Prince: Piano & a Microphone 1983 review – demo gems from the Paisley Park vaults

Piano & a Microphone is an essential, if occasionally vexing eavesdropping experience

Piano & a Microphone 1983
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Artist: Prince
Genre: R&B / Soul
Label: Warner Bros

Any singer worthy of their talent can strip a song down to its bare bones and successfully perform it without enhanced instrumentation or recording.

Whether Prince would have allowed this nine-song collection of previously unheard home studio cassette recordings to be released were he alive is a moot point (rough guess: unlikely), because what we have are unadorned performances originally recorded for his ears only. For all that, this is a fascinating assortment.

Recorded before Purple Rain (album and film) showered him with immense commercial success, there is intimate gentility here that becomes such a fine songwriter.

Songs such as Purple Rain, Joni Mitchell's A Case of You (sketch versions each), 17 Days and Strange Relationship would appear on future works; much rarer are the likes of Why the Butterflies and Cold Coffee and Cocaine. The latter is gruff, frenetic; the former is a classic Prince song in waiting.

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Best of all, however, is Mary Don't You Weep, a thrilling, grandstanding version of a traditional negro spiritual song dating from the US civil war.

For that alone, Piano & a Microphone is an essential, if occasionally vexing eavesdropping experience.

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Tony Clayton-Lea

Tony Clayton-Lea

Tony Clayton-Lea is a contributor to The Irish Times specialising in popular culture