s guilt and doubt in his relationship with Clara…

Absolutely. Like most men, he wants to fix [his relationship]. If I’m nice to her, or more intimate with her, and have sex more, it will fix itself, but she has her own issues.

“A Kind of Murder” is a period piece. What observations do you have about getting into the mindset of the character, doing research on the era and the costumes? Walter tucks his sweaters into his pants! How do these elements inform your character/portrayal?

It’s awesome! Every time you play someone who is falling apart, it’s nice to try to put them together as much as you can. It’s playing the opposite. In this era, this style, there’s a specific look. When you are looking at a lot of those old photos—the tucked-in sweater, the high-waist pants, the very clean-cut, cropped hair—that’s someone trying to hold onto an image of the ’50s as the ’60s are on the rise. That’s why with the film was set a few years later than the book… it’s a different era. 

How do you find the sympathy or humanity in a character like Walter? How do you identify with him?

I don’t play words like “sympathy” or “emotional.” You have to remain active. You have to show him trying to succeed. I don’t really care if you like me or don’t like me, it’s do you care? You do that by actions. You show him trying to be a better husband, even if he fails.

So with the success of “Fargo,” are you looking for more projects like that, or to do something of your own?

Absolutely. But the bar is set pretty high. “Fargo” was a dream job for a number of reasons, mostly the writing, the time, the support, the direction, the cast—that rare combo of critical and commercial success. I’m certainly looking, and I get offered a nice amount, and I’m very thankful for that, but it’s hard. There’s a big difference between “Fargo,” an episodic miniseries, and a true series that you’re signing on to for several years, and a network show. It’s a much bigger difference that even two years ago. I have a few projects in mind—I’m writing a movie I want to direct and be in. There’s a Florida Western that I’m writing with my brother. I have lots of little passion projects.Need an actor to play amoral? Patrick Wilson seems to have cornered the market, having misbehaved on screen as a pedophile in “Hard Candy,” an adulterer in “Little Children” and a family man obsessed with hookers in “Zipper.”

But Wilson can also play noble: Check out his impressive turn as State Trooper Lou Solverson in season two of TV’s “Fargo.”

In his latest film, “A Kind of Murder,” which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, Wilson’s character, Walter Stackhouse, is borderline amoral. Based on Patricia Highsmith’s novel, “The Blunderer,” the film has Walter, an architect who writes crime stories on the side, unhappily married to Clara (Jessica Biel). She has emotional problems and no interest in sex. Before long, Walter becomes infatuated with Ellie (Haley Bennett), a comely singer who lives in the Village. When Clara ends up dead, Walter is suspected of the crime, in part because it mirrors the recent murder of Kimmel’s (Eddie Marsan) wife, which Walter was tracking. As Detective Colby (Vincent Kartheiser) investigates, Walter’s secrets and lies threaten to become exposed.

Wilson excels at playing characters who should be upstanding leading-man types, but who are often masking a quiet desperation. As Walter, he feels a palpable sense of guilt, maintaining his innocence even as he gets deeper into trouble.

The actor chatted about “Murder” at the festival.

You play a writer in the film. What do you like to read?

I’m a part bookstore owner, and husband of a novelist and writer, but I don’t read a ton. I have eight scripts on my iPad that I’m scrolling through. I didn’t grow up reading much. The last book I read was Nick Offerman’s “Gumption.” To be quite fair, I was hosting him at the bookstore, Word, in Jersey City. I read music books… rock and roll biographies fascinate me.

Do you have an interest in crime or murder like Walter does?

I do. That I can talk about! I’ve seen every episode of “The First 48” and “Lockup Raw.” I have a real fascination with prison and crime. “Making of a Murder,” “Jinx,” “The Staircase.” I remember shooting a scene for “The A-Team” with Liam Neeson. We were in a prison, the only maximum security prison in BC, and during a lunch break, the warden came up and said, “Do you want to walk through with me?” And everyone else said, “No,” but I was like, “Yeah, I do.”

My wife was like, “Why are you fascinated by that?” And I said, it’s because I’m staring at a man no different than me. And yet he’s killed several people. He’s very nice to me—he recognized me from movies—but he has this complete other side to him. And that does fascinate me. And the flip side is Lou Solverson. He’s a straight-up kind of guy. You shake my hand, and I’m gonna believe you. Whether that’s naiveté or extreme optimism…

What can you say about playing characters on both sides of the law—Walter in “A Kind of Murder” vs. Lou on “Fargo”?

I am interested in the dark side because my parents are still together; they have been married for 50 years. I have a very strong belief in family, and a strong family relationship. I’ve lived a nice life. I like to discover those sides of me that I don’t have…. I liken it to traveling down the highway in your car and thinking, “I could drive this car off that bridge. I could. I could with the wheels…” A number of things make us not to do that, but some people do that. That’s a lot of what’s in “A Kind of Murder”—wanting to be involved in something like that.

Where does all this come from? Have you had trouble with the law?

No, and I think that’s probably why. There’s a real fine line… I used to be fascinated with Kurtz and the violence that is within men. What makes that guy that different than me? Which is similar to Walter, I think.

Patrick tells Ellie "there's nothing straight up about me!" What can you say about the character's secrets, lies and self-deception?

I think what separates Walter from Kimmel is that Walter is unsatisfied as a writer, as a husband, as a lover. He’s not a parent. He doesn’t feel valued, or important, or that he can make a difference. He’s drifting. He’s convinced he’s worked out how Kimmel has murdered his wife.

Do you gravitate to playing amoral characters, or just tend to get offered them more?

I look for guys who sort of belie the look. You have to understand your type and use it to show the flip side. That’s why I’ll gravitate to [playing] good or bad characters… Lou was in some way a real departure. He’s so solid—the kind of guy you want to be. I’ve tended to play guys who have a real weakness that you do not want to be.

As your career began, you frequently played characters who were sexy, objects of desire, but now you seem to be moving away from those kinds of parts to play more complex characters, like Walter, who project their desires on others. Can you talk about this shift in your career?

There’s no grand plan. Whether it’s the things you get offered or that appeal to me. The only conscious effort I have is to try not to retread the same old ground. When I did “Zipper,” because I’d done so many different love scenes, and showed a lot of skin, I felt that this was probably it for a while. It doesn’t get much dirtier, or more exposed than that. I’ve satiated that for a bit.

Can you talk about the themes of guilt and doubt in the film? This has much to do with Walter being suspected of murder, but also there’s guilt and doubt in his relationship with Clara…

Absolutely. Like most men, he wants to fix [his relationship]. If I’m nice to her, or more intimate with her, and have sex more, it will fix itself, but she has her own issues.

“A Kind of Murder” is a period piece. What observations do you have about getting into the mindset of the character, doing research on the era and the costumes? Walter tucks his sweaters into his pants! How do these elements inform your character/portrayal?

It’s awesome! Every time you play someone who is falling apart, it’s nice to try to put them together as much as you can. It’s playing the opposite. In this era, this style, there’s a specific look. When you are looking at a lot of those old photos—the tucked-in sweater, the high-waist pants, the very clean-cut, cropped hair—that’s someone trying to hold onto an image of the ’50s as the ’60s are on the rise. That’s why with the film was set a few years later than the book… it’s a different era. 

How do you find the sympathy or humanity in a character like Walter? How do you identify with him?

I don’t play words like “sympathy” or “emotional.” You have to remain active. You have to show him trying to succeed. I don’t really care if you like me or don’t like me, it’s do you care? You do that by actions. You show him trying to be a better husband, even if he fails.

So with the success of “Fargo,” are you looking for more projects like that, or to do something of your own?

Absolutely. But the bar is set pretty high. “Fargo” was a dream job for a number of reasons, mostly the writing, the time, the support, the direction, the cast—that rare combo of critical and commercial success. I’m certainly looking, and I get offered a nice amount, and I’m very thankful for that, but it’s hard. There’s a big difference between “Fargo,” an episodic miniseries, and a true series that you’re signing on to for several years, and a network show. It’s a much bigger difference that even two years ago. I have a few projects in mind—I’m writing a movie I want to direct and be in. There’s a Florida Western that I’m writing with my brother. I have lots of little passion projects.

Continue Reading...

The Prince song too hot for the strip club: Why the Purple One is always a go-go bar DJ’s go-to jam

Not only did the lyrics to “Darling Nikki” – with its reference to a girl in a hotel lobby masturbating with a magazine – get Tipper Gore’s knickers in such a twist that she founded the Parents Music Resource Center, they got the song banned from a South Jersey gentleman’s club called The Playhouse in 1996. I’ll never forget where I was when I got the shocking news: in the DJ booth at said go-go bar, cueing up a CD for one of the dancers working the noon-to-five shift. The day manager, Linda, popped her head into the booth to deliver the news.

“Hey, I don’t know if Rick (the head DJ) told you or not (he hadn’t – details weren’t really a priority for Rick), but you can’t play that Prince song anymore.”

“Which one?” I asked.

“The ‘Nikki’ one where the girl is taking care of herself in a lobby – no more. It’s just too much.”

“But this is a go-go bar,” I reasoned. “Look up on the stage – bare breasts!”

“I know, but it’s just….” her voice trailed off as she made a face that said "I went to college for accounting and I can’t believe I’m having this conversation," “… it’s just not appropriate.”

She walked away and that was that. No more “Darling Nikki” at The Playhouse, marking the only time Prince’s music was deemed “not appropriate” for a strip club. Because if ever there was an artist whose music was absolutely appropriate for a strip club, it was Prince.

In what seems like another lifetime, I spent the better part of 11 years DJ’ing in strip clubs. And I can tell you unequivocally that no artist’s music works better in the dimly lit, Vanillaroma-scented, hyper-sexual setting of a strip club than Prince’s. Thematically, spiritually, sonically and cosmically, Prince’s songs provide the perfect soundtrack to all the bumping and grinding on stage, all the strategic straddling in the couch dance room, and all the scantily-clad strippers feigning interest in some cigar-chomping douchebag’s house-flipping venture.

It all starts with Prince’s grooves. No one crafted a go-go groove like Prince. They always sit in the sweetest spot of the pocket, enabling strippers to embrace their inner sexy-aerialist on the pole, do some lustful writhing at ground level, and remove what articles of clothing they are legally permitted to remove at their own unhurried pace. The slow jams like “Do Me, Baby” and “The Beautiful Ones,” and the fatback funk workouts like “Gett Off” and “Kiss” are the most obviously pole-friendly, but Prince’s grooves work at all ends of the BPM (beats per minute) spectrum. Even on the frantic ones like “Let’s Go Crazy” and “Baby, I’m a Star,” the strippers never have to work too hard to keep up. Instinctively, they just find that sweet spot and work it. I am convinced that dude created beats with the pole in mind.

Of course you generally can’t go wrong with lyrics about sex in a strip club. But like the film "This Is Spinal Tap" taught us, it’s a fine line between sex-y and sex-ist. Graphic as a few of them might be (I’ll give you that much, Linda), Prince’s sex songs are straight-up sex-y, rendering strip club warhorses like Mötley Crüe’s “Girls, Girls, Girls” and ZZ Top’s “Tush” little more than dumb, sexist nursery rhymes. Prince’s sex was always smart, with something to suit any stripper’s mood, taste or outfit. You need some gender-twisting roleplay fantasy? Cue up “If I Was Your Girlfriend.” Need nasty and up-tempo? Flip over “Let’s Go Crazy” and go for the B-side, “Erotic City.” How about something with a playful metaphor that will pair well with that all-white outfit? You can’t go wrong with “Cream.”

I found that I simply could not go wrong with any Prince song in any strip club setting – be it a fancy-ish place with a dress code and bouncers wearing headsets, or a shady-ass joint adjacent to a motor lodge with a cook who had a glass eye courtesy of the Korean War manning the deep fryer. Prince was the one artist who everyone in the place -- the dancers, the clientele (ranging from bikers to white collar types) the management, the bartenders and the bouncers -- could agree on. If I didn't know what to play for a dancer or she really didn't know what kind of music she wanted to dance to (pretty common with newbies), Prince always worked. Bawdy lust and that perpetually sexy feel always get the job done in a strip club. Even the socially conscious stuff and the stately ballads were strip club bangers. Never had a customer complain that his couch dance mellow was harshed by the heavy vibe of “Sign ‘O’ The Times; never had a stripper say she couldn’t dance to “Diamonds and Pearls” because the drum fills were too busy and there wasn’t enough backbeat in the verses.

And his shit always sounded amazing. I’d crank the subs during busy shifts when the club would get really noisy and the bottom end on those Prince records would sound sweeter the louder it got, rather than turning to mud like a lot of rock stuff. Didn’t matter if it was live drums or drum machine, real bass, synth bass or no bass at all (like on “When Doves Cry”), that bottom end was consistently beautiful.

I used to joke that the only CD I really needed of the 1,500 or so I regularly brought to work was Prince’s 1993 three-CD compilation "The Hits/The B-Sides" (though having "Back in Black" and "Pretty Hate Machine" in your back pocket probably wouldn’t hurt, just for variety). It’s a Swiss Army knife for strip club DJs – it’s versatile and functional and it had everything I needed to get through a shift – rock, soul, ballads, funk, and, yes, strippers would routinely request Prince B-sides such as “Erotic City” and “She’s Always in My Hair.”

Any upstart strip club DJ should pick up this collection, dig deep and spin it liberally. It will serve you well. It’s been 11 years since I last brought a stripper to the stage, but I can’t imagine anyone has come close to dethroning Prince in the strip club world. I hope he is resting peacefully, and I hope he knows how much easier he made life for all of us strip club DJs.Not only did the lyrics to “Darling Nikki” – with its reference to a girl in a hotel lobby masturbating with a magazine – get Tipper Gore’s knickers in such a twist that she founded the Parents Music Resource Center, they got the song banned from a South Jersey gentleman’s club called The Playhouse in 1996. I’ll never forget where I was when I got the shocking news: in the DJ booth at said go-go bar, cueing up a CD for one of the dancers working the noon-to-five shift. The day manager, Linda, popped her head into the booth to deliver the news.

“Hey, I don’t know if Rick (the head DJ) told you or not (he hadn’t – details weren’t really a priority for Rick), but you can’t play that Prince song anymore.”

“Which one?” I asked.

“The ‘Nikki’ one where the girl is taking care of herself in a lobby – no more. It’s just too much.”

“But this is a go-go bar,” I reasoned. “Look up on the stage – bare breasts!”

“I know, but it’s just….” her voice trailed off as she made a face that said "I went to college for accounting and I can’t believe I’m having this conversation," “… it’s just not appropriate.”

She walked away and that was that. No more “Darling Nikki” at The Playhouse, marking the only time Prince’s music was deemed “not appropriate” for a strip club. Because if ever there was an artist whose music was absolutely appropriate for a strip club, it was Prince.

In what seems like another lifetime, I spent the better part of 11 years DJ’ing in strip clubs. And I can tell you unequivocally that no artist’s music works better in the dimly lit, Vanillaroma-scented, hyper-sexual setting of a strip club than Prince’s. Thematically, spiritually, sonically and cosmically, Prince’s songs provide the perfect soundtrack to all the bumping and grinding on stage, all the strategic straddling in the couch dance room, and all the scantily-clad strippers feigning interest in some cigar-chomping douchebag’s house-flipping venture.

It all starts with Prince’s grooves. No one crafted a go-go groove like Prince. They always sit in the sweetest spot of the pocket, enabling strippers to embrace their inner sexy-aerialist on the pole, do some lustful writhing at ground level, and remove what articles of clothing they are legally permitted to remove at their own unhurried pace. The slow jams like “Do Me, Baby” and “The Beautiful Ones,” and the fatback funk workouts like “Gett Off” and “Kiss” are the most obviously pole-friendly, but Prince’s grooves work at all ends of the BPM (beats per minute) spectrum. Even on the frantic ones like “Let’s Go Crazy” and “Baby, I’m a Star,” the strippers never have to work too hard to keep up. Instinctively, they just find that sweet spot and work it. I am convinced that dude created beats with the pole in mind.

Of course you generally can’t go wrong with lyrics about sex in a strip club. But like the film "This Is Spinal Tap" taught us, it’s a fine line between sex-y and sex-ist. Graphic as a few of them might be (I’ll give you that much, Linda), Prince’s sex songs are straight-up sex-y, rendering strip club warhorses like Mötley Crüe’s “Girls, Girls, Girls” and ZZ Top’s “Tush” little more than dumb, sexist nursery rhymes. Prince’s sex was always smart, with something to suit any stripper’s mood, taste or outfit. You need some gender-twisting roleplay fantasy? Cue up “If I Was Your Girlfriend.” Need nasty and up-tempo? Flip over “Let’s Go Crazy” and go for the B-side, “Erotic City.” How about something with a playful metaphor that will pair well with that all-white outfit? You can’t go wrong with “Cream.”

I found that I simply could not go wrong with any Prince song in any strip club setting – be it a fancy-ish place with a dress code and bouncers wearing headsets, or a shady-ass joint adjacent to a motor lodge with a cook who had a glass eye courtesy of the Korean War manning the deep fryer. Prince was the one artist who everyone in the place -- the dancers, the clientele (ranging from bikers to white collar types) the management, the bartenders and the bouncers -- could agree on. If I didn't know what to play for a dancer or she really didn't know what kind of music she wanted to dance to (pretty common with newbies), Prince always worked. Bawdy lust and that perpetually sexy feel always get the job done in a strip club. Even the socially conscious stuff and the stately ballads were strip club bangers. Never had a customer complain that his couch dance mellow was harshed by the heavy vibe of “Sign ‘O’ The Times; never had a stripper say she couldn’t dance to “Diamonds and Pearls” because the drum fills were too busy and there wasn’t enough backbeat in the verses.

And his shit always sounded amazing. I’d crank the subs during busy shifts when the club would get really noisy and the bottom end on those Prince records would sound sweeter the louder it got, rather than turning to mud like a lot of rock stuff. Didn’t matter if it was live drums or drum machine, real bass, synth bass or no bass at all (like on “When Doves Cry”), that bottom end was consistently beautiful.

I used to joke that the only CD I really needed of the 1,500 or so I regularly brought to work was Prince’s 1993 three-CD compilation "The Hits/The B-Sides" (though having "Back in Black" and "Pretty Hate Machine" in your back pocket probably wouldn’t hurt, just for variety). It’s a Swiss Army knife for strip club DJs – it’s versatile and functional and it had everything I needed to get through a shift – rock, soul, ballads, funk, and, yes, strippers would routinely request Prince B-sides such as “Erotic City” and “She’s Always in My Hair.”

Any upstart strip club DJ should pick up this collection, dig deep and spin it liberally. It will serve you well. It’s been 11 years since I last brought a stripper to the stage, but I can’t imagine anyone has come close to dethroning Prince in the strip club world. I hope he is resting peacefully, and I hope he knows how much easier he made life for all of us strip club DJs.Not only did the lyrics to “Darling Nikki” – with its reference to a girl in a hotel lobby masturbating with a magazine – get Tipper Gore’s knickers in such a twist that she founded the Parents Music Resource Center, they got the song banned from a South Jersey gentleman’s club called The Playhouse in 1996. I’ll never forget where I was when I got the shocking news: in the DJ booth at said go-go bar, cueing up a CD for one of the dancers working the noon-to-five shift. The day manager, Linda, popped her head into the booth to deliver the news.

“Hey, I don’t know if Rick (the head DJ) told you or not (he hadn’t – details weren’t really a priority for Rick), but you can’t play that Prince song anymore.”

“Which one?” I asked.

“The ‘Nikki’ one where the girl is taking care of herself in a lobby – no more. It’s just too much.”

“But this is a go-go bar,” I reasoned. “Look up on the stage – bare breasts!”

“I know, but it’s just….” her voice trailed off as she made a face that said "I went to college for accounting and I can’t believe I’m having this conversation," “… it’s just not appropriate.”

She walked away and that was that. No more “Darling Nikki” at The Playhouse, marking the only time Prince’s music was deemed “not appropriate” for a strip club. Because if ever there was an artist whose music was absolutely appropriate for a strip club, it was Prince.

In what seems like another lifetime, I spent the better part of 11 years DJ’ing in strip clubs. And I can tell you unequivocally that no artist’s music works better in the dimly lit, Vanillaroma-scented, hyper-sexual setting of a strip club than Prince’s. Thematically, spiritually, sonically and cosmically, Prince’s songs provide the perfect soundtrack to all the bumping and grinding on stage, all the strategic straddling in the couch dance room, and all the scantily-clad strippers feigning interest in some cigar-chomping douchebag’s house-flipping venture.

It all starts with Prince’s grooves. No one crafted a go-go groove like Prince. They always sit in the sweetest spot of the pocket, enabling strippers to embrace their inner sexy-aerialist on the pole, do some lustful writhing at ground level, and remove what articles of clothing they are legally permitted to remove at their own unhurried pace. The slow jams like “Do Me, Baby” and “The Beautiful Ones,” and the fatback funk workouts like “Gett Off” and “Kiss” are the most obviously pole-friendly, but Prince’s grooves work at all ends of the BPM (beats per minute) spectrum. Even on the frantic ones like “Let’s Go Crazy” and “Baby, I’m a Star,” the strippers never have to work too hard to keep up. Instinctively, they just find that sweet spot and work it. I am convinced that dude created beats with the pole in mind.

Of course you generally can’t go wrong with lyrics about sex in a strip club. But like the film "This Is Spinal Tap" taught us, it’s a fine line between sex-y and sex-ist. Graphic as a few of them might be (I’ll give you that much, Linda), Prince’s sex songs are straight-up sex-y, rendering strip club warhorses like Mötley Crüe’s “Girls, Girls, Girls” and ZZ Top’s “Tush” little more than dumb, sexist nursery rhymes. Prince’s sex was always smart, with something to suit any stripper’s mood, taste or outfit. You need some gender-twisting roleplay fantasy? Cue up “If I Was Your Girlfriend.” Need nasty and up-tempo? Flip over “Let’s Go Crazy” and go for the B-side, “Erotic City.” How about something with a playful metaphor that will pair well with that all-white outfit? You can’t go wrong with “Cream.”

I found that I simply could not go wrong with any Prince song in any strip club setting – be it a fancy-ish place with a dress code and bouncers wearing headsets, or a shady-ass joint adjacent to a motor lodge with a cook who had a glass eye courtesy of the Korean War manning the deep fryer. Prince was the one artist who everyone in the place -- the dancers, the clientele (ranging from bikers to white collar types) the management, the bartenders and the bouncers -- could agree on. If I didn't know what to play for a dancer or she really didn't know what kind of music she wanted to dance to (pretty common with newbies), Prince always worked. Bawdy lust and that perpetually sexy feel always get the job done in a strip club. Even the socially conscious stuff and the stately ballads were strip club bangers. Never had a customer complain that his couch dance mellow was harshed by the heavy vibe of “Sign ‘O’ The Times; never had a stripper say she couldn’t dance to “Diamonds and Pearls” because the drum fills were too busy and there wasn’t enough backbeat in the verses.

And his shit always sounded amazing. I’d crank the subs during busy shifts when the club would get really noisy and the bottom end on those Prince records would sound sweeter the louder it got, rather than turning to mud like a lot of rock stuff. Didn’t matter if it was live drums or drum machine, real bass, synth bass or no bass at all (like on “When Doves Cry”), that bottom end was consistently beautiful.

I used to joke that the only CD I really needed of the 1,500 or so I regularly brought to work was Prince’s 1993 three-CD compilation "The Hits/The B-Sides" (though having "Back in Black" and "Pretty Hate Machine" in your back pocket probably wouldn’t hurt, just for variety). It’s a Swiss Army knife for strip club DJs – it’s versatile and functional and it had everything I needed to get through a shift – rock, soul, ballads, funk, and, yes, strippers would routinely request Prince B-sides such as “Erotic City” and “She’s Always in My Hair.”

Any upstart strip club DJ should pick up this collection, dig deep and spin it liberally. It will serve you well. It’s been 11 years since I last brought a stripper to the stage, but I can’t imagine anyone has come close to dethroning Prince in the strip club world. I hope he is resting peacefully, and I hope he knows how much easier he made life for all of us strip club DJs.Not only did the lyrics to “Darling Nikki” – with its reference to a girl in a hotel lobby masturbating with a magazine – get Tipper Gore’s knickers in such a twist that she founded the Parents Music Resource Center, they got the song banned from a South Jersey gentleman’s club called The Playhouse in 1996. I’ll never forget where I was when I got the shocking news: in the DJ booth at said go-go bar, cueing up a CD for one of the dancers working the noon-to-five shift. The day manager, Linda, popped her head into the booth to deliver the news.

“Hey, I don’t know if Rick (the head DJ) told you or not (he hadn’t – details weren’t really a priority for Rick), but you can’t play that Prince song anymore.”

“Which one?” I asked.

“The ‘Nikki’ one where the girl is taking care of herself in a lobby – no more. It’s just too much.”

“But this is a go-go bar,” I reasoned. “Look up on the stage – bare breasts!”

“I know, but it’s just….” her voice trailed off as she made a face that said "I went to college for accounting and I can’t believe I’m having this conversation," “… it’s just not appropriate.”

She walked away and that was that. No more “Darling Nikki” at The Playhouse, marking the only time Prince’s music was deemed “not appropriate” for a strip club. Because if ever there was an artist whose music was absolutely appropriate for a strip club, it was Prince.

In what seems like another lifetime, I spent the better part of 11 years DJ’ing in strip clubs. And I can tell you unequivocally that no artist’s music works better in the dimly lit, Vanillaroma-scented, hyper-sexual setting of a strip club than Prince’s. Thematically, spiritually, sonically and cosmically, Prince’s songs provide the perfect soundtrack to all the bumping and grinding on stage, all the strategic straddling in the couch dance room, and all the scantily-clad strippers feigning interest in some cigar-chomping douchebag’s house-flipping venture.

It all starts with Prince’s grooves. No one crafted a go-go groove like Prince. They always sit in the sweetest spot of the pocket, enabling strippers to embrace their inner sexy-aerialist on the pole, do some lustful writhing at ground level, and remove what articles of clothing they are legally permitted to remove at their own unhurried pace. The slow jams like “Do Me, Baby” and “The Beautiful Ones,” and the fatback funk workouts like “Gett Off” and “Kiss” are the most obviously pole-friendly, but Prince’s grooves work at all ends of the BPM (beats per minute) spectrum. Even on the frantic ones like “Let’s Go Crazy” and “Baby, I’m a Star,” the strippers never have to work too hard to keep up. Instinctively, they just find that sweet spot and work it. I am convinced that dude created beats with the pole in mind.

Of course you generally can’t go wrong with lyrics about sex in a strip club. But like the film "This Is Spinal Tap" taught us, it’s a fine line between sex-y and sex-ist. Graphic as a few of them might be (I’ll give you that much, Linda), Prince’s sex songs are straight-up sex-y, rendering strip club warhorses like Mötley Crüe’s “Girls, Girls, Girls” and ZZ Top’s “Tush” little more than dumb, sexist nursery rhymes. Prince’s sex was always smart, with something to suit any stripper’s mood, taste or outfit. You need some gender-twisting roleplay fantasy? Cue up “If I Was Your Girlfriend.” Need nasty and up-tempo? Flip over “Let’s Go Crazy” and go for the B-side, “Erotic City.” How about something with a playful metaphor that will pair well with that all-white outfit? You can’t go wrong with “Cream.”

I found that I simply could not go wrong with any Prince song in any strip club setting – be it a fancy-ish place with a dress code and bouncers wearing headsets, or a shady-ass joint adjacent to a motor lodge with a cook who had a glass eye courtesy of the Korean War manning the deep fryer. Prince was the one artist who everyone in the place -- the dancers, the clientele (ranging from bikers to white collar types) the management, the bartenders and the bouncers -- could agree on. If I didn't know what to play for a dancer or she really didn't know what kind of music she wanted to dance to (pretty common with newbies), Prince always worked. Bawdy lust and that perpetually sexy feel always get the job done in a strip club. Even the socially conscious stuff and the stately ballads were strip club bangers. Never had a customer complain that his couch dance mellow was harshed by the heavy vibe of “Sign ‘O’ The Times; never had a stripper say she couldn’t dance to “Diamonds and Pearls” because the drum fills were too busy and there wasn’t enough backbeat in the verses.

And his shit always sounded amazing. I’d crank the subs during busy shifts when the club would get really noisy and the bottom end on those Prince records would sound sweeter the louder it got, rather than turning to mud like a lot of rock stuff. Didn’t matter if it was live drums or drum machine, real bass, synth bass or no bass at all (like on “When Doves Cry”), that bottom end was consistently beautiful.

I used to joke that the only CD I really needed of the 1,500 or so I regularly brought to work was Prince’s 1993 three-CD compilation "The Hits/The B-Sides" (though having "Back in Black" and "Pretty Hate Machine" in your back pocket probably wouldn’t hurt, just for variety). It’s a Swiss Army knife for strip club DJs – it’s versatile and functional and it had everything I needed to get through a shift – rock, soul, ballads, funk, and, yes, strippers would routinely request Prince B-sides such as “Erotic City” and “She’s Always in My Hair.”

Any upstart strip club DJ should pick up this collection, dig deep and spin it liberally. It will serve you well. It’s been 11 years since I last brought a stripper to the stage, but I can’t imagine anyone has come close to dethroning Prince in the strip club world. I hope he is resting peacefully, and I hope he knows how much easier he made life for all of us strip club DJs.Not only did the lyrics to “Darling Nikki” – with its reference to a girl in a hotel lobby masturbating with a magazine – get Tipper Gore’s knickers in such a twist that she founded the Parents Music Resource Center, they got the song banned from a South Jersey gentleman’s club called The Playhouse in 1996. I’ll never forget where I was when I got the shocking news: in the DJ booth at said go-go bar, cueing up a CD for one of the dancers working the noon-to-five shift. The day manager, Linda, popped her head into the booth to deliver the news.

“Hey, I don’t know if Rick (the head DJ) told you or not (he hadn’t – details weren’t really a priority for Rick), but you can’t play that Prince song anymore.”

“Which one?” I asked.

“The ‘Nikki’ one where the girl is taking care of herself in a lobby – no more. It’s just too much.”

“But this is a go-go bar,” I reasoned. “Look up on the stage – bare breasts!”

“I know, but it’s just….” her voice trailed off as she made a face that said "I went to college for accounting and I can’t believe I’m having this conversation," “… it’s just not appropriate.”

She walked away and that was that. No more “Darling Nikki” at The Playhouse, marking the only time Prince’s music was deemed “not appropriate” for a strip club. Because if ever there was an artist whose music was absolutely appropriate for a strip club, it was Prince.

In what seems like another lifetime, I spent the better part of 11 years DJ’ing in strip clubs. And I can tell you unequivocally that no artist’s music works better in the dimly lit, Vanillaroma-scented, hyper-sexual setting of a strip club than Prince’s. Thematically, spiritually, sonically and cosmically, Prince’s songs provide the perfect soundtrack to all the bumping and grinding on stage, all the strategic straddling in the couch dance room, and all the scantily-clad strippers feigning interest in some cigar-chomping douchebag’s house-flipping venture.

It all starts with Prince’s grooves. No one crafted a go-go groove like Prince. They always sit in the sweetest spot of the pocket, enabling strippers to embrace their inner sexy-aerialist on the pole, do some lustful writhing at ground level, and remove what articles of clothing they are legally permitted to remove at their own unhurried pace. The slow jams like “Do Me, Baby” and “The Beautiful Ones,” and the fatback funk workouts like “Gett Off” and “Kiss” are the most obviously pole-friendly, but Prince’s grooves work at all ends of the BPM (beats per minute) spectrum. Even on the frantic ones like “Let’s Go Crazy” and “Baby, I’m a Star,” the strippers never have to work too hard to keep up. Instinctively, they just find that sweet spot and work it. I am convinced that dude created beats with the pole in mind.

Of course you generally can’t go wrong with lyrics about sex in a strip club. But like the film "This Is Spinal Tap" taught us, it’s a fine line between sex-y and sex-ist. Graphic as a few of them might be (I’ll give you that much, Linda), Prince’s sex songs are straight-up sex-y, rendering strip club warhorses like Mötley Crüe’s “Girls, Girls, Girls” and ZZ Top’s “Tush” little more than dumb, sexist nursery rhymes. Prince’s sex was always smart, with something to suit any stripper’s mood, taste or outfit. You need some gender-twisting roleplay fantasy? Cue up “If I Was Your Girlfriend.” Need nasty and up-tempo? Flip over “Let’s Go Crazy” and go for the B-side, “Erotic City.” How about something with a playful metaphor that will pair well with that all-white outfit? You can’t go wrong with “Cream.”

I found that I simply could not go wrong with any Prince song in any strip club setting – be it a fancy-ish place with a dress code and bouncers wearing headsets, or a shady-ass joint adjacent to a motor lodge with a cook who had a glass eye courtesy of the Korean War manning the deep fryer. Prince was the one artist who everyone in the place -- the dancers, the clientele (ranging from bikers to white collar types) the management, the bartenders and the bouncers -- could agree on. If I didn't know what to play for a dancer or she really didn't know what kind of music she wanted to dance to (pretty common with newbies), Prince always worked. Bawdy lust and that perpetually sexy feel always get the job done in a strip club. Even the socially conscious stuff and the stately ballads were strip club bangers. Never had a customer complain that his couch dance mellow was harshed by the heavy vibe of “Sign ‘O’ The Times; never had a stripper say she couldn’t dance to “Diamonds and Pearls” because the drum fills were too busy and there wasn’t enough backbeat in the verses.

And his shit always sounded amazing. I’d crank the subs during busy shifts when the club would get really noisy and the bottom end on those Prince records would sound sweeter the louder it got, rather than turning to mud like a lot of rock stuff. Didn’t matter if it was live drums or drum machine, real bass, synth bass or no bass at all (like on “When Doves Cry”), that bottom end was consistently beautiful.

I used to joke that the only CD I really needed of the 1,500 or so I regularly brought to work was Prince’s 1993 three-CD compilation "The Hits/The B-Sides" (though having "Back in Black" and "Pretty Hate Machine" in your back pocket probably wouldn’t hurt, just for variety). It’s a Swiss Army knife for strip club DJs – it’s versatile and functional and it had everything I needed to get through a shift – rock, soul, ballads, funk, and, yes, strippers would routinely request Prince B-sides such as “Erotic City” and “She’s Always in My Hair.”

Any upstart strip club DJ should pick up this collection, dig deep and spin it liberally. It will serve you well. It’s been 11 years since I last brought a stripper to the stage, but I can’t imagine anyone has come close to dethroning Prince in the strip club world. I hope he is resting peacefully, and I hope he knows how much easier he made life for all of us strip club DJs.Not only did the lyrics to “Darling Nikki” – with its reference to a girl in a hotel lobby masturbating with a magazine – get Tipper Gore’s knickers in such a twist that she founded the Parents Music Resource Center, they got the song banned from a South Jersey gentleman’s club called The Playhouse in 1996. I’ll never forget where I was when I got the shocking news: in the DJ booth at said go-go bar, cueing up a CD for one of the dancers working the noon-to-five shift. The day manager, Linda, popped her head into the booth to deliver the news.

“Hey, I don’t know if Rick (the head DJ) told you or not (he hadn’t – details weren’t really a priority for Rick), but you can’t play that Prince song anymore.”

“Which one?” I asked.

“The ‘Nikki’ one where the girl is taking care of herself in a lobby – no more. It’s just too much.”

“But this is a go-go bar,” I reasoned. “Look up on the stage – bare breasts!”

“I know, but it’s just….” her voice trailed off as she made a face that said "I went to college for accounting and I can’t believe I’m having this conversation," “… it’s just not appropriate.”

She walked away and that was that. No more “Darling Nikki” at The Playhouse, marking the only time Prince’s music was deemed “not appropriate” for a strip club. Because if ever there was an artist whose music was absolutely appropriate for a strip club, it was Prince.

In what seems like another lifetime, I spent the better part of 11 years DJ’ing in strip clubs. And I can tell you unequivocally that no artist’s music works better in the dimly lit, Vanillaroma-scented, hyper-sexual setting of a strip club than Prince’s. Thematically, spiritually, sonically and cosmically, Prince’s songs provide the perfect soundtrack to all the bumping and grinding on stage, all the strategic straddling in the couch dance room, and all the scantily-clad strippers feigning interest in some cigar-chomping douchebag’s house-flipping venture.

It all starts with Prince’s grooves. No one crafted a go-go groove like Prince. They always sit in the sweetest spot of the pocket, enabling strippers to embrace their inner sexy-aerialist on the pole, do some lustful writhing at ground level, and remove what articles of clothing they are legally permitted to remove at their own unhurried pace. The slow jams like “Do Me, Baby” and “The Beautiful Ones,” and the fatback funk workouts like “Gett Off” and “Kiss” are the most obviously pole-friendly, but Prince’s grooves work at all ends of the BPM (beats per minute) spectrum. Even on the frantic ones like “Let’s Go Crazy” and “Baby, I’m a Star,” the strippers never have to work too hard to keep up. Instinctively, they just find that sweet spot and work it. I am convinced that dude created beats with the pole in mind.

Of course you generally can’t go wrong with lyrics about sex in a strip club. But like the film "This Is Spinal Tap" taught us, it’s a fine line between sex-y and sex-ist. Graphic as a few of them might be (I’ll give you that much, Linda), Prince’s sex songs are straight-up sex-y, rendering strip club warhorses like Mötley Crüe’s “Girls, Girls, Girls” and ZZ Top’s “Tush” little more than dumb, sexist nursery rhymes. Prince’s sex was always smart, with something to suit any stripper’s mood, taste or outfit. You need some gender-twisting roleplay fantasy? Cue up “If I Was Your Girlfriend.” Need nasty and up-tempo? Flip over “Let’s Go Crazy” and go for the B-side, “Erotic City.” How about something with a playful metaphor that will pair well with that all-white outfit? You can’t go wrong with “Cream.”

I found that I simply could not go wrong with any Prince song in any strip club setting – be it a fancy-ish place with a dress code and bouncers wearing headsets, or a shady-ass joint adjacent to a motor lodge with a cook who had a glass eye courtesy of the Korean War manning the deep fryer. Prince was the one artist who everyone in the place -- the dancers, the clientele (ranging from bikers to white collar types) the management, the bartenders and the bouncers -- could agree on. If I didn't know what to play for a dancer or she really didn't know what kind of music she wanted to dance to (pretty common with newbies), Prince always worked. Bawdy lust and that perpetually sexy feel always get the job done in a strip club. Even the socially conscious stuff and the stately ballads were strip club bangers. Never had a customer complain that his couch dance mellow was harshed by the heavy vibe of “Sign ‘O’ The Times; never had a stripper say she couldn’t dance to “Diamonds and Pearls” because the drum fills were too busy and there wasn’t enough backbeat in the verses.

And his shit always sounded amazing. I’d crank the subs during busy shifts when the club would get really noisy and the bottom end on those Prince records would sound sweeter the louder it got, rather than turning to mud like a lot of rock stuff. Didn’t matter if it was live drums or drum machine, real bass, synth bass or no bass at all (like on “When Doves Cry”), that bottom end was consistently beautiful.

I used to joke that the only CD I really needed of the 1,500 or so I regularly brought to work was Prince’s 1993 three-CD compilation "The Hits/The B-Sides" (though having "Back in Black" and "Pretty Hate Machine" in your back pocket probably wouldn’t hurt, just for variety). It’s a Swiss Army knife for strip club DJs – it’s versatile and functional and it had everything I needed to get through a shift – rock, soul, ballads, funk, and, yes, strippers would routinely request Prince B-sides such as “Erotic City” and “She’s Always in My Hair.”

Any upstart strip club DJ should pick up this collection, dig deep and spin it liberally. It will serve you well. It’s been 11 years since I last brought a stripper to the stage, but I can’t imagine anyone has come close to dethroning Prince in the strip club world. I hope he is resting peacefully, and I hope he knows how much easier he made life for all of us strip club DJs.

Continue Reading...

Prince and the queer body: Our dirty patron saint of pop gave me permission to think outside the gender binary

The musical virtuosity of Prince was rivaled only by his status as a sex symbol. A paragon of eroticism, not only did he give us soundtracks for every kind of romp, he embodied sexual possibility. His look, his body, his movement, his beyond-he-ness was a cooing, screeching example. Sex is good. Bodies are good. Gett Off. He was, for this queer woman and so many others, a Big Fucking Deal.

“I’m not a woman, I’m not a man, I am something you will never understand.” The line resounded in my ten year old mind somewhere outside a small Canadian town. Listening to the radio in the backseat of a Suburban, I didn’t know what the line meant, but it was a strange wave of relief. There are more options than women and men? It was the first hint I’d gotten that such categories could be questioned, let alone rejected.

The “Kiss” video confirmed it: slim and made-up, this singer was challenging our limited sense of "man," yet he was the manliest thing I’d ever seen—in an asymmetrical half-top. Moving in a way my young self couldn’t place as masculine or feminine, he was singing about someone being ‘his girl’ and there was a badass woman—fully clothed in a red suit—playing guitar. He was dancing half-naked around her (Wendy Melvoin). It was Derridean recognition at first sight. Not just of androgyny or gender-bending, but of sheer queer possibility.

This was someone different, wild, real and awesome—a kindred spirit candle in the window.

Even before lust entered the picture, Prince opened a new realm of being for me and those around me. In a culture that implies that people, especially girls, can either be smart or care about being pretty, here was a person who was clearly both brilliant and enamored with his own beauty. And his looks were his. And yes, he was a man, though his existence called for more words, options, homage. Men could be like that. Men could look like that. Eyeliner and mustache, sissy-ish posing and growling foreplay. This confidence transcended gender roles as deftly as his dance moves walked the line between aggressive and alluring. A young naive Canadian, the racial dimensions of Prince were mostly lost on me, though I’d read Hilton Als’ take, among others, later. I was awakening to a world divided by gender and Prince was my first genderfuck, shimmering: men can be this, women can be that. Neither, both—Prince’s shapeshifting and the ease with which he did it was the single most formative blessing in my understanding of sexuality.

I didn’t understand and I liked it. That was part of the draw. I was a skinny white Canadian country girl, but I could see that he was his own and the fact that that was alright gave me a certainty that has grounded me—albeit quietly—all my purple life. Glam rockers had deep necklines and eyeshadow but it often seemed like a costume, like they were trying to look like rock stars. Little Richard was before my time, and his androgyny and era lacked Prince’s sexual daring and MTV platform. Cobain wore eyeliner but felt like a reaction, a semiotic statement. On Prince it was natural. Even if controversial, it wasn’t a stunt.

I couldn’t articulate it at the time, but that visual example of born-this-way norm-breaking laid the groundwork for my adult life. In a redneck place where scarves were considered effeminate and gay-bashing a yet-unnamed danger, this doe-eyed man in ruffles was a pretty conceptual explosion. Nefertiti, Pharaoh, look however U want—look at Prince. Today, with "They" as the American Dialect Society’s 2016 Word of the Year, the royal-he who declared himself a gender-bending symbol in 1993 was obviously a visionary, clearing the way for the progress we build on today.

Prince was beautiful and small. 5’2” without shoes, he was short for any gender. Obviously this didn’t affect his surety, his larger than life presence, cultivated or inborn. A small girl who internalized ideas of feminine weakness, I saw Prince as living proof that physical parameters—of gender, of size, of biology—aren’t limitations. It wouldn’t sound cheesy were he singing it: it’s possible for all of us to live, enjoy, and celebrate our bodies, work though it may be. Art helps in that endeavor; especially music, when it comes to movement.

Not only did Prince teach me that could you look however you wanted, he also made it drippingly clear that you could be as sexual as you wanted, a familiar yet revolutionary notion for everyone, especially women. Long before slut-shaming was common vernacular, Prince was the dirty patron saint—the Pope, really—of sex positivity. In the universe of Prince, not only is it okay to be sexual, it’s a given. Beautiful, writhing, wounded, and ultimately, human. Free to self-define and stay up past dawn, everything becomes naturalized, accepted, celebrated. If you can give yourself permission to look however you want and have as much sex as you want, the anxiety of orientation is next to dissolve. The message of so many Prince songs is the same: love is love.

Of course there were other such figures. As poet Mark Bibbins put it, David Bowie was the original It Gets Better video. But there was an otherness and otherworldliness to Bowie. He was a Star Man, a myth, where Prince gave Pan an earthly run for his money. Bowie’s Nietzsche-infused lyrics could be difficult for listeners to parse; Prince’s were as direct as possible, and no less existential or confrontational: I want you. Do Me, Baby.

Bowie was also a Brit, imbued with that across-the-pond glamour. Prince was from Minnesota. That fact said to all of those not from cosmopolitan cultural center, especially the queers: hell yes, you can play too! Minnesota was almost as nowhere as my hometown. For Prince to be himself, that self, from the waters of Lake Minnetonka—it meant that it could be okay. It gets better. We can make it better.

In a culture still grappling with accepting bodies at the most basic level, Prince not only looked and sang and preached the part. There was the way he moved, a kind of prowl that played every role daring us to dance, to dig, to get free. Some people have moods, personas, performances. Prince was a coil, an erotic livewire, and one for the ages. Decades after that radio shocker, I no longer understand man and woman as an either/or binary. I used to work Prince into a theory that everyone is bisexual—whoever you are, if you aren’t attracted to Prince, you must be lying. How could anyone not be drawn to such visceral, unabashed sinew? If you can watch “Purple Rain” and not squirm, well, that’s your problem. He tapped into an essential libido and invited us for a drink and I for one will be forever grateful.

Meet me in another world, space and joy,
vous etes tres belle, mama, girls and boys.

We can appreciate his music to the extent of our knowledge and taste but Prince had a prowess at life that we can all draw from, regardless of demographics. “All of my hang ups are gone/how I wish u felt the same.” A constant source of almost spiritual encouragement in a time of civil rights activism and bodily coming-to-terms, Prince spoke to and for the glorious animal in all of us, whether we listened or not.

I'm not a human
I am a dove
I'm your conscious
I am love

Electric words. He wasn’t wrong.The musical virtuosity of Prince was rivaled only by his status as a sex symbol. A paragon of eroticism, not only did he give us soundtracks for every kind of romp, he embodied sexual possibility. His look, his body, his movement, his beyond-he-ness was a cooing, screeching example. Sex is good. Bodies are good. Gett Off. He was, for this queer woman and so many others, a Big Fucking Deal.

“I’m not a woman, I’m not a man, I am something you will never understand.” The line resounded in my ten year old mind somewhere outside a small Canadian town. Listening to the radio in the backseat of a Suburban, I didn’t know what the line meant, but it was a strange wave of relief. There are more options than women and men? It was the first hint I’d gotten that such categories could be questioned, let alone rejected.

The “Kiss” video confirmed it: slim and made-up, this singer was challenging our limited sense of "man," yet he was the manliest thing I’d ever seen—in an asymmetrical half-top. Moving in a way my young self couldn’t place as masculine or feminine, he was singing about someone being ‘his girl’ and there was a badass woman—fully clothed in a red suit—playing guitar. He was dancing half-naked around her (Wendy Melvoin). It was Derridean recognition at first sight. Not just of androgyny or gender-bending, but of sheer queer possibility.

This was someone different, wild, real and awesome—a kindred spirit candle in the window.

Even before lust entered the picture, Prince opened a new realm of being for me and those around me. In a culture that implies that people, especially girls, can either be smart or care about being pretty, here was a person who was clearly both brilliant and enamored with his own beauty. And his looks were his. And yes, he was a man, though his existence called for more words, options, homage. Men could be like that. Men could look like that. Eyeliner and mustache, sissy-ish posing and growling foreplay. This confidence transcended gender roles as deftly as his dance moves walked the line between aggressive and alluring. A young naive Canadian, the racial dimensions of Prince were mostly lost on me, though I’d read Hilton Als’ take, among others, later. I was awakening to a world divided by gender and Prince was my first genderfuck, shimmering: men can be this, women can be that. Neither, both—Prince’s shapeshifting and the ease with which he did it was the single most formative blessing in my understanding of sexuality.

I didn’t understand and I liked it. That was part of the draw. I was a skinny white Canadian country girl, but I could see that he was his own and the fact that that was alright gave me a certainty that has grounded me—albeit quietly—all my purple life. Glam rockers had deep necklines and eyeshadow but it often seemed like a costume, like they were trying to look like rock stars. Little Richard was before my time, and his androgyny and era lacked Prince’s sexual daring and MTV platform. Cobain wore eyeliner but felt like a reaction, a semiotic statement. On Prince it was natural. Even if controversial, it wasn’t a stunt.

I couldn’t articulate it at the time, but that visual example of born-this-way norm-breaking laid the groundwork for my adult life. In a redneck place where scarves were considered effeminate and gay-bashing a yet-unnamed danger, this doe-eyed man in ruffles was a pretty conceptual explosion. Nefertiti, Pharaoh, look however U want—look at Prince. Today, with "They" as the American Dialect Society’s 2016 Word of the Year, the royal-he who declared himself a gender-bending symbol in 1993 was obviously a visionary, clearing the way for the progress we build on today.

Prince was beautiful and small. 5’2” without shoes, he was short for any gender. Obviously this didn’t affect his surety, his larger than life presence, cultivated or inborn. A small girl who internalized ideas of feminine weakness, I saw Prince as living proof that physical parameters—of gender, of size, of biology—aren’t limitations. It wouldn’t sound cheesy were he singing it: it’s possible for all of us to live, enjoy, and celebrate our bodies, work though it may be. Art helps in that endeavor; especially music, when it comes to movement.

Not only did Prince teach me that could you look however you wanted, he also made it drippingly clear that you could be as sexual as you wanted, a familiar yet revolutionary notion for everyone, especially women. Long before slut-shaming was common vernacular, Prince was the dirty patron saint—the Pope, really—of sex positivity. In the universe of Prince, not only is it okay to be sexual, it’s a given. Beautiful, writhing, wounded, and ultimately, human. Free to self-define and stay up past dawn, everything becomes naturalized, accepted, celebrated. If you can give yourself permission to look however you want and have as much sex as you want, the anxiety of orientation is next to dissolve. The message of so many Prince songs is the same: love is love.

Of course there were other such figures. As poet Mark Bibbins put it, David Bowie was the original It Gets Better video. But there was an otherness and otherworldliness to Bowie. He was a Star Man, a myth, where Prince gave Pan an earthly run for his money. Bowie’s Nietzsche-infused lyrics could be difficult for listeners to parse; Prince’s were as direct as possible, and no less existential or confrontational: I want you. Do Me, Baby.

Bowie was also a Brit, imbued with that across-the-pond glamour. Prince was from Minnesota. That fact said to all of those not from cosmopolitan cultural center, especially the queers: hell yes, you can play too! Minnesota was almost as nowhere as my hometown. For Prince to be himself, that self, from the waters of Lake Minnetonka—it meant that it could be okay. It gets better. We can make it better.

In a culture still grappling with accepting bodies at the most basic level, Prince not only looked and sang and preached the part. There was the way he moved, a kind of prowl that played every role daring us to dance, to dig, to get free. Some people have moods, personas, performances. Prince was a coil, an erotic livewire, and one for the ages. Decades after that radio shocker, I no longer understand man and woman as an either/or binary. I used to work Prince into a theory that everyone is bisexual—whoever you are, if you aren’t attracted to Prince, you must be lying. How could anyone not be drawn to such visceral, unabashed sinew? If you can watch “Purple Rain” and not squirm, well, that’s your problem. He tapped into an essential libido and invited us for a drink and I for one will be forever grateful.

Meet me in another world, space and joy,
vous etes tres belle, mama, girls and boys.

We can appreciate his music to the extent of our knowledge and taste but Prince had a prowess at life that we can all draw from, regardless of demographics. “All of my hang ups are gone/how I wish u felt the same.” A constant source of almost spiritual encouragement in a time of civil rights activism and bodily coming-to-terms, Prince spoke to and for the glorious animal in all of us, whether we listened or not.

I'm not a human
I am a dove
I'm your conscious
I am love

Electric words. He wasn’t wrong.

Continue Reading...

Minnesota officials: “No reason to believe” Prince committed suicide and no signs of trauma

One day after Prince's death shocked music fans around the world, additional details surrounding the pop superstar's demise were released Friday afternoon. Carver County Sheriff Jim Olson announced that the singer's body showed "no obvious signs of trauma" and that there is "no reason to believe at this point" that Prince committed suicide. Officials found that Prince was alone at the time of his death, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

An autopsy was performed on Prince's body Friday morning at the Midwest Medical Examiner's Office in Ramsey, Minnesota. Though the autopsy is complete, toxicology results are still pending and the official explanation for Prince's death likely won't be released for some time. "It could be days, depending on the type of test, and most likely weeks to have the complete set of results available to us," said Martha Weaver, a spokeswoman for the office.

Conjecture surrounding the cause of Prince's has centered on reports that the musician suffered an opioid overdose last week, but Weaver discouraged speculation until the results of the autopsy are announced. "Nothing will be released until everything is complete. Nothing can be reported with a pending status," she said.

Prince was found unconscious in an elevator at his Minnesota residence on Thursday and was pronounced dead shortly thereafter. He was 57 years old.

 One day after Prince's death shocked music fans around the world, additional details surrounding the pop superstar's demise were released Friday afternoon. Carver County Sheriff Jim Olson announced that the singer's body showed "no obvious signs of trauma" and that there is "no reason to believe at this point" that Prince committed suicide. Officials found that Prince was alone at the time of his death, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

An autopsy was performed on Prince's body Friday morning at the Midwest Medical Examiner's Office in Ramsey, Minnesota. Though the autopsy is complete, toxicology results are still pending and the official explanation for Prince's death likely won't be released for some time. "It could be days, depending on the type of test, and most likely weeks to have the complete set of results available to us," said Martha Weaver, a spokeswoman for the office.

Conjecture surrounding the cause of Prince's has centered on reports that the musician suffered an opioid overdose last week, but Weaver discouraged speculation until the results of the autopsy are announced. "Nothing will be released until everything is complete. Nothing can be reported with a pending status," she said.

Prince was found unconscious in an elevator at his Minnesota residence on Thursday and was pronounced dead shortly thereafter. He was 57 years old.

 

Continue Reading...

Bernie’s donation windfall: Sanders’ campaign has raised $182 million, eclipsing Hillary Clinton’s total

After trailing DNC establishment darling Hillary Clinton in fundraising for almost a year, Bernie Sanders has now surpassed his Democratic rival in the metric, according to a CNN report.

Federal Election Commission filings indicate Sanders' campaign has out-raised Clinton's "by at least 50%" every month this year -- and in so doing, steadily reeled in Hillary's more than $30 million head start.

The Democratic candidates were effectively tied at $182 million, with Sanders having a relatively slight $720,000 edge, at the end of March.

Up-to-date figures give Clinton a marginal edge following her commanding victory in the New York primary. As of this writing, Hillary's fundraising lead (just under $1 million) is less than the amount she's raised from PACs.

All the more impressive, Sanders has based his fundraising efforts on grassroots tactics; he's raised nearly $183 million from individual contributions. The average individual contribution, Sanders boasts, is $27. (Really, it's more like $29, but I'm not gonna be the one to tell him.)After trailing DNC establishment darling Hillary Clinton in fundraising for almost a year, Bernie Sanders has now surpassed his Democratic rival in the metric, according to a CNN report.

Federal Election Commission filings indicate Sanders' campaign has out-raised Clinton's "by at least 50%" every month this year -- and in so doing, steadily reeled in Hillary's more than $30 million head start.

The Democratic candidates were effectively tied at $182 million, with Sanders having a relatively slight $720,000 edge, at the end of March.

Up-to-date figures give Clinton a marginal edge following her commanding victory in the New York primary. As of this writing, Hillary's fundraising lead (just under $1 million) is less than the amount she's raised from PACs.

All the more impressive, Sanders has based his fundraising efforts on grassroots tactics; he's raised nearly $183 million from individual contributions. The average individual contribution, Sanders boasts, is $27. (Really, it's more like $29, but I'm not gonna be the one to tell him.)After trailing DNC establishment darling Hillary Clinton in fundraising for almost a year, Bernie Sanders has now surpassed his Democratic rival in the metric, according to a CNN report.

Federal Election Commission filings indicate Sanders' campaign has out-raised Clinton's "by at least 50%" every month this year -- and in so doing, steadily reeled in Hillary's more than $30 million head start.

The Democratic candidates were effectively tied at $182 million, with Sanders having a relatively slight $720,000 edge, at the end of March.

Up-to-date figures give Clinton a marginal edge following her commanding victory in the New York primary. As of this writing, Hillary's fundraising lead (just under $1 million) is less than the amount she's raised from PACs.

All the more impressive, Sanders has based his fundraising efforts on grassroots tactics; he's raised nearly $183 million from individual contributions. The average individual contribution, Sanders boasts, is $27. (Really, it's more like $29, but I'm not gonna be the one to tell him.)

Continue Reading...

Stop calling Kelly Ripa a “diva”: The urge to demean women for exercising power is still going strong

Kelly Ripa deserves a hell of a lot better than this. The talk show host, actress, producer and parent has a long-running television show with her name on it and a string of successful endorsement deals. Yet this week, following the announcement that her Live With Kelly and Michael" cohost Michael Strahan was because, insiders say, she was kept out of the loop as network bosses negotiated Strahan’s transfer to 'GMA,'" adding, "Whether Ripa is suffering a wounded ego or her absence is part of a larger negotiating ploy, she may want to think twice before extending her time off from 'Live,' where she reportedly earns a $20 million paycheck."

Yeah, while your male cohost goes on to "more opportunities," just watch your back, missy!

Meanwhile, speculation has been running that Ripa may also be crowded out of her current timeslot, if "GMA's" acquisition of Strahan is part of a strategy to expand the show to a third hour.

Ripa's not some petulant amateur. She's been in the business since she was a teenager, shaking it like a Polaroid on "Dance Party USA." She's been doing her show for more than 15 years. And as Queen of All Media Oprah Winfrey explained to "ET" this week, "Nobody should ever be blindsided. I don't know who's in charge, but somebody should've said, 'This is gonna happen.' You shouldn't have to read it in the paper. Ever."  Maybe certainly now the senior host of her own show? Oh, what a wonderful world it would be if more working women were in enough of a position of power to express their displeasure when they're getting screwed over at their jobs.

Whatever Ripa's current plans or tactical choices about how to handle the next several months until Strahan's September departure, it should be abundantly clear that this is a 45 year old adult we're talking about here, a person with a lengthy and proven television track record. And though she's taken heat in the past for her old fashioned views about who should pick up the dinner check, asserting that she deserves to be kept in the loop when, say, her co-host is leaving the show is as feminist as it gets. And it's sure as hell not a "diva" move, a sexist term used to describe successful women who don't put up with crap.

Continue Reading...

The world mourns Prince: Everything you need to know about his life, death and international tributes

The music industry and fans across the world continue to mourn the death of Prince, who was found dead Thursday in Minneapolis at 57.

An autopsy was performed Friday, though speculation began almost immediately following Prince's passing. TMZ has been most active in determining the cause of Prince's death.

Prince had to postpone by a week two back-to-back concerts at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta after contracting the flu. The concerts, held on April 14, would be his last. Paste Magazine's Bonnie Stiernberg, who reviewed the 7 p.m. early show that evening, mentioned that he seemed as if "he'd made a full recovery."

Early the next morning, however, Prince's plane — on route to Minnesota from Atlanta — had to make an emergency landing in Moline, Illinois, where he was rushed to the hospital and treated for dehydration, according to a breaking TMZ scoop.

Thursday late-morning, TMZ released a photo of Prince leaving his local Walgreens. The accompanying report claimed he'd visited the pharmacy four times in the week leading up to his death and that, "People at the store were concerned because he looked much more frail and nervous than usual."

Then, Thursday night, TMZ reported that, according to "sources in Moline," Prince had actually been treated for overdose (given the "save shot") less than a week before his death.

On Friday, British tabloid the Daily Mail alleged Prince had "overdosed on Percocet he was taking for a chronic hip problem he had been suffering for years as he refused to have an operation because of his strict Jehovah's Witness faith."

Authorities have refused to release a timetable for the autopsy results.

The day since Prince's death has been an unending retrospective, profiling the legend's influence on fashion, identity, feminism, race, and, of course, music.

Given Prince's enormous scope of influence, tributes came in all shapes and sizes. Celebrities from Barack Obama to Frank Ocean to Magic Johnson reflected on The Purple One's passing.

He got the Broadway treatment:

Jennifer Hudson (Prince's friend) led a tribute to the late legend Thursday night during a performance of Broadway musical "The Color Purple," performing "Purple Rain":



And not to be outdone, the cast of Lin-Manuel Miranda's Pulitzer Prize-winning "Hamilton" did their own tribute, dancing to an instrumental version of "Let's Go Crazy":



Infrastructure in Minneapolis (and around the world) were lit in Prince's signature purple:

https://twitter.com/GMA/status/723519...

https://twitter.com/Twins/status/7232...

https://twitter.com/RadioClydeNews/st...

https://twitter.com/coslive/status/72...

Both Questlove and Spike Lee held tribute parties in Brooklyn. The former spun Prince deep cuts during his weekly DJ residency at Brooklyn Bowl, where he showed video of "Finding Nemo," in reference to this strange story:

Representin. It's Only Right. #Prince #BowlTrain #PurpleTRAIN #ThatDambFish

A photo posted by Questlove Gomez (@questlove) on Apr 21, 2016 at 8:52pm PDT

Meanwhile, Spike Lee hosted a block party outside his studio in the Fort Greene neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. It's estimated that as many as 800 people were in attendance to "dance, sing and shout to his music."

And, it seems, that Mother Nature may have paid her own tribute, as TMZ reported that a rainbow appeared over Paisley Park, Prince's Minneapolis compound, early Thursday evening:

https://twitter.com/TMZ/status/723309...

Russell Simmons joined "Nightly Show" host Larry Wilmore's panel for a retrospective of Prince's influence on the music industry. Watch here.

Other late-night television hosts also paid their respects during Thursday's lineup:





Among the more obscure tributes, The Game, oddly enough, released the track "Rest in Purple" on Soundcloud late Thursday evening:



And Mike Tyson did this:

https://twitter.com/MikeTyson/status/...

Even corporate Twitter rushed to integrate purple into their logos -- some did so more tastefully than others (e.g. Four Loko, Cheerios):

https://twitter.com/dhm/status/723504...

https://twitter.com/Arielle07/status/...

 The music industry and fans across the world continue to mourn the death of Prince, who was found dead Thursday in Minneapolis at 57.

An autopsy was performed Friday, though speculation began almost immediately following Prince's passing. TMZ has been most active in determining the cause of Prince's death.

Prince had to postpone by a week two back-to-back concerts at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta after contracting the flu. The concerts, held on April 14, would be his last. Paste Magazine's Bonnie Stiernberg, who reviewed the 7 p.m. early show that evening, mentioned that he seemed as if "he'd made a full recovery."

Early the next morning, however, Prince's plane — on route to Minnesota from Atlanta — had to make an emergency landing in Moline, Illinois, where he was rushed to the hospital and treated for dehydration, according to a breaking TMZ scoop.

Thursday late-morning, TMZ released a photo of Prince leaving his local Walgreens. The accompanying report claimed he'd visited the pharmacy four times in the week leading up to his death and that, "People at the store were concerned because he looked much more frail and nervous than usual."

Then, Thursday night, TMZ reported that, according to "sources in Moline," Prince had actually been treated for overdose (given the "save shot") less than a week before his death.

On Friday, British tabloid the Daily Mail alleged Prince had "overdosed on Percocet he was taking for a chronic hip problem he had been suffering for years as he refused to have an operation because of his strict Jehovah's Witness faith."

Authorities have refused to release a timetable for the autopsy results.

The day since Prince's death has been an unending retrospective, profiling the legend's influence on fashion, identity, feminism, race, and, of course, music.

Given Prince's enormous scope of influence, tributes came in all shapes and sizes. Celebrities from Barack Obama to Frank Ocean to Magic Johnson reflected on The Purple One's passing.

He got the Broadway treatment:

Jennifer Hudson (Prince's friend) led a tribute to the late legend Thursday night during a performance of Broadway musical "The Color Purple," performing "Purple Rain":



And not to be outdone, the cast of Lin-Manuel Miranda's Pulitzer Prize-winning "Hamilton" did their own tribute, dancing to an instrumental version of "Let's Go Crazy":



Infrastructure in Minneapolis (and around the world) were lit in Prince's signature purple:

https://twitter.com/GMA/status/723519...

https://twitter.com/Twins/status/7232...

https://twitter.com/RadioClydeNews/st...

https://twitter.com/coslive/status/72...

Both Questlove and Spike Lee held tribute parties in Brooklyn. The former spun Prince deep cuts during his weekly DJ residency at Brooklyn Bowl, where he showed video of "Finding Nemo," in reference to this strange story:

Representin. It's Only Right. #Prince #BowlTrain #PurpleTRAIN #ThatDambFish

A photo posted by Questlove Gomez (@questlove) on Apr 21, 2016 at 8:52pm PDT

Meanwhile, Spike Lee hosted a block party outside his studio in the Fort Greene neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. It's estimated that as many as 800 people were in attendance to "dance, sing and shout to his music."

And, it seems, that Mother Nature may have paid her own tribute, as TMZ reported that a rainbow appeared over Paisley Park, Prince's Minneapolis compound, early Thursday evening:

https://twitter.com/TMZ/status/723309...

Russell Simmons joined "Nightly Show" host Larry Wilmore's panel for a retrospective of Prince's influence on the music industry. Watch here.

Other late-night television hosts also paid their respects during Thursday's lineup:





Among the more obscure tributes, The Game, oddly enough, released the track "Rest in Purple" on Soundcloud late Thursday evening:



And Mike Tyson did this:

https://twitter.com/MikeTyson/status/...

Even corporate Twitter rushed to integrate purple into their logos -- some did so more tastefully than others (e.g. Four Loko, Cheerios):

https://twitter.com/dhm/status/723504...

https://twitter.com/Arielle07/status/...

 

Continue Reading...

“Defining political issue of our time”: NYU grad student union overwhelmingly votes to boycott Israel over violations of Palestinian human rights

Graduate students at New York University have overwhelmingly voted to boycott Israel in protest of its violation of Palestinian human rights.

Exactly two-thirds of voting members of the graduate student union the Graduate Student Organizing Committee, or GSOC-UAW 2110, supported a referendum on Friday that calls for New York University and United Auto Workers International to withdraw their investments from Israeli state institutions and international corporations complicit in violations of Palestinian human and civil rights.

At least 645 union members participated in the vote. An additional 57 percent of voting members pledged to uphold the academic boycott of Israel, refraining from participating in research and academic programs sponsored by institutions funded by the Israeli government.

The union says this "was an unusually large membership turnout, a testament to union democracy." It explained in a statement that the vote took place after a period of "vigorous debate and engagement with the union among wide layers of graduate workers."

“After months of mass mobilization and a four-day election, GSOC members have taken a clear stand for justice in Palestine,” explained Shafeka Hashash, a member of the union's Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, or BDS, caucus.

“This historic endorsement of BDS by GSOC at NYU occurs in the wake of growing momentum for the movement across university campuses and labor unions nationwide,” she added.

BDS is an international grassroots movement that uses peaceful economic means to pressure Israel into complying with international law and respecting Palestinian human rights. The campaign was called for by Palestinian civil society and by major trade unions in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The Graduate Student Organizing Committee is a labor union representing more than 2,000 teaching assistants, adjunct instructors, research assistants and other graduate workers at New York University, or NYU. It is the first recognized graduate worker union at a private university in the U.S.

The union says its referendum vote it sets "an important precedent for both solidarity with Palestine and for union democracy."

"In addition to bringing material gains for their members, NYU graduate students are reclaiming the union as a political platform for social justice causes," explained Maya Wind, an Israeli activist and Ph.D. student at NYU who is a member of the union.

"Through the recent mass mobilization for justice in Palestine we have taken a stand on one of the defining political issues of our time," she added. "The referendum success is indicative of the traction the movement is gaining across university campuses, and increasingly among graduate students."

The referendum also calls on NYU to close its sister program in Israel's Tel Aviv University, which the union says violates its own non-discrimination policy.

A recent U.S. State Department report acknowledged the “institutional and societal discrimination against Arab citizens of Israel,” as well as the unlawful killings, excessive force and torture people endure at the hands of the Israeli military in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories.

The BDS movement is growing rapidly throughout the U.S. and the world.

In the past week, at least two major graduate student unions voted to endorse a boycott of Israel. The Graduate Employee Organization at the University of Massachusetts Amherst passed a BDS resolution by referendum, as well as the City University of New York Doctoral Students Council, which approved an academic boycott measure overwhelmingly via vote.

"The impact of NYU’s referendum will not only reverberate across private academic institutions where unionization efforts have gained momentum, but across the American academy more broadly," GSOC said in a statement.

At least eight major U.S. academic associations have voted to boycott Israel in protest of its violation of Palestinian human rights, including the American Studies Association, the American Anthropological Association, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association and the Association for Asian American Studies. Many of these votes had resounding majorities in favor.

Several national unions have also made similar votes, including the United Electrical Workers union.

Despite the democratic nature of these votes, the efforts have faced huge backlash.

Legislators around the U.S. are proposing bans on boycotts of Israel, which legal experts say is unconstitutional.

When the University of California system's graduate student union voted to endorse the BDS movement by a landslide in 2014, Salon exposed how the small pro-Israel opposition derailed the democratic process with the help of a prominent law firm that has defended powerful multinational corporations like Wal-Mart, Amazon, Apple and Chevron. Under this pressure, the United Auto Workers International Executive Board nullified the vote, even while admitting that it was thoroughly democratic.

NYU's graduate student union also says the UAW Local 2110 Executive Board "attempted to interfere with democratic elections to union leadership bodies." GSOC condemned union executives for having "cracked down on their own membership" in an undemocratic manner.

Ph.D. student and union member Sean Larson told Salon the local executive executive board has disqualified a large number of candidates for the leadership election, "disputing our membership criteria eligibility and the eligibility for candidates to run in both elections."

GSOC is pushing back against the backlash. "In the fight for social justice and against repression, the BDS movement and union democracy are natural allies," the union affirmed in a statement.

"By empowering the members themselves to speak, the emerging movement for union democracy among graduate students is helping to lead these efforts. Rank-and-file democracy is the future of the labor movement, and the labor movement can secure a vigorous future for BDS in the United States."

Continue Reading...

The first clue into what caused Prince’s death? The music icon reportedly overdosed on Percocet a week before he was found dead

One day after news of Prince's death shocked the world, fans are seeking answers to how and why the pop icon died. An official explanation won't be released until the results of an autopsy are complete, which could take weeks, but a new report offers what could be the first hint into what caused Prince's death.

According to TMZ, Prince overdosed on Percocet after a concert in Atlanta last week, prompting EMTs to inject the singer with a "save shot." The outlet reports that Prince's plane made an emergency landing in Illinois early on the morning of April 15, after which emergency responders treated Prince at the airport and then rushed him to a hospital. Prince and his entourage reportedly disregarded the advice of doctors and left the hospital just hours after arriving, heading for the singer's Minnesota home. 

Six days later, Prince died at 57 in his Paisley Park estate in Chanhassen, Minnesota.

Prince was reportedly taking Percocet, an opioid, to treat a hip problem. A "save shot" is an injection, commonly of the drug naloxone, used to reverse the effects of a life-threatening opiate overdose.

 

One day after news of Prince's death shocked the world, fans are seeking answers to how and why the pop icon died. An official explanation won't be released until the results of an autopsy are complete, which could take weeks, but a new report offers what could be the first hint into what caused Prince's death.

According to TMZ, Prince overdosed on Percocet after a concert in Atlanta last week, prompting EMTs to inject the singer with a "save shot." The outlet reports that Prince's plane made an emergency landing in Illinois early on the morning of April 15, after which emergency responders treated Prince at the airport and then rushed him to a hospital. Prince and his entourage reportedly disregarded the advice of doctors and left the hospital just hours after arriving, heading for the singer's Minnesota home. 

Six days later, Prince died at 57 in his Paisley Park estate in Chanhassen, Minnesota.

Prince was reportedly taking Percocet, an opioid, to treat a hip problem. A "save shot" is an injection, commonly of the drug naloxone, used to reverse the effects of a life-threatening opiate overdose.

 

Continue Reading...

Donald Trump’s “magic” thinking: His campaign’s insane general election optimism about states they can’t possibly win

If there’s one quality the Donald Trump presidential campaign does not lack, its confidence. In the days since Trump barreled through the New York primary, his team has been making a deliberate show of strength intended to discourage his rivals and win over skeptical Republicans. And, in characteristic Trump fashion, their pitches have an eye-catching, over-the-top quality intended to distract from the obvious lack of substance behind the product.

As I wrote earlier this week, Trump’s people are boasting that he’ll come into the convention with more than 1,400 delegates in his corner, a number that far exceeds outside estimates. And now, according to the New York Times, Trump campaign underboss Paul Manafort is making the case to high-ranking Republican officials that Trump is uniquely capable of tearing down the so-called “blue wall” – states that are all but guaranteed to vote for the Democratic candidate in the general election.

From the Times:

Mr. Manafort, citing “the unique magic of Trump,” said the candidate could be in a “very competitive situation in states that by the end of September you say goodbye to the presidential candidate. He singled out Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware. The three states last voted for a Republican presidential nominee in 1988.

Let’s just nip this in bud right now. Maryland and Delaware are two of the most Democratic states in the country – in the 2012 election, Obama won Maryland with 62 percent of the vote, and he won Delaware with 59 percent. Maryland’s population centers (Baltimore, Montgomery County, Prince George’s County) are full of liberals and minority voters, which means they’re extremely hostile territory for a candidate like Trump. These are not states Donald Trump will win. These are not states Donald Trump will be competitive in.

As for Pennsylvania, it is the quadrennial dream of Republicans everywhere that their presidential candidate will poach Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes from the Democrats, and it always fails to come to fruition as Democrats mobilize their supporters in the state’s urban centers. Mitt Romney spent the final weekend of the 2012 race campaigning in Pennsylvania, giving hope to the faithful that a Republican landslide was in the works. He lost the state by five points. How a broadly reviled and organizationally incompetent candidate like Trump will succeed where his predecessors have failed is unclear, though I’m fairly certain “magic” is an insufficient explanation.

Continuing on, Manafort painted a still rosier picture for Trump’s 2016 chances:

As Republicans ate oysters in a dim, stuffy conference room overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, [senior Trump campaign operative Rick] Wiley walked them through a slide show that predicted victory for Mr. Trump not just in swing states with large Hispanic populations like Nevada, Colorado and Florida, but in states that Republicans have not captured since the 1980s: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Connecticut.

It’s difficult to convey just how ludicrous much of this is. The idea that Trump will perform strongly in “swing states with large Hispanic populations” is a fantasy – Donald Trump very well might be the mot hated candidate among Hispanic voters in American electoral history. New polling of Latino voters puts Trump’s unfavorable rating at 87 percent (79 percent are “very unfavorable”). In a head-to-head match-up with Hillary Clinton, Trump takes 11 percent of the Latino vote. To put that in perspective, Mitt Romney took 27 percent of the Latino vote on his way to losing Nevada, Colorado, and Florida. Regarding the Rust Belt states, it’s not entirely inconceivable that he could outperform expectations across the industrial Midwest, but it would be a monumentally difficult task.

As for Connecticut, I think Trump is being a little too conservative here. If he can flip a deeply blue state Obama won by 18 points in 2012, why not also throw Illinois in there? Hell, they should toss New Jersey into the mix while they’re at it.

Oh wait, I’m sorry, they do:

And in other solidly Democratic states, like Illinois and New Jersey, [Wiley] said Mr. Trump could force Mrs. Clinton to spend money defending herself.

Who’s to say where the Trump “magic” will stop?If there’s one quality the Donald Trump presidential campaign does not lack, its confidence. In the days since Trump barreled through the New York primary, his team has been making a deliberate show of strength intended to discourage his rivals and win over skeptical Republicans. And, in characteristic Trump fashion, their pitches have an eye-catching, over-the-top quality intended to distract from the obvious lack of substance behind the product.

As I wrote earlier this week, Trump’s people are boasting that he’ll come into the convention with more than 1,400 delegates in his corner, a number that far exceeds outside estimates. And now, according to the New York Times, Trump campaign underboss Paul Manafort is making the case to high-ranking Republican officials that Trump is uniquely capable of tearing down the so-called “blue wall” – states that are all but guaranteed to vote for the Democratic candidate in the general election.

From the Times:

Mr. Manafort, citing “the unique magic of Trump,” said the candidate could be in a “very competitive situation in states that by the end of September you say goodbye to the presidential candidate. He singled out Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware. The three states last voted for a Republican presidential nominee in 1988.

Let’s just nip this in bud right now. Maryland and Delaware are two of the most Democratic states in the country – in the 2012 election, Obama won Maryland with 62 percent of the vote, and he won Delaware with 59 percent. Maryland’s population centers (Baltimore, Montgomery County, Prince George’s County) are full of liberals and minority voters, which means they’re extremely hostile territory for a candidate like Trump. These are not states Donald Trump will win. These are not states Donald Trump will be competitive in.

As for Pennsylvania, it is the quadrennial dream of Republicans everywhere that their presidential candidate will poach Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes from the Democrats, and it always fails to come to fruition as Democrats mobilize their supporters in the state’s urban centers. Mitt Romney spent the final weekend of the 2012 race campaigning in Pennsylvania, giving hope to the faithful that a Republican landslide was in the works. He lost the state by five points. How a broadly reviled and organizationally incompetent candidate like Trump will succeed where his predecessors have failed is unclear, though I’m fairly certain “magic” is an insufficient explanation.

Continuing on, Manafort painted a still rosier picture for Trump’s 2016 chances:

As Republicans ate oysters in a dim, stuffy conference room overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, [senior Trump campaign operative Rick] Wiley walked them through a slide show that predicted victory for Mr. Trump not just in swing states with large Hispanic populations like Nevada, Colorado and Florida, but in states that Republicans have not captured since the 1980s: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Connecticut.

It’s difficult to convey just how ludicrous much of this is. The idea that Trump will perform strongly in “swing states with large Hispanic populations” is a fantasy – Donald Trump very well might be the mot hated candidate among Hispanic voters in American electoral history. New polling of Latino voters puts Trump’s unfavorable rating at 87 percent (79 percent are “very unfavorable”). In a head-to-head match-up with Hillary Clinton, Trump takes 11 percent of the Latino vote. To put that in perspective, Mitt Romney took 27 percent of the Latino vote on his way to losing Nevada, Colorado, and Florida. Regarding the Rust Belt states, it’s not entirely inconceivable that he could outperform expectations across the industrial Midwest, but it would be a monumentally difficult task.

As for Connecticut, I think Trump is being a little too conservative here. If he can flip a deeply blue state Obama won by 18 points in 2012, why not also throw Illinois in there? Hell, they should toss New Jersey into the mix while they’re at it.

Oh wait, I’m sorry, they do:

And in other solidly Democratic states, like Illinois and New Jersey, [Wiley] said Mr. Trump could force Mrs. Clinton to spend money defending herself.

Who’s to say where the Trump “magic” will stop?

Continue Reading...