It’s been a week now since I heard the words “Prince died” while away on vacation.
I had been determined to stay off of social media and the internet while away and was doing a good job of it. Reading books, swimming, drinking, relaxing… everything I needed to unplug from the world and recharge my batteries after a particularly gruelling last six weeks.
It was over beers when one of our group said it and there was a quiet that followed as we all took in what that meant.
For me, it wasn’t a question of what to say… I just didn’t have the words… any words. You see, unlike a number of music blogs I read where everyone professes to have been the hugest Prince fan yet quick searches of their site reveal they have never written anything about him before, I’m just… not a fan.
Now, let me clarify, pretty much everything I have heard from Prince – and that is a lot more in the last seven days – I love, so I guess I am becoming a Prince fan. I have just never made the effort to listen to him, to read up on him or to follow his random exploits until now. Prince to me was an artist who I knew I’d respect if given the time, I just never gave the time. Out of over 6500 songs in my iTunes library, there is only one Prince song – “Cream” – and that was likely off a compilation I burned off of CDs back when that was still a thing.
My first social media reaction was to post the link to that time on the Dave Chappelle show when Prince killed on the basketball court then made everyone pancakes. I mean, this was pretty much the first thing that came to me as I tried to run my mind through any Prince connections I had in my life. It’s a hilarious story and back when it first ran I thought it was just a sketch. Only now am I realizing that it was based on a true story. Hear it here from the man himself:
And then to read how Prince gets Chappelle back by putting his picture on the cover of the Breakfast Can Wait Single… honestly, he’s kind of the best.
From the Nextshark link above:
I have spent a good deal of time over the last week bringing myself up to speed on everything Prince and if ever there was a rabbit hole to dive into, man, this is it. The more you dig, the weirder the stories get and this whole time I am kicking myself for how much I have been missing out on. This whole post will reek of Johnny-Come-Lately if I share everything I’ve been reading (wait, he wrote “Manic Monday”???), and by now we’ve all seen the Jimmy Fallon and Questlove Prince Ping Pong story, but this other story by Questlove below I haven’t yet seen posted anywhere else. To be fired as a DJ and replaced by the movie Finding Nemo… you just can’t make this stuff up.
Honestly, if I ever were to do anything worthwhile that helped me attain the notoriety of a Prince, I would love to pull the same kind of stunts, just for the joy of absolutely messing with people and having them afterwards, for the rest of their lives, thinking… did that really happen?
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There is one other story worth sharing here…
Last August I went on a 60km trek across Iceland and saw some of the most beautiful landscape I have ever seen; it’s a trip I will remember for the rest of my life.
We arrived at our final campsite, many of us bruised and battered (I myself had done two thirds of the trek on a badly sprained ankle) but all of us in good spirits and just elated to have made it through the trek. Being Canadian, we asked if we could have a campfire; this was something we hadn’t yet had due to the lack of trees and burnable wood along the route we had taken.
Our guides knew of a secret stash of wood at this final campsite and there, as the sun set and drew long shadows under Eyjafjallajökull herself, we made a campfire.
The liquor flowed freely and we all started to sing and tell stories from the trip. All we needed to make the picture complete was a guitar.
Fortunately, there were a group of Icelandic hikers staying at the campsite as well, and as campfires were such an anomaly, they eventually wandered over to us and we invited them to join us. We were especially excited to see that one of them had a guitar. The Iceland folks sang a couple of national songs but then quickly moved onto a slew of campfire classics that had everyone singing along – Brown Eyes Girl, American Pie etc. We sang for some time before the guitar player keyed up one of the most unusual campfire tunes I’ve ever heard.
Purple Rain.
A song that everyone knows, even if they don’t know they know it. We sang at the top of our lungs.
It wasn’t until way later that night, after most people had gone to bed, that one of our guides told those of us still up that the guitar player was actually a member of Iceland’s Parliament. That made us love the night even more.
So, in summary, that time we sang Purple Rain to an acoustic guitar played by an Icelandic MP at a campfire at the base of a volcano ranks as one of my top travel moments of all time.
And from everything I’ve learned in the last week, that’s a story I think Prince would have appreciated.