Just a Castaway. . .

I started writing this month's essay on one of my favorite albums - Ben Folds Five's Whatever and Ever Amen, but the close-listening just confirmed what I had been considering for a while, which is that the record does not do it for me the way it once did. Perhaps I have "outgrown it," or perhaps I am just not in that same bitter recently broken up moving through a weird relationship mode like I was when I first became enamoured of it. And while I wrote more than half of it and at first I was going to just muddle through and finish examining it, this morning I put Regatta de Blanc by The Police on my iPod and it struck me that this is a classic album that my appreciation for has deepened in the 20+ years I have been listening to it. This was the album I should write about.

I started listening to this record at the end of my freshman year in high school, so 1986, seven years after it had been released. My Police obsession had penetrated my bubble of hip-hop, soul and R&B that I lived in then when Synchronicity came out while I was in 7th grade, but it would not be for a couple of years before I began to explore the rest of their records. For a good part of my high school years if you asked me what my favorite bands were I would have replied, "The Police, Prince and Pink Floyd," and true to teen-aged obsession with obscure meaning, I used to try to figure out what it was about the letter 'P' that made me like the bands - or maybe I was just high. . .

When I first started listening to the Police it was probably the lyrics and the reggae feel that drew me in ("Regatta de Blanc" is supposedly some bastardized French for "White Reggae"), but like any good band as time went on different aspects of the music appealed to me. For a long time it was (and to some degree still is) Steward Copeland's phenomenal drumming, but more recently I have come to feel that Andy Summers' guitar-playing is underrated and is just as phenomenal. I mean, it is so understated and perfect as to blend in and be almost forgotten, but when you train your ear to break the parts up and really listen you can hear both the intricacy of the progressions and the deceiving simplicity of the rhythms he plays. He is not a shreddy lead-guitar kind of guitar player (though he can do that), but rather his rhythmic flares keeps things moving over Sting's journeyman basslines and Stewart's expressive drumming.

The opening track is an example of a song that I might have just heard too many times in my life to still have the same effect on me. "Message in a Bottle" may just forever be one of those teenage songs to me, expressing the collective alienation I was beginning to sense at that age and that is so easy to wallow in at 15 or 16. If anything, it is definitely one of the most straightforward of their songs with the pounding snare and the driving descending progression, but Copeland's fills and his ever-excellent cymbal work fills it out nicely. Of course, I shouldn't discount Sting's ability to carry the song vocally. Sometimes I forget what he was once capable because of the intervening years of his mostly stinky solo records (with some exceptional tracks).

While the title track is nothing impressive lyrically with some fake "world music" nonsense words and sounds, the instruments themselves are excellent from Copeland's great rim-taps to Summers' airy slow appregiating of chords to open the song and just showing how much you can do with nothing but rhythm (even if the bass parts are rather simple and repetitive). "It's Alright For You" might be the weakest track on the record (perhaps second weakest depending on how you feel about "On Any Other Day") with its psuedo-punk approach and rapid-fire lyrics. It just has no depth and musically is not all that interesting - I guess the little "turn around" riff between the verse on the guitar is vaguely interesting, but I can't help but wonder what this song is really about. Hmm, take it back about being completely muscially uninteresting, I guess the guitar break a little more than halfway through the song shows some interesting effects on the guitar making it sound like two different instruments.

"Bring On the Night" would be my favorite song on the record if it weren't for the first song on the second side. I just love how it builds with the high-hat hits and the nearly helicopterish guitar that transforms into one of the most interesting chord progressions in any of their songs, almost behind the beat and finger-picked I can spend 4+ minutes of the track doing nothing but listening to that part alone, but when the chorus comes, the bass is that simple boucey feel that carries you through and perfectly expresses the relief of the night's arrival, aided by the reggae strumming that comes on the guitar. Copeland plays the highhat almost throughout and again, Sting's voice is perfect here, perfectly expressing both the desire and relief. According to wikipedia, the song is supposed to be about the execution of Gary Gilmore, but I never knew that until recently, and I don't know the source for that information. Seems irrelevant. "Deathwish" has no chorus. Just three verses sung amid what is mostly an instrumental. In fact, it is easy for me to forget there are lyrics at all. Like a lot of these songs it has a driving rhythm that is accented nicely by Andy Summers' guitar (great mix of struming, arrpegiating and use of echo). I like the lyrics.

Deathwish in the fading light
Headlight pointing through the night
Never thought I’d see the day
Playing with my life this way

Gotta keep my foot right down
If I had wings I’d leave the ground
Buning in the outside lane
People think that I’m insane

The day I take a bend too fast
Judgement that could be my last
I’ll be wiped right off the slate
Don’t wait up ’cause I’ll be late

Side Two begins with what is probably my favorite song by the Police, "Walking on the Moon." From the instantly recognizable bassline to the echoing guitar chords and jaunty reggae feel that imply some loss of gravity, the song's simplicity is its strength. Again, this song displays Stewart Copeland's excellent highhat work, but it is the feeling it more than adequately describes that is the best part of it. Or perhaps it is just me, the silly romantic that I can be - but the sensation: "Walking back from your house / Walking on the moon / Walking back from your house / Walking on the moon / Your feet they hardly touch the ground. . ." I know it so well, and I love it. It is a moment divorced from the future, just like you'd feel divorced from gravity making giant steps across the moonscape. The song ends with more of Copeland's great cymbal-work and the echoing "Keep it up" suggests not only a common call out in ska and reggae, but also the weightlessness itself. The song is just as close to perfect as you can get, if you ask me.

"On Any Other Day" was written by Stewart Copeland and he does most of the singing on it. It starts with him saying "The other ones are complete bullshit. . " which suggests not only that his other offerings are worse, but that they think this track is bullshit as well to some degree - and I cannot disagree. It just has a jokey sophmoric feel that just doesn't sit well with me and doesn't age well. I guess the horrible things listed in the song are happening on the protagonist's birthday. . . But really, I don't care. It isn't even very interesting musically and ultimately not all that funny.

"The Bed's Too Big Without You" on the other hand is another of my favorites off this album. A kind of reggae ballad that puts the guitar, bass and drum pieces together beautifully. The song fades in from the left channel and then comes in stereo (I have heard a mono version), and has the perfect tempo for Sting's languid lyrics.

"Contact" is a weird song with a droning bassline and obscure lyrics, though I like the chorus. "Have we got contact, you and me? Have we got touchtone? Can we be?" It not a very long song, and neither is the song that follows it that at one time I would have probably said was my favorite on the album, "Does Everyone Stare?" This song is unique in that it starts with piano and Stewart Copeland singing a kind of muffled lead that echoes the verses to come until the song really starts up and Sting takes over the lead vocals - just before he does there is a sample(? - can I call it a sample?) of a man's operatic voice further back in the mix, not sure what is up with that, but it works. Again, this is a song that I think my teenaged self related to because of the awkwardness it conveys (reinforced by the purposefully slightly off-time kind of marching drum that goes along with the the trotting piano chords). "I change my clothes ten times before I take you on a date / I get the heebie-jeebies and my panic makes me late / I break into a cold sweat reaching for the phone / I let it ring twice before / I chicken out and decide you're not at home." Of course, the very idea of staring at a woman reinforces the awkward creepiness of it.

The closing track is "The Other Way of Stopping" is a fast-paced frenetic song with some amazing drumming.

Overall, I find Regatta de Blanc to be the Police's best album, though I am leaving aside the problematic aspect of cultural appropriation that come along with the idea of "white reggae," mainstreaming it beyond even the broader popularity that Bob Marley gave it. Reading this over I also find that my enthusiasm for the record is lacking compared to what I wrote about 1999 last month. I think that might because of my recent discovery of TV on the Radio's Dear Science, and right now everything I am feeling about it is what Regatta de Blanc is not. It fills that bottom middle in a way that the sparseness of the Police's tunes do not, and while I love that sparseness, the negative aural space that it creates, right now I am appreciating that fullness contrasted with the falsetto voices and the frequent handclaps. I have also been kind of obsessively listening to some early Springsteen records and they too have a "full" sound laid over with that cramped lyricality with endless eternal rhyme that Bruce was into back then. I may have to write about Greetings from Asbury Park next month, that is, if I am not still so into Dear Science that I just have to write about it.

I Only Want You To Have Some Fun. . .

1999. "Don't worry. I won't hurt you. I only want you to have some fun. . ."

So opens an underrated classic, underscoring the sense of menace that is so often present in Prince's music, but that can be easily overlooked. Even if you don't want to characterize it as menace, there was an underlying tone in those early Prince records of the forbidden, of the taboo - like you are saying or doing something that might get you hurt - and that is appealing to me.


It must have always been appealing, because as I wrote once before, I first heard "1999" when I was about 11 years old over the Christmas break, and I think it is for that reason I always associate it with winter and the new year. I guess the title track is playing on millennial fear, even if it was 18 years before the threat of Y2K appeared to make people stress out about apparently nothing.

(Note that throughout this essay when I refer to "1999" (in quotes) I mean the song by that name, and when I use 1999 (in italics) I mean the album as a whole).

1999 is a different kind of record and a culmination of some of the new-wavey keyboard and drum machine stuff Prince had been experimenting with on Dirty Mind and Controversy, and while Purple Rain (which followed 1999) still has some of that keyboard-y stuff, the live drums and guitar rock gives it a totally different feel. There is an interesting contradiction in this collection of songs because while he certainly has a pop sensibility to his use of these electronic elements (in some cases riffing off Kraftwerk and in others pre-figuring Timbaland) and there some hooky-ass hooktidity hooks ("Delirious," "Little Red Corvette"), at the same time the songs are long - while "Delirious" clocks in at exactly four minutes, most of the songs are six or more minutes long with "Automatic" passing the nine-minute mark. The thing is that these were also dance songs, so that explains the length - but Prince has always been an artist that is unafraid to be self-indulgent (with varying levels of success) - so he is willing to spend two minutes of a song softly cooing over the drumbeat, or just groaning and moaning and making those Prince sounds that he manages to make. The dance music aspect also explains the melange of styles, because popular dance music often alludes to and plays with different styles and makes allusions to fragments of melody of other songs. So "Delirious" swings a bit, and both "Little Red Corvette" and "Let's Pretend We're Married" have a blues-rock base - and live versions of these songs I have heard sometimes emphasize these influences. In fact, despite the heavy synths throughout the record, almost all of it (save perhaps on "Automatic" and "Something in the Water (Does Not Compute)" could easily be arranged for horns, and most of the live versions I have heard of these songs do exactly that.

The title track evokes a common Prince theme, the idea that the world is in bad shape and his only reaction to it is to experience as much pleasure as possible before he goes on to the next life. "War is all around us, my mind says prepare to fight / So if I gotta die I'm gonna listen to my body tonight". Simultaneously, however, it does seem to ask questions from a particular (perhaps pacifist) political point of view. I mean, when the song closes "Mommy? Why does everybody have a bomb?" with a vocal effect that makes Prince voice seem child-like, the ghost of war and reality of imminent self-destruction rises up out of a danceable party hit.

Lyrically, like a lot of Prince records, 1999 is uneven. Prince has never been what I consider a master lyricist, but as time went on he seemed to feel more comfortable being playful with language and using certain reversals and purposeful mispronunciation of words that really work. And sometimes his incredibly explicit lyrics are delivered with more success than others. But I have to admire someone who can sing "Girl's got an ass like I've never seen / And the ride. . . I said, the ride is so smooth, you must be a limousine!"

In "Let's Pretend We're Married" he displays total willingness to disrupt his own rhyme schemes and the meter of his lyrics to cram in what he wants, how he wants (something that will become a signature of his songs to those with more than a passing familiarity with them - in that sense I think the occasional Dylan comparisons I have heard are accurate, but only in that very specific sense). For example, one repeated lyric is "My girl's gone and she don't care at all / And if she did, so what? Come on baby let's ball. . ." But before that is even established, he doesn't sing it that way, instead of "let's ball" he says "let's fuck, aw!" pronouncing that "fuck" with three squeezed syllables that take some kind of verbal gymnastics to make work. In the same song he dares to say, "I'm not saying this just to be nasty / But I sincerely want to fuck the taste out of your mouth." I never thought of this before, but the opening lyric to this song is "Excuse me, but I need a mouth like yours / To help forget the girl just walked out my door." Maybe there is even more of an oral sex theme in this song than I thought (though not like Dirty Mind's "Head" - great fucking song).

"Let's Pretend We're Married" ends with a spoken tangent, which these long songs allow for, total drifting away from the song's theme. (Perhaps this is the "going astray" mentioned in the title track), and sometimes become really weird and kind of stream of consciousness. All of "All the Critics Love U In New York" is like this - just strange lyrics that make little sense over an electro-funk groove. "Look out all you hippies, you ain't as sharp as me / It ain't about the tripping, but the sexuality / Turn it up!"

Speaking of funk, "D.M.S.R" (which was omitted from the original CD release of 1999) has a great groove that is reminiscent of the afore-mentioned "Head." It is a total party funk song with call and response and with the bass, drums and shakers pumping along to the hooky refrain that you can imagine a packed dance floor calling back to. The backing vocals are brushed liberally with chorus in the mix to give that crowd feel. And like most funk songs, the lyrics don't have to be great, they just have to be fun. But don't get too comfortable, when he asks for "All the white people clap your hands on the four," he counts it out for them, mockingly. Also, the song ends with a distressed woman's voice begging, "Somebody call the police! Somebody help me please! Somebody help me!" There is that menace, that discomfort I was talking about.

As I mentioned before, Prince's guitar is not as present on this record as we would come to expect from his post-Purple Rain period. In fact, "Little Red Corvette" is the only song on the album that has any real guitar solo to speak of (though "Lady Cab Driver" does have a synth and guitar trading off a lead at one point). Rather, in most of these tunes the guitar is light and rhythmic with little funk flares and tinkling progressions. We also get the mechanistic groove of "Automatic" - another dark dance tune that goes on and on, allowing Prince to play with computer sounds (including what sounds like a sampled staccato airplane engine on take-off that punctuates the song's development towards the end) and for some murmured call and response between him and the girls (Wendy and Lisa) "I pray that when U dream / U dream of how we kiss / Not with our lips, but with our souls."

"Something in the Water (Does Not Compute)" takes up the mechanistic feel, but at a much more frenetic pace in a way (like I said) that seems to channel Kraftwerk by pre-figuring Timbaland. This is a tune I didn't feel as much back in the day. While some of the soundss and words of the other songs are discomforting, the jerking rhythm of this song is not exactly "pop" friendly - at least not for that time period. It is one of those bad lover songs. "Some people tell me I got great legs / Can't figure out why you make me beg."

One of the things I love about Prince is his (seemingly) casual use of gender-specific words or sayings. I mean, is it all that common to compliment a man on his legs? Saying someone has "great legs" is usually reserved for women, but in this case it doesn't matter (Similar to how on Parade's "Do You Lie?" he talks about lying awake in his "boudoir," he seems to not know or not care that by definition a boudoir is a lady's private bedroom or dressing room).

Anyway, "Something in the Water (Does Not Compute)" conveys a sense of frustration and desperation that really works for the song, and the computer-y synthesized sounds help the human frailty of the lyric stand out in stark contrast. Again, this is an example of lyrics that aren't that strong on their own "I'll buy you clothes / I'll buy you fancy cars / But you gotta tell me who the hell you think you are" - but Prince makes them work with the raw delivery and willingness to scream. It is the kind of thing he would perfect on Purple Rain's "The Beautiful Ones" and "Darling Nicki."

The weakest song on the album is the ballad "Free." I must admit to skipping past it most of the times I listen to the album these days (though I listened to it this morning on the way to work and again right now as I write this). The lyrics are definitely the weakest "Don't cry unless you're happy / Don't smile unless you're blue / Never let that lonely monster take control of you." Lonely monster? Ugh. Makes me a little nauseous with embarrassment just thinking about it (though interesting, some poor lyrics in "International Lover" don't have the same effect on me (see below). "Free" is an example of Prince's strangely conservative political side - or at least what comes off as superficial patriotism - something that shows up rarely and that changed later in his career - but songs like "Ronnie Talk to Russia" (off of Controversy - 1981) and "America" (off of Around the World in a Day - 1985) are also examples (by the time we get to "Family Name" off of 2001's The Rainbow Children he is veering more towards a dissenting view on race in America that basically pits all the racial minorities against white America in a powerful way). But "Free"? Again, ugh! The refrain "Be glad that you are free / Free to change your mind / Free to go most anywhere anytime / Be glad that you are free / There's many a man whose not / Be glad for what you have, for what you've got." The plodding ballad's monotonous melody and the "rousing" anthemic repetition of the chorus at the end of the song doesn't help either.

"Lady Cab Driver" is another funky mid-tempo one. It is marked by a bridge that features the orgasmic moaning of woman in response to Prince saying "This one's [for this], this one's [for that]" and those "this" and "thats" range wildly and some make no sense as far as I can tell - "This one's for Yosemite Sam and the tourists that didn't land"? What the heck does that mean? My favorite one is "This is for how I wasn't born / like my brother handsome and tall" - I think I can just relate. Interestingly, only one of these orgasms he is "giving" the lady cab driver in question is for her. Again, there is that weird sense of menace - as if orgasms were being inflicted upon her, rather than some loving shared experience. He is venting some aggression sexually "This is for politicians who were born to believe in war," or "This one's for discrimination and egotistic things supreme / This one is for whoever taught you how to kiss in designer jeans."

After the long and bizarre "All the Critics Love U in New York" (which segues from "Lady Cab Driver" nicely with traffic noise that alludes to New York City), we get that classic Prince lover-man ballad "International Lover" - which is ridiculous and awesome as you'd expect. There is a great tradition in soul music of taking gospel songs and influences and making them into love songs. "International Lover" takes that one step beyond and (in classic Prince style) makes it into nasty playful rave-up that plays up the whole dramatic presentation and winks all the way through with an airplane ride metaphor that was alluded to in "Automatic" and as does the smooth "limousine" ride of "Little Red Corvette." For some people, Controversy's "Do Me, Baby" is the classic song of this type, but for my money "International Lover" is better because it seems to have a little more awareness of its own absurdity, and is winking all along.

Sure this song suffers from some poor lyrics, like Prince's penchant to rhyme "girl" with "diamonds and pearls" (something he would do as the title track of the 1991 album of the same name, e.g. "Diamond & Pearls) - but as I've said before, sometimes Prince can more than make up for a weak lyric with the pliability of his voice. Just listen to the way he sings "Baby" halfway through the second verse, or the way he pauses knowingly after the word "come" when asking "Don't you want to come. . . inside."

But really to me, where this closing track shines most is in the spoken part that is in the guise of a airline pilot, but delivered like a pastor half-singing his sermon while the choir bolsters him with their voices (all of which sound like Prince overdubs). "Good evening. This is your pilot Prince speaking / You are flying aboard the Seduction 747 / and this plane is fully equipped with anything your body desires." And then it goes into these amazing faux-instructions like those a flight attendant gives before take-off.

For any reason there is a loss in cabin pressure
I will automatically drop down to apply more
To activate the flow of excitement
Extinguish all clothing materials
And pull my body close to yours,
put your lips upon my mouth and kiss, kiss
In the event there is over-excitement
your seat cushion can be used as a floatation device.

And later, as the song reaches its climax, he announces, "We are now making our final approach to satisfaction / Please bring your lips, your arms, your hips to the up and locked position / for landing." And particularly wink-wink at the end, "Please remain awake until the aircraft has come to a complete stop."


As someone who believes in the power of having music playing when you make love (and it is for that reason alone that I own a 5-disc CD changer), 1999 ranks up there are one of the best for that purpose. Overall the flow of the record is condusive to getting your groove on (sometimes slow, sometimes fast, grooving, crooning, jerking, shaking, hollering. .. ) - and maybe that is another reason why I think of this as a winter-time album (in addition to when I discovered it and the millenial nature of the title track that suggests New Year's Eve), it makes me want to stay in all day with a lover, listening and getting it on - staying warm and safe while playing dangerously - while the world outside freezes over.