Michaelangelo Matos - Prince’s Sign O’ the Times

Praise for the series:

All six books revel in the distinct shapes and benefits of an album, its ability to go places film, prose or sculpture cant reach, while capable of being as awe-inspiring as the best of those mediumsPhiladelphia City Paper

Each volume has a distinct, almost militantly personal take on a beloved long-player the books that have resulted are like the albums themselvesfilled with moments of shimmering beauty, forgivable flaws, and stubborn eccentricityTracks Magazine

At their best, these books make rich, thought-provoking arguments for the song collections at handThe Philadelphia Inquirer

Praise for individual books in the series:

Dusty in Memphis

Warren Zanes is so in love with Dusty Springfields great 1969 adventure in tortured Dixie soul that hes willing to jump off the deep end in writing about itRolling Stone

Zanes uses Dusty in Memphis as a springboard to ruminate eloquently on the history of Atlantic Records and the myth of the American SouthTracks Magazine

Forever Changes

Hultkrans obsesses brilliantly on the rock legends seminal discVanity Fair

The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society

This is the sort of focus that may make you want to buy a copy, or dig out your old oneThe Guardian

This detailed tome leads the reader through the often fraught construction of what is now regarded as Daviess masterpieceand, like the best books of its ilk, it makes the reader want to either reinvestigate the album or hear it for the first timeBlender Magazine

Miller makes a convincing case for the Kinks 1968 operetta of English village life as a heartbreaking work of staggering geniusRay Davies greatest songwriting triumph and an unjust commercial dudwith deep research and song-by-song analysisRolling Stone

Meat is Murder

Full of mordant wit and real heartache. A dead-on depiction of what it feels like when pop music articulates your pain with an elegance you could never hope to muster. Meat is Murder does a brilliant job of capturing how, in a world that doesnt care, listening to your favorite album can save your lifeThe Philadelphia Inquirer

Pernice hits his mark. The well-developed sense of character, plot and pacing shows that he has serious promise as a novelist. His emotionally precise imagery can be bluntly, chillingly personalThe Boston Weekly Dig

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn

John Cavanagh combines interviews with early associates of Pink Floyd and recording-studio nitty-gritty to vividly capture the first and last flush of Syd Barretts psychedelic genius on the Floyds 67 debutRolling Stone

Packed with interviews and great stories will certainly give you a new perspective on Pink FloydErasing Clouds

Sign O the Times

Also available in this series

The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, by Andy Miller
Dusty in Memphis, by Warren Zanes
Meat is Murder, by Joe Pernice
Harvest, by Sam Inglis
Forever Changes, by Andrew Hultkrans
The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, by John Cavanagh
Abba Gold, by Elisabeth Vincentelli
Unknown Pleasures, by Chris Ott
The Velvet Underground and Nico, by Joe Harvard
Electric Ladyland, by John Perry

Forthcoming in this series

Loveless, by David Keenan
Grace, by Daphne Brooks
Live at the Apollo, by Douglas Wolk
OK Computer, by Dai Griffiths
Aqualung, by Allan Moore
Let It Be, by Colin Meloy
Let It Be, by Steve Matteo

Michaelangelo Matos

2010

The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc
80 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038

The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd
The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX

www.continuumbooks.com

Copyright 2004 by Michaelangelo Matos

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers.

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Matos, Michaelangelo.
Sign O the times / Michaelangelo Matos.
p. cm. (33 1/3)
Includes bibliographical references (p.).
eISBN-13: 978-1-4411-9127-4
1. Prince. Sign O the times. I. Title. II. Series.
ML420.P974M28 2004
782.42166092--dc22
2003026509

My thanks to David Barker, who said yes and then said yes again when I needed an extension; to Douglas Wolk, who put me in Barkers sights; to the ILX crew for insight, encouragement, and distraction; to A.G. for bringing me to New York; to Seattle Weekly for luring me away; to Rod Smith and Andy Battaglia for listening to endless, half-formed ideas; and especially to Mom, Alex, and Brittany, my favorite Prince fans.

Early evening, March 1, 1988. Im where I always am on the first of the month: At the Target store near Southdale, the shopping mall in Edina, a suburb south of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Im helping watch my sisters while my mother shops. Alex is two and a half years old; Brittany is a little over a year; I turned 13 two weeks ago; Mom turned 28 a week after that. My father has been out of the picture since I was a little kid; the girls dad is a year removed from our apartment in Richfield, a lower-class suburb that neighbors Edina to the east. During the three or so years my sisters father lived with us, he would drive us to and from Target on the first. Since then, wed either get a ride from relatives or take the bus over and cab back. This, I believe, is one of the latter occasions.

For a long time, I had stayed home while Mom went shopping. Because our welfare check and food stamps came five days apart, and because the mail usually arrived at the same time I came home from school, this ensured me a few hours of free time twice a month. Im already used to this. From age five, like Mom and my aunts and uncles before me, I would go to my great-grandaunts Loretta and Arlenes house every weekend. They live near downtown Minneapolis; there, I stay up as late as I can make myself, watching TV, listening to the radio, reading books and comics and back issues of the Minneapolis Star Tribune (they have it delivered), making balls with the rubber bands that bound the newspapers (Red and Arlene put them around the doorknobs throughout the house), drawing, eating nachos and ice cream, and making lists. Mom had pretty much let me do whatever I wanted when I was younger, but then my siblings were bornmy brother Jacob, who died at 15 months of a heart condition; Alex was born three months laterand I began babysitting them, more and more as they got older.

Mom carts Brittany around Target, while I watch Alex in the stores cafeteria and look at leftover newspapers. I glance through the St. Paul Pioneer-Press & Dispatch