Sometimes It Snows in April

Last Thursday, April 21, marked the sixth anniversary of Prince’s passing. Oddly, I just discovered that Thursday also marked the 36th anniversary of the day that I scribbled some notes in preparation for my Temple University News review of Prince’s 1986 album, Parade.

I seriously miss Prince, though if I am honest, I need to admit that I had not kept up with the torrent of music he released in the last two decades of his life. There was just so much of it.

In my review, I wrote, “Parade: Music from the Movie Under a Cherry Moon confirms Prince’s status as the most peculiarly talented pop musicians to emerge in the 1980s.”

That’s a nice sentence but from the vantage point of 2022, it’s hard to describe what it was like following Prince’s career in the ‘80s. Every album was an event and his concerts were unbelievable. I am fortunate to have seen two Prince concerts: one during the iconic Purple Rain tour, and one during the Black Album/Lovesexy era. Both shows rearranged my brain.

Sadly, sometime in the 1990s, I think many of us took Prince for granted, figuring he wasn’t going anywhere any time soon. But he did.

As Prince himself noted at the end of Parade, sometimes it does indeed snow in April.

~217~