Today is the halfway point of our current 6 Degrees series, connecting albums from The List. And, again, because we’re doing a bit of a Prince-theme, we’ll be picking out some fun Prince-connections in/below the set.

Okay, carrying on from where we left off last time…

6 Degrees of Separation: Bruce Dickinson to Explosions In The Sky

Bruce Dickinson – The Chemical Wedding (list number 509)
>> As noted in our feature on Tagaq’s album (which ended Part 3), she’s keen to someday cover Iron Maiden, whose frontman is Bruce Dickinson. Dickinson’s solo album contains both lyrics and artwork by the 18th/19th century English poet and painter William Blake…

Prince – For You (623)
…who the writer John Higgs delightfully compares at length to Prince in his piece in The Quietus called “Visionaries Across Time: The Shared Magic of Prince & William Blake“. …

Iggy And The Stooges – Raw Power (814)
…William Blake also pops up in Jim Jarmusch’s 1995 film Dead Man, as the main character, also named William Blake, may or may not be the reincarnation of the English poet. Dead Man features a cameo by Iggy Pop, who is regarded as the “godfather of punk”. …

Minor Threat – Minor Threat (609)
…And, if anyone could similarly be called the “godfather of hardcore” (or could command as much devotion from Henry Rollins), that would be Ian MacKaye, of Minor Threat and…

Fugazi – Repeater (422)
…Fugazi, whose tour for The Argument album featured the post-rock greats…

Explosions In The Sky – Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Live Forever (73)
Explosions In The Sky. <<

Prince 6(ish)

This group of artists are a bit far removed from The Purple One, so the connections are tough for this set. Let me know in the comments if you know of any other connections!

• Iron Maiden and Prince both had a rigorous release schedule in the 80s and early 90s, with both releasing an album (and a hit album, at that) nearly every year. E.g., Iron Maiden’s 1st self-titled album came out the same year as Prince’s Dirty Mind (1980), as did Killers and Controversy (1981), The Number of the Beast and 1999 (1982), Powerslave and Purple Rain (1984), etc. (Prince didn’t have an 1983 album to match Maiden’s Piece of Mind, likely due to working on the Purple Rain film/album.) ((I feel like there should be an accompanying string of surveys on Mastodon asking people to pick their favorites from the above pairs…))
• The Swedish author and professor Per Nilsen has written music biographies on Prince as well as Iggy Pop and the Stooges (and David Bowie).
• While there’s no direct connection between Minor Threat and Prince, I found this Flavorwire article interesting that links the American hardcore scene with Prince by way of fellow-Minneapolis band Hüsker Dü (who is on The List, and who was signed to SST Records, the label of Greg Ginn of Black Flag, who Henry Rollins, Ian MacKaye’s bff, was the vocalist of from 1981 to 1985). Essentially, the author argues that location tied Prince and Hüsker Dü (as well as The Replacements) together just like Seattle, Detroit, and Memphis did for the bands that came from those cities:
  • “Trying to separate the success of Prince and The Revolution from the impact the music of The Replacements and Hüsker Dü would go on to have smacks of punk rock elitism, and is almost like somebody saying that Nirvana shouldn’t count as part of the now-legendary Seattle scene simply because they got too big… Prince…and his lasting impact on his hometown’s music scene are just as vital as the influence attributed to a couple of punk bands he has probably never even listened to.”
• Fugazi’s Repeater came out the same year as Prince’s Graffiti Bridge (1990).
• Explosions In The Sky’s Those Who Tell the Truth… came out just a couple months before Prince’s Rainbow Children (2001), just a week prior to 9/11. Explosions In The Sky had some hub-bub around their album since the artwork had an airplane with the caption “This plane will crash tomorrow”, including one of the band members being detained by airport security. I wonder if the reception of Prince’s album would’ve been different if it wasn’t released during this time, as it seems that Rainbow Children is one of those that gets missed. ((Indeed, it should be on The List – I would add it myself, but I’ve cut myself off – somebody else want to submit it???))
• Prince died on Iggy Pop’s 69th birthday.

Tune in on Wednesday for Part 5, to see how we get from Explosions in the Sky to Rainbow! And in the meantime, tomorrow we will have a regular spotlight that provides a bit of a spoiler to Part 5…

https://1001otheralbums.com/2024/04/15/6-degrees-of-separation-part-4/

#1001OtherAlbums #6DegreesOfSeparation #BruceDickinson #ExplosionsInTheSky #Fugazi #HuskerDu #IanMacKaye #IggyPop #IronMaiden #MinorThreat #PerNilsen #Prince #Tagaq #TheStooges #WilliamBlake