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Purple Snow: Forecasting the Minneapolis Sound
$85.00 (4LP + Hardbound Book) / $35.00 (2CD + Hardbound Book)
Bonus 7" limited to the first 500 pre-orders. LP and CD subscribers will get the bonus 7" as part of their subscription.
In the late 1970s, a peculiar sound began bubbling up from the land of 10,000 lakes. Buried beneath 50 solid inches of annual snow, Minneapolis made a Sound quite different than what the pop world foresaw. It issued forth as a slick, black, technologically advanced fusion, poised to storm the charts. Never known for sizable African-American populations, the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul in fact harbored a tight-knit community of musicians working feverishly through the late ’70s and early ’80s toward a radical manipulation of American dance music, coating futuristic funk with the glamorous sheen of guitar rock. Synthetic ebony and ivory met electricity, with sexed-up results sent shockingly across the pop heavens like violet lightning.
On 4 LPs or 2 CDs, Purple Snow: Forecasting the Minneapolis Sound—the Numero Group’s breathlessly anticipated 50th mainline release—chronicles the scene’s first steps, false starts, and follow-throughs, sourcing the life’s work of known quantities and shadowy figures alike. In the beginning, there was Purple Haze, whose billing as Haze on two obscure albums left the color purple to their city’s incipient sound. Pepé Willie’s 94 East project gave local prodigy Prince Rogers Nelson an early chance to row along with the crew. From there, the story courses past Jimmy Jam Harris’ extroverted Philly throwback Mind & Matter collective, to Terry Lewis and Flyte Tyme, flamboyant precursor to Morris Day’s The Time.
Unearthing basement demos by Prince’s childhood sidekick/departed bassist André Cymone, plus deep cuts from legend-about-town Alexander O’Neal, Numero 050 gathers relentlessly as the sprawling, nonfiction prequel to Purple Rain’s cultural takeover.
Surpassing 30,000 words, our hardbound, full-color book companion to Purple Snow: Forecasting the Minneapolis Sound is a gorgeous, exhaustively detailed, and insight-rich guided tour across two hours of music and a decade of North Star history. Inside, dozens of supporting characters and combos seed clouds for the meteoric rise of a genre formerly known mostly as Prince’s—not to mention unheard product from his top collaborators and fiercest competitors. In game-changing sound and image-rich splendor, Purple Snow: Forecasting the Minneapolis Sound clears a crowded stage, ushering in unsung Twin Cities future-funk talent, to bask for a spotlit moment, out of that persistent violet shadow, and to shine.
About the pre-order bonus 45:
Back in 1985, with the Minneapolis Sound at the leading edge of its music culture takeover, David “T.C.” Ellis—an aspiring St. Paul rapper—dedicated his own rhyming-couplet document to the genre’s founding city. Constructed upon a sturdy drum machine and vocoder bedrock, “Twin Cities Rapp” contextualized and outright flattered the movement’s marquee contenders, threading together Prince, André Cymone, the Time and Morris Day, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Sheila E, and sundry other Purple Snow honorees. Originally released as a 12” single by Twin Town Records, Ellis’s electro-rap narrative gets into the grooves of a Numero replica 7”—complete with Minnesota silhouette pic sleeve—be included with the first 500 pre-orders on Numero 050, Purple Snow: Forecasting the Minneapolis Sound, as well as with 2013 LP and CD subscriptions. For all the many strengths of the compendious Purple Snow book, its words almost never rhyme. We’ve left that level of artistry to Minneapolis, to Ellis, and to good old 1985.
Side A:
1. 94 East - "If You See Me"
2. Aura - "Taste Of Love"
3. Herman Jones - "I Love You"
4. Orville Shannon - "Oh Lover"
Side B:
5. Mind & Matter - "I'm Under Your Spell"
6. Haze - "Waiting For The Moment"
7. Prophets Of Peace - "Get It On"
8. Cohesion - "Expense"
9. Mind & Matter - "Sunshine Lady"
Side C:
10. The Lewis Connection - "Higher"
11. Flyte Tyme - "It's The Things That You Do"
12. Herman Jones - "Ladie"
13. Michael A. Dixon and J.O.Y. - "You're All I Need"
Side D:
14. Music, Love & Funk - "Stone Lover"
15. Cohesion - "Cohesion"
16. Haze - "I Do Love My Lady"
17. The Lewis Connection - "Got To Be Something Here"
Side E:
18. Walter Lewis & the Blue Stars - "I Have Love at Home"
19. Flyte Tyme - "I've Got You On My Mind"
20. Quiet Storm - "Can You Deal With It"
21. Steven - "Quick"
Side F:
22. The Stylle Band - "If You Love Me"
23. The Girls - "I've Got My Eyes On You"
24. Sue Ann Carwell - "Should I Or Should I Not?"
25. Alexander O'Neal - "Do You Dare"
Side G:
26. Ronnie Robbins - "Contagious"
27. Alexander O'Neal - "Borrowed Time"
28. Orville Shannon - "One Life To Live"
29. André Cymone - "Somebody Said"
Side H:
30. Walter Lewis & the Blue Stars - "Do It Baby Do It"
31. Rockie Robbins - "Together"
32. Mind & Matter - "No One Else Can Do It To Me Baby"
The Stylle Band ~ If You Love Me
[video=youtube;mRGuMdMJp5Q]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRGuMdMJp5Q[/video]
