The Prince Must Fl-o-o-w-w-w.

“Intentional detail in everything although sometimes you had to dig for it. Budget dictated reduced quality in many choices, endurance preferred over luxury or eye appeal. Compromise, and like most compromise, satisfying no one.”

—Reverend Mother Superior Darwi Odrade, in Frank Herbert’s “Chapterhouse: Dune.”

The reason, though, that I find this quote from Dune (above all others) so interesting is that it sums up better than I ever could how I feel about latter-day (say, post Batdance) Prince records. The genius is there, the albums are still dense and interesting, but they sound terrible and are confusingly bad. It’s tough sometimes to listen to things on, say, Chaos & Disorder, or Planet Earth, but when you do, you start to pick out the little things, and you start to get a picture of what Prince is trying to do.

Of course, comparing Prince to a Guild Navigator, encased in a tank of Melange Gas, is also pretty funny.

PS EVERYONE I FOUND PAGE FIFTY TWO IT IS NO LONGER MISSING.