Thursday, April 16, 2009

All The Critics (and Sasha Frere-Jones) Love Him In (The) New York(er)

If by "May U live 2 see the dawn," Prince means "Design O' The Times: The Art Direction Memos," hilariously written by Sasha Frere-Jones and Ben Greenman, then I am happy indeed that I lived to see it. Read the excerpted introduction below and follow the links to brilliance.


My colleague Ben Greenman and I are both enormous Prince fans. (Two years ago, I documented the nature and scope of my feelings about Prince in the magazine.) That said, we think that the gap between the quality of Prince’s music and that of his album covers is possibly the widest in all of popular music, at least where gifted musicians are concerned (though there is some strong competition).
When Prince was signed to Warner Brothers, his album covers were not as egregious as they have become recently, but neither were they a sure thing. After Prince left Warner Brothers, the situation deteriorated acutely. After having a series of speculative conversations (“Does Prince have an enormous ‘Earth Pix’ folder? Or does he have to buy new satellite pictures of Earth each year?”), Ben and I decided to write a series of memos imagining what art directors would have said to Prince over the years.


Volume 1: Rave un2 the Joy fantastic

Volume 2: Graffiti Bridge

Volume3: Crystal Ball

1 comment:

The Old Man and His Dog said...

My sis and I saw Prince at a very small place in Phila. She's a huge fan, me not as much. I was extremely impressed by him. Then the concert was over,around 3am as the concert didn't start til midnight, that Prince is one eccentric dude,and we went to get the car to leave and my car had been towed. Ahhh the fond memories.