Dean Michael Anthony - PRINCE The Internet, Relevancy & Respect

By

Michael Dean

Copyright 2011 by Michael Dean

Freedom Trainonline.com

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Freedom Train Books

The internet is completely over. I dont see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They wont pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they cant get it.

Prince, The Daily Mirror July 5 2010

Prince Rogers Nelson or simply Prince is a living legend. With over 30 albums, movies and countless videos to his name, Prince is one of the most prolific artists of our generation. At the time of this writing Prince at the age of 52 shows no desire to quit making music and touring around the world. Let me say this now, this book is for Prince fans. So that means I'm assuming you have some knowledge of Prince's career. We will not be doing a biography of his life and albums over the years. There are great books that cover that already. See: Possessed: The Rise and Fall of Prince by Alex Hahn or better yet Dancemusicsexromance : Prince - The First Decade by Per Nelson.

What this book will attempt to discuss is how the internet has affected Prince's career. His relevancy to the mainstream music industry and lastly as fans of his music do we really respect Prince. In terms of the part about respect, I'm talking about all the bootlegs and unreleased Prince music and videos.

This is a discussion with the following:

Michael Dean: Founder of the Freedom Train Online Radio Network. Michael has been a life long fan of Prince's music. He started out as a rapper back in the 90's learning his chops in the studio and even touring with Grammy Award winning rapper Sir Mix-O-Lot. Michael started his 1st website back in 1996 called Molove.com. He soon gathered a following and caught the eye of Prince, who inquired Michaels input on creating a website.Michael started The Prince Podcast in 2006 as a way to share his love and enthusiasm for the music of Prince. Also a musican, Michael released his album 'Stroke The Mind B4 The Behind' in December 2010. Michael also spends his time consulting and mentoring business with there online endeavors. Ken Mitchell (aka Big Ken ) has been co-hosting the Prince Podcast since December of 2007. An insanely passionate music lover since childhood, hes been inspired by a virtually endless list of artists spanning almost every genre: Prince, Miles Davis, James Brown, Curtis Mayfield, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Run-DMC, John Williams, John Barry and countless others. Ken is also a music artist, under the name The Flavor Foundation, and has released 5 albums. BigsexyinSac: Born back during the British Invasion of the 60s, He grew up on the Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, The Temptations and Curtis Mayfield. BigsexyinSac out of High School in 1981 to be a roadie because he loved music. Worked with tons of Bay Area acts, most notably Journey and Santana. Decided after some conversation with musician friends in 1985 to give college a shot. BigsexyinSac is now a very successful lawyer. Ernie W (aka Mr. DeyDroppin )Occupation: Probation Officer Mr. Dey Droppin' has been hooked ever since he first heard Little Red Corvette back in 83. "I recall laying on my carpet, ear to the huge stereo speaker, waiting for the radio to play the song again. Ive followed Princes career and mystique from that point on and got into the earlier stuff just as soon as I joined the Columbia House Music Club (5 cassettes for 1 penny? Im in!!!). Although I thought the guy was weird, I always respected him doing his own thing and dug the craziness and difference of the music from one album to the next. His music and career developed my love for artists that are willing to try new things and sounds. What I think I dig most, though, is that I feel Ive grown with Princes music. It seems that as I was growing up, every stumbling block, every exhilarating moment, every high and every low was always accompanied with a Prince song that could easily play as background music to my life."

Michael: Todays topic is Prince and the Internet. Were going to talk about Prince websites, fan sites, whats the impact the Internet has had on Prince and get our opinions and viewpoints. I want to start this conversation off with; What was your first introduction to Prince online?
Im going to tell my story, but Im not going to go first. I want to start with DeyDroppin. What brought you to find Prince on the Internet?

DeyDroppin: I was thinking about this. I was trying to remember the name of the service. This was back when I was going to junior college. They didnt have much in the way of the Internet, but we had this other deal where you can look at old periodicals and search on that web. I forgot the name of the service now.
Id go in there looking up stuff for school. When I had some free time, Id go in there looking up stuff about Prince. In a way, it was an online type of search. It wasnt directly Internet-related. But soon after that, I got wind of actual computer online stuff and was able to try to find some things here and there. But primarily, it was looking things up through America Online.

Michael: Do you remember what year that might have been?

DeyDroppin: This wouldve been right around 93-94.

Michael: Big Ken, same question.

Big Ken: Im trying to think of the site. I think I started trying to mess around with the Prince online experience back in 96 or 97. It mightve been love4oneanother.com. What was the site that he had before that? Didnt he have one more before that?

Michael: I think the first one was The Dawn.

DeyDroppin: The Dawn I think was the first one.

Big Ken: It might have been that one or Love for One Another, but I stumbled across that the first time. I thought it was cool, albeit I thought the design of the site, which well probably get into a little later, was just insanely crazy with all the heavy graphics at the time. You know computers back in those days werent as powerful as they are now.

Michael: Im still on dial-up. (Ed note: he's joking)

Big Ken: It took forever for the pages to load. It was impressive that he was trying this, but the end result was just so-so. That was my first real experience with him online. Later, I started getting into going to the message boards, Prince.org, stuff like that, HouseQuake.com and all that later. I think it was love4oneanother.com was the first one I started messing with.

Michael: Okay. BigSexy, how about you?

BigSexyInSac: Ive got to cosign with Ken. I think love4oneanother.com was first. If Im not mistaken, was npg.com or love4oneanother.com online first?

DeyDroppin: Was that the NPG music club?

BigSexyInSac: Not music club, something before that.

Michael: Love4oneanother.com came before npgonline.com.

BigSexyInSac: Okay. I remember doing love4oneanother.com and that was right around 96 [first showed up in 1998], I remember getting the interactive video game on CD. I got that from an online vendor and I thought I was the coolest thing walking and that kept having ads for the upcoming websites. From that point, on Id always follow what he was doing.

Michael: The first time I ever looked up Prince on the net, I didnt have a computer, but my mom had a computer and she had CompuServe. I remember this.

DeyDroppin: That was CompuServe. There you go.

Michael: Yeah, way back. I remember, I dont know why, I was like, What do I want to look up? Interesting enough it was my first introduction to the Internet period. So I typed in the word Prince and it came up with a mailing list kind of bulletin board-ish type of thing and it was just other people who had posted things about Prince on there.

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