2 Whom it May Concern

[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hello. Welcome to Alphabet Suite podcast for the Prince Songbook. There are hundreds of songs to choose from. You have chosen whomever it may concern. [00:00:11] Speaker B: Are you going to call it whom it may concern, or are you going to use the two on this one? [00:00:16] Speaker C: Okay, we are back. I got some words for words. We on camera. [00:00:23] Speaker B: So we are. [00:00:24] Speaker C: All right. [00:00:25] Speaker B: We're going to be on public display. [00:00:26] Speaker C: We are. We're back. It's to whom it may concern is what we're going to do today. [00:00:33] Speaker B: The song. So you're just saying. To whom it may concern. [00:00:36] Speaker C: Whom it may concern. Our producer, Guy. [00:00:40] Speaker B: Rock on. Our producer is Aaron, by the way. [00:00:43] Speaker C: Yes, he is. [00:00:44] Speaker B: Wonderful Guy. [00:00:45] Speaker C: Excellent. [00:00:45] Speaker B: Excellent producer. [00:00:46] Speaker C: Yes. Love that. [00:00:47] Speaker B: Great work. [00:00:48] Speaker C: Love that guy. [00:00:49] Speaker B: If you ever want to do some work, I think he puts his information at the end of every episode. So if you ever want to do something, hit him up. He's good. [00:00:57] Speaker C: There you go. Okay, so I'm Tim. [00:00:59] Speaker B: I'm Pat. And that's Aaron. [00:01:01] Speaker C: That's Aaron. [00:01:04] Speaker B: And what are we. [00:01:10] Speaker C: To whom it may concern? [00:01:11] Speaker B: Yeah, but what's the name of the show? What's the name of the show? [00:01:14] Speaker C: Son of a hoopla. [00:01:16] Speaker B: What is the name of the show? [00:01:17] Speaker C: Name of the show is Alphabet Sweet. Not street Sweet. [00:01:23] Speaker B: Don't confuse us with Alphabet Street. All right, so Alphabet sweet, whom it may concern. [00:01:32] Speaker C: And your thoughts are, don't do that to me. [00:01:41] Speaker B: So this song was. It's another B side. It was an add on to, I think, what my name is. Prince. [00:01:50] Speaker C: Yes. [00:01:54] Speaker B: It was like more, in my opinion, it was like an advertisement. It was a commercial, a musical commercial for his new album. In fact, if you ever watch the video for this, for to whom it may concern, he even says the funky new album entitled. And then the symbol comes. [00:02:18] Speaker C: It did do that. [00:02:19] Speaker B: Remember that? [00:02:19] Speaker C: Yes. Okay. It was a great commercial. [00:02:27] Speaker B: It was. [00:02:28] Speaker C: It's when I was in Michigan and sitting by the fire, and I remember I called you and I said, dude, turn on a commercial for Prince on there. You remember? [00:02:45] Speaker B: Were you, like, smoking a stogie and have a glass of brandy, too, while you're sitting by the fire? Oh, really? For some reason, I don't seem to recall that situation. [00:03:02] Speaker C: I was going somewhere with that man. [00:03:05] Speaker B: I think you done gone wherever you went. I did not go along with you. [00:03:11] Speaker C: I don't even think you started with me. I don't know. [00:03:16] Speaker B: Anyway, so it came out in 92, according to our notes. [00:03:26] Speaker C: Oh, wow. VHS. That's a long time ago. [00:03:29] Speaker B: VHS. Do you even know what VHS stands for? [00:03:32] Speaker C: Video horny syndrome. [00:03:37] Speaker B: The video Horny syndrome. So it's porn. [00:03:40] Speaker C: Yeah. Who is that one, Wanda who whips Wall Street? We shouldn't say that. I don't know. [00:03:48] Speaker B: Now people are going to start looking up that movie. Can you get it on VHS? [00:03:52] Speaker C: You can. We had it, remember? [00:03:55] Speaker B: I would never watch anything like that. [00:03:57] Speaker C: Nothing. [00:03:57] Speaker B: I don't know what you're talking about. [00:03:59] Speaker C: Okay, there you go. [00:04:06] Speaker B: We playboy for the articles. Do they have articles on VHS? I don't know. That's something for a producer to look up. [00:04:18] Speaker C: Oh, Ads. [00:04:22] Speaker B: So this song was Prince's way of. Prince always had to do things the Prince way. You couldn't do anything normal. It always had to be the prince. [00:04:32] Speaker C: Know, not to interrupt you. But that brings me back to. [00:04:35] Speaker B: Why don't you interrupt me? [00:04:36] Speaker C: Well, because I had to. I forgot to interrupt you a show or two ago. [00:04:40] Speaker B: Okay. [00:04:47] Speaker C: He must really have to trust them people, Ingrid. Okay. [00:04:55] Speaker B: Like the people he surrounds himself with. [00:04:57] Speaker C: Yes. He's got to have the. Because with the Black Album, right. He scrapped it, okay, because she come to him and said, hey, blah, blah, blah, whatever. I don't know. I wasn't there at this one. I think you were there, but I wasn't there. [00:05:12] Speaker B: Yeah, it was during dinner. [00:05:13] Speaker C: Was it? Yeah. Okay. [00:05:15] Speaker B: We're having the cool ranch, Doritos and pancakes. Anyway, go ahead. [00:05:23] Speaker C: I didn't know what to say to that. [00:05:26] Speaker B: You were talking about how he trusts people. [00:05:29] Speaker C: Okay, so you got the Black elm. He scrapped it. Because I could do this by myself. [00:05:33] Speaker B: If I have to. So he scrapped the Black Album. [00:05:40] Speaker C: Look, man, all right, what I'm saying is, because he always had that control. What Prince wanted to do with music, he did with music. And nobody's going to tell him different. [00:05:50] Speaker B: Right. [00:05:51] Speaker C: However, then you throw in Ingrid and was it. I can't think of that guy's name. I mean, they were like really close. [00:06:02] Speaker B: Larry Graham. [00:06:03] Speaker C: Yes. People like know he must have really touched Prince and he must have really loved. [00:06:09] Speaker B: Well, Larry Graham's the one who got him to convert to Jehovah Witness. [00:06:15] Speaker C: Really? [00:06:15] Speaker B: Yeah. So, I mean, he was really close with Prince. [00:06:18] Speaker C: I would have loved to have Prince come knocking at my door. He did. [00:06:21] Speaker B: He went knocking. [00:06:22] Speaker C: Knocked on my door. [00:06:23] Speaker B: No, he came to yours. Well, that's because you don't like. [00:06:27] Speaker C: But all right. [00:06:29] Speaker B: Tony's going to be knocking on your door, though. [00:06:31] Speaker C: I can guarantee you that. [00:06:35] Speaker B: Tony, if you need his address, let me. No. Anyway, so he must trust. [00:06:40] Speaker C: I mean, but very little. Well. [00:06:47] Speaker B: I was never there. It would be really mean. I watch interviews. Know, you can see them with Apollonia and Sheila E. And all the people that have been around them and you see all these interviews. But it'd be cool to talk to someone and just figure out what, because I don't know if it was so much a trust thing, but people influenced them. I remember watching an interview. They were interviewing the members of the revolution. They were all together. And this was just recently, so it was really cool. It was after Prince passed and they were talking to the revolution and they remembered collectively a lot of the same things. And they remember early on, I want to say it was around the 1999 era, touring somewhere overseas. I think it was. I'd have to go back and watch this interview again because it was really good. And Prince saw people with the Pompadour hairdos where it's kind of short and pulled off to the side. [00:07:50] Speaker C: Right. [00:07:51] Speaker B: And just seeing people do that, that influenced know that was not a prince idea. I'm going to just start doing my hair like that. He saw used, whether it was trust or not, I don't know. But he used everything around know things would influence him. And so I think people were just part of the surroundings for him sometimes. And so when they would talk to him, he would listen, he would take it in. And there was just certain people, Ingrid, I'm sure, Sheila Morris, Larry Graham, I bet George Clinton. I bet. There's just a lot of people that really got into his inner circle. And I know, like in the later years, John Blackwell, I think he was close with them, but there was just a lot of people that were part of his inner circle that he felt he could trust but who had just huge influences on. So I don't know why we're even talking about that. That has nothing to do with the song. Why'd you take us there? What's that got to do with. To whom it may concern? So he used his influences. Right. Where were you going with that? [00:09:11] Speaker C: Basically to say that, I don't know, man. I was listening to you, but you cut me off. [00:09:21] Speaker B: Look, you didn't mean to cut me off when you cut me off, but you cut me off anyway. [00:09:25] Speaker C: There we go. Okay. All right. [00:09:27] Speaker B: So to whom it may concern. It's a commercial. He talks about all the songs that are on the new album, the symbol album, and he does it to music, of course, because he has to do it in the Prince way. You can't just make a typical commercial. You make a song to advertise. You know what I mean? Now, this also is the new power generation. And I also remember one thing when this came out, because it came out on the single for my name is Prince. And I was so scared of that song when it came out, because the song right before that, if you remember, was sexy mother. [00:10:15] Speaker C: Yes. [00:10:16] Speaker B: And that song was not what I was expecting for the next album. So I was a little worried. I was a little worried about this new album coming out. And so when I heard my name is Prince, I was like, we're okay. [00:10:31] Speaker C: Yeah, buddy. [00:10:33] Speaker B: So it was on that, and there was, best I can see, there was one released version, but he also did the two commercials, the promo video commercial ones. [00:10:46] Speaker C: Right. [00:10:47] Speaker B: And they are different than the released version of the song. They're kind of edited. And then there was during this time, so I don't know what it was. This was a very strange time in music and in Prince's career, to me anyway, because it was this weird dichotomy of him and Warner Brothers. I hate Warner Brothers. I love Warner Brothers. I hate Warner Brothers. I love Warner Brothers. And I think WarNer brothers had that same feeling with Prince because they knew he was a money train, and so they kind of let him do a lot of things that you wouldn't let any other artist do. [00:11:23] Speaker C: Right. [00:11:24] Speaker B: This is when he did the act one TV special. Do you remember that? [00:11:29] Speaker C: I do not. [00:11:30] Speaker B: You don't? So basically, it was like an hour long show that they played on. Like, it was like on a late Friday night on ABC or something. I don't remember when it was, but it was all the videos that he had made for this album put together in, like, a know. [00:11:57] Speaker C: Really? [00:11:58] Speaker B: Yeah. So it was really weird. [00:12:02] Speaker C: I'm going to check that out. [00:12:04] Speaker B: Yeah, but anyway, so there was on there, too, but, yeah, anyway, I like the song. It's nothing I would pick off the shelf to listen to because, like I said, it's more of a commercial, but it does have, like, little funky riffs and little. [00:12:25] Speaker C: Yeah, I like the riffs in there. [00:12:28] Speaker B: So it was all right. Anything else? [00:12:31] Speaker C: I'm good with it. [00:12:32] Speaker B: You good? [00:12:32] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:12:33] Speaker B: So until next time, we outta here. [00:12:35] Speaker C: We out of here. [00:12:36] Speaker B: All right. [00:12:36] Speaker C: Peace. Peace. [00:12:46] Speaker B: Wasn't that bad, was it? Till Tony comes? Yes, it is, isn't it? That song? Really. I mean, really good. And what's funny is this, to whom it may concern, it's like the commercial for that album, but when you listen to my name is Prince at the beginning of it, he plays other samples of his songs through his whole career before the song actually kicks in properly. You can hear I want to be your lover party up stuff through his career. So it's kind of like that song is a commercial for his career, whereas to whom it may concern is a commercial for this album. [00:13:32] Speaker C: Right. [00:13:33] Speaker B: So it's really kind of cool that he did that.