** No Signal Sound Mix #5: For You **

     

My Dad was the first person to play me Prince. Driving in our black box Volvo (The Batmobile), we'd endlessly argue over whether we were going to listen to 'Dangerous' or 'Purple Rain'. The two cassettes were from the amazingly named 'Plastic Surgery', our local music shop down the road from our house in Maidstone. I was scared of Prince when I was 8. Dad was blasting 'Darling Nikki' on the primary school morning run and it was too much. I was with Michael in the early 90s. It took me a few years to see the purple light...

     I'll never forgive my dad for not driving me to Birmingham on a school night in the middle of my GCSE's to see Prince play. I'll never forget turning the corner on Elephant and Castle Roundabout and looking up to see a giant Prince billboard for his 21 Nights O2 residency. Sorry for sweating more than I ever have before at that gig Bambi. I'll never forget the sixteen and a half hour wait to see Prince at Ronnie Scott's, running to Brixton station at six in the morning to join the queue, laughing. Me and Emma ended up third and fourth in the line that morning, beaten to second place by Sam, a young man with a single purple painted fingernail...

     Thank you to everyone that came down or sent love from afar as we played Prince for two consecutive nights down at the Nines in Peckham this weekend past. Thank you to the Nines for having us. It was beautiful to meet with close friends and strangers alike, to be in a space with people who felt deeply about the music. Thank you everyone who came down and danced your asses off, sweated the room into a hot box, took your tops off, chanted the words, laughed and cried with the lights up...