I Only Want to Be With You

I only want to see you, baby, in the Purple Rain

When I watch Prince doing "Purple Rain," I'll get goosebumps and get all teary every single time.  I don't feel embarrassed about that as practically everyone gets all teary hearing that song.  The teariness is not over any misguided self-pity but rather for the total magnificence of it for me and partly it's because I know some people don't get it or, worse, they don't feel it.  Not so long ago I heard someone say there's some music that's ok but mostly he could take it or leave it and I know that's not that so unusual.

I suppose your reaction may be so what, different strokes for different folks, but I see it as much, much more than that.  How could anyone have missed the electrification of music, the greatest change in the art form since we first came out of trees and started beating on logs.

Prior to the late fifties and sixties, the only way to make a band louder was to get more instruments and the symphony orchestras were born as, unfortunately, were marching bands.  One of the troubles with that is some instruments (e.g. guitars) aren't naturally very loud so they have no place in a symphonic arrangement.  Symphonies are magnificent musical organisations but they are, in some ways, limited by their own grandeur.

A gifted composer can feature any instrument in a symphony as a triangle or an oboe will be lost in a full symphonic sweep but the only way to feature these instruments in an orchestral arrangement is to make everything else stop.  It's a fundamental limitation inherent in the physics of individual instruments ... but electrification changed all of that.

With the advent of electric instruments, the entire musical world was transformed and it's not even the slightest exaggeration to say that as you already know the truth of it.  The only question about it is how in the world did some people miss it or at least remain unaffected by it.  For many of us, music is as necessary for life as love and the glory of the sunrise but there are some who aren't affected by it at all and isn't that one hell of a shame.

I took my ol' Dad to a Rolling Stones concert once.  We did a trial run to see if he could handle it by going to an Omnimax movie of one of their shows.  That went very well but it still wasn't close to as loud as a full-out live show so off we went.  I can cheerfully report that it blew his ass away and he loved Keith Richards from that point forward.  To go to your grave without experiencing the unparalleled grandeur of a full-out rock concert is, to me, one hell of a tragedy but, again I cheerfully report, that did not happen.

Actually, in thinking back on it now, that might have been my finest hour with my ol' Dad.  We weren't very good communicators but at that moment we were tight.  That thought could get me just as teary as hearing "Purple Rain" but for a whole different reason.  I love you, ol' dude.