A Thought About Prince

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Officially, he released 39 albums in 37 years. Often, these were solo albums as the term would imply: albums on which he made sounds with his own hands on his instruments and singing his own words and music. This does not include live albums, “hits” compilations, or all the songs he sold other artists.

Legend has it that there is as much unreleased music yet to be heard by the public. His most recent album came out in December 2015.

When Prince died today, it was a shock because 57 is 57, after all; because he has been touring with an acclaimed solo acoustic show; because when news broke about a hospitalization last week with dehydration from the flu, he handled the publicity with some cheeky Tweets and Instagram photos. This weekend, he did something he often did at his home/studio in Chanhassen, Minnesota (Paisley Park): host a dance party at $10 per ticket at which he performed.
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Today in History: April 21

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia visited Kingston, Jamaica, fifty years ago today. Over 100,000 people came to the airport to catch a glimpse of him. (Photo above.)

A religious movement had grown in Jamaica since the 1930s holding that the emperor himself was God incarnate, the Messiah, the “King of Kings.” Selassie’s birth name was Tafari and his pre-imperial title had been Ras (“duke”)—Ras Tafari—which the religion took as its name. The followers called themselves Rastafarians.

The Emperor never embraced the idea of his divinity, but he never denied it outright, either. “Who am I to disturb their belief?” he is reported to have said once. Today is a holy day in Jamaica, Grounation Day, the day the messiah himself visited Jamaica. A video from the day, below the fold:
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Auden’s ‘Thank You, Fog’

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“My face looks like a wedding cake left out in the rain,” quipped W.H. Auden. Indeed, by the age of 60, Auden’s face looked like the most-read library book in the most popular library; it exhausted any adjectives thrown at it—it was its own adjective. His friend Hannah Arendt said he looked “as if life itself had delineated a kind of face-scape to make manifest the ‘heart’s invisible furies.'”
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