Parade: music from the motion picture under the cherry moon
PRINCE AND THE REVOLUTION | NPG RECORDS/WARNER
In 1985, you wouldn’t have had a hope of finding Prince standing still. After Purple Rain’s god-like funk-rock-pop sermon, Around The World In A Day veered swiftly into saturated psychedelic pop. Meanwhile, he had already begun work on its cool-as-cream follow-up, an album forged in flux and made of many effortless-seeming flavours.
The film it soundtracked wouldn’t prove as memorable. A disastrous retro-romance, Under The Cherry Moon put the low in gigolo. But its flighty spirit set the tone for 1986’s Parade, which started life as a different album – bootlegged as Charade - before Prince recast it in its parent film’s light, teasing transcendence from turmoil.
Thirty-five years on, its tentpole track seems like a song that has always existed, a slip of zero-gravity funk so immaculate it could have emerged fully formed of its own volition. Yet ‘Kiss’ only just made the cut. Prince had given the demo to Mazarati, a band on his Paisley Park label, before reclaiming it - “too good” for them,
apparently. Prince’s label Warner Bros recoiled from the song, too, though its success surely ameliorated any jitters.
Elsewhere, ain’t no particular style Parade is more or less compatible with. Prince aces every sideways swerve. Paired with Around The World In A Day’s title track on tour, ‘Christopher Tracy’s Parade’ builds a bridge from that album’s carnival-hued fancies, leavened by Clare Fischer’s euphoric orchestrations. Then ‘New Position’ swiftly realigns Prince’s thrust, with Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman harmonising in a playfully horny hit of steel-drum funk.
The title track and ‘Venus De Milo’ luxuriate in dreamy silver-screen romanticism. ‘Life Can Be So Nice’ is a lusty bop, ‘Do U Lie?’ a boudoir-jazz tease. And even besides ‘Kiss’, Parade’s other singles dazzle. With saucy sax stabs from Eric Leeds, ‘Girls & Boys’ is an eyelids-a-flutter funk-pop flirtation. ‘Anotherloverholenyohead’ is slinky and seductive, while ‘Mountains’ is flushed psychedelic pop at its most buoyant, lifted by Atlanta Bliss’ crisp trumpets.
After Parade’s tour, Prince stayed mobile, cutting ties to his band the Revolution. “All good things, they say, never last,” he sings on ‘Sometimes It Snows In April’, the gorgeous closer that gained aching resonance on Prince’s death in April 2016. Wise words, but Parade’s genius resides in Prince’s peak-period ability to catch the rocket-tails of each passing whim and turn them into fleet-footed keepers. All we can do, like he said, is “come and dig”. Kevin Harley