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Has anyone heard "When Doves Cry" with a bassline (Prince-related)

phongonephongone 1,652 Posts
edited March 2013 in Strut Central
http://www.vulture.com/2013/03/questloves-master-class-on-prince.html

This is an interesting article by Toure on Questlove's love (or obsession) with Prince. Questlove describes "When Doves Cry" as the "most radical" song of the 80's because there's no bass:

"I mean, ???When Doves Cry??? is probably the most radical song of the first five years of the eighties, because there???s no bass. I heard the version of ???Doves Cry??? with a bass line???it wouldn???t have grabbed me. Without bass it had a desperate, cold feeling to it. It made you concentrate on his voice. With the bass line, the song was cool. Without it, it was astounding.???

Questlove mentions hearing the version of the song with a bassline -- has anyone heard it and is it readily available?
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  Comments

  • phatmoneysackphatmoneysack Melbourne 1,124 Posts
    new grael alert?
  • DJBombjackDJBombjack Miami 1,665 Posts
    I hear Biz has it on 12"
  • batmonbatmon 27,574 Posts
    If dude heard it, it was on some extra special listening party at Prince's house where he had to go shirtless and win at 21.

    I never heard of a Bass-Line included version of When Doves Cry.

    And its not that Revolutionary. Props for making a Black/Funk/R&B hit w/out a baseline but its not that big of a deal.

    Cats have been talmbout that feat for a long minute, but its not some great paradigm shift.
  • jamesjames chicago 1,863 Posts
    batmon said:
    And its not that Revolutionary. Props for making a Black/Funk/R&B hit w/out a baseline but its not that big of a deal.

    Cats have been talmbout that feat for a long minute, but its not some great paradigm shift.
    It kinda is, though.

    In and of itself, it's mostly just ("just") a really sonically striking song. But looked at in its larger context, leaving out the bassline denies the listener a certain familiar warmth, and makes the song stand as a kind of rejection of What People Required From Black Music. It's angular and demanding (just like my father, too?), and pretty much the antithesis of the ingratiating, accommodating stuff that MJ, for example, had by then been pushing for years, and I think the absence of a bassline, that cushion underneath, has a lot to do with it.

    The more common form of musical innovation is to take an established formula and modify its existing elelments and/or add stuff on top (e.g. the grafted rock moves of "Beat It," an important record in its own way, I suppose); fucking with formula by leaving stuff out is comparatively rare, and generally sounds more revolutionary.

    Like, hearing the Sugarhill Gang rapping over the fat and friendly "Good Times" was a big deal to me, but hearing Run-DMC however many years later rapping over just some skeletal drum machine fucked my shit all up. Know what I mean?

    I understand your fatigue with the critical gassing-up of this one particular aspect, but unless you don't think "When Doves Cry" was a heavily influential landmark record, I don't see how you can say the bassline shit isn't a big deal.
  • parallaxparallax no-style-having mf'er 1,266 Posts
    Thes, can the next soulstrut book be nothing but "Jamesian" quotes, please?
  • JimsterJimster Cruffiton.etsy.com 6,960 Posts
    Missy/Timabland tried sacking the bassline off too. Lots.

    God, those songs sound shit.

    'Bout the same time, Masters at Work were simultaneously keeping Gene Perez in bass strings for life and Rescuing Dance Music From The Blahs???.

    "Doves" is such an enigmatic record for me. I believe I've had the discussion about "Animals strike curious poses". That line alone has kept me entertained for, oh, decades.

    But then there's also "Why do we scream at each other? This is what it sounds like, when doves cry."

    Is that, screaming at each other is what lachrymose doves sound like?

    Or... and here's the mindf*ck:

    Is that "This is what it sounds like, when doves cry :" ?

    So doves sound like "beep, beep-beep-beep, ..." when they cry?

    I've never made a dove cry so I don't know.

    b/w

    I've never shoed a horse, but I've told a donkey to f*ck off.
  • batmonbatmon 27,574 Posts
    james said:
    batmon said:
    And its not that Revolutionary. Props for making a Black/Funk/R&B hit w/out a baseline but its not that big of a deal.

    Cats have been talmbout that feat for a long minute, but its not some great paradigm shift.
    It kinda is, though.

    In and of itself, it's mostly just ("just") a really sonically striking song. But looked at in its larger context, leaving out the bassline denies the listener a certain familiar warmth, and makes the song stand as a kind of rejection of What People Required From Black Music. It's angular and demanding (just like my father, too?), and pretty much the antithesis of the ingratiating, accommodating stuff that MJ, for example, had by then been pushing for years, and I think the absence of a bassline, that cushion underneath, has a lot to do with it.

    The more common form of musical innovation is to take an established formula and modify its existing elelments and/or add stuff on top (e.g. the grafted rock moves of "Beat It," an important record in its own way, I suppose); fucking with formula by leaving stuff out is comparatively rare, and generally sounds more revolutionary.

    Like, hearing the Sugarhill Gang rapping over the fat and friendly "Good Times" was a big deal to me, but hearing Run-DMC however many years later rapping over just some skeletal drum machine fucked my shit all up. Know what I mean?

    I understand your fatigue with the critical gassing-up of this one particular aspect, but unless you don't think "When Doves Cry" was a heavily influential landmark record, I don't see how you can say the bassline shit isn't a big deal.

    Who else ran with the bassline-less idea? Did it make other artiists reshape their game?

    Where are the copycats and influence?

    Alot of Rap made after Run Dmc attempted to ape their style. That was a shift.
    Sucker Mc was without baselines in Black music before When Doves Cry.

    Its not a big deal.
  • asstroasstro 1,754 Posts
    Going without a bassline was a pretty huge thing, don't re-write history. The fact that "Sucker MC's" and "When Doves Cry" were such massive records just proves what a shocking sound it was back in 83-84. However, given Prince's well documented disdain for hip-hop, especially back in the early 80's, I kind of doubt that he was looking to Run DMC for production cues. It was just an idea that was too good for someone not to use. The fact that other pop/rock acts didn't use it doesn't mean it wasn't influential as hell, it just shows how difficult it must be to write a song with a sound that will stand up to such sparse instrumentation. Especially since the production style at the time was to pile more and more onto a track, not to strip it down.
  • JimsterJimster Cruffiton.etsy.com 6,960 Posts
    We must also remember Prince is batshit crazy.
  • jamesjames chicago 1,863 Posts
    batmon said:
    james said:
    batmon said:
    And its not that Revolutionary. Props for making a Black/Funk/R&B hit w/out a baseline but its not that big of a deal.

    Cats have been talmbout that feat for a long minute, but its not some great paradigm shift.
    It kinda is, though.

    In and of itself, it's mostly just ("just") a really sonically striking song. But looked at in its larger context, leaving out the bassline denies the listener a certain familiar warmth, and makes the song stand as a kind of rejection of What People Required From Black Music. It's angular and demanding (just like my father, too?), and pretty much the antithesis of the ingratiating, accommodating stuff that MJ, for example, had by then been pushing for years, and I think the absence of a bassline, that cushion underneath, has a lot to do with it.

    The more common form of musical innovation is to take an established formula and modify its existing elelments and/or add stuff on top (e.g. the grafted rock moves of "Beat It," an important record in its own way, I suppose); fucking with formula by leaving stuff out is comparatively rare, and generally sounds more revolutionary.

    Like, hearing the Sugarhill Gang rapping over the fat and friendly "Good Times" was a big deal to me, but hearing Run-DMC however many years later rapping over just some skeletal drum machine fucked my shit all up. Know what I mean?

    I understand your fatigue with the critical gassing-up of this one particular aspect, but unless you don't think "When Doves Cry" was a heavily influential landmark record, I don't see how you can say the bassline shit isn't a big deal.

    Who else ran with the bassline-less idea? Did it make other artiists reshape their game?
    I'd say that "When Doves Cry" took a chilly, European/new-wave sound--a sound that had in black music theretofore mostly only really been mined in an underground dance context--and made it an option for aboveground black artists who wanted to sell a lot of records. An important part of Prince achieving that chill was leaving out the bass, and when artists started chasing That Prince Sound, a big part of what they were chasing was that chill, that thinness.

    Now, as far as how many other artists aped that sound by actually leaving out the bass, maybe you're right that there weren't that many. But that "bassline-less" feel was undeniably a key compnent of what those artists were after. So I'd say it was a big deal in the same way that it was a big deal in the early- to mid-90s when more radio-rock drummers started playing in a way that made them sound like drum loops: even if the technical particulars of a certain technique (sampling drums, leaving out the bass, etc.) are not being duplicated exactly, that root technique is still exerting a pretty big musical influence.
  • vintageinfantsvintageinfants 4,538 Posts
    J i m s t e r said:
    We must also remember Prince is batshit crazy.

    totally.

    i just chalked it up to prince being really mad at his bassist the day he did the final mix because they ate his favorite lefties out of the studio fridge.
  • batmonbatmon 27,574 Posts
    asstro said:
    Going without a bassline was a pretty huge thing, don't re-write history. The fact that "Sucker MC's" and "When Doves Cry" were such massive records just proves what a shocking sound it was back in 83-84. However, given Prince's well documented disdain for hip-hop, especially back in the early 80's, I kind of doubt that he was looking to Run DMC for production cues. It was just an idea that was too good for someone not to use. The fact that other pop/rock acts didn't use it doesn't mean it wasn't influential as hell, it just shows how difficult it must be to write a song with a sound that will stand up to such sparse instrumentation. Especially since the production style at the time was to pile more and more onto a track, not to strip it down.

    How can you be mesmerized by a no bassline song a year after Sucker MC's?
  • 4YearGraduate4YearGraduate 2,945 Posts
    parallax said:
    Thes, can the next soulstrut book be nothing but "Jamesian" quotes, please?

    :bizzo:

    b/w

    I guarantee this is just a setup for Quest finding the "test pressing" or "master reel" (because it's going to be a hell of a lot easier to add a bassline to a song than it is to take something off ... ahem). ? was super competitive about that bells thing.
  • asstroasstro 1,754 Posts
    Most people didn't hear (or didn't like) Sucker MC's when it came out, it wasn't on the radio much outside of NY and it wasn't on MTV at all. "When Doves Cry" had the reach to, yes mesmerize, the vast majority of people who had never heard anything like that before.
  • SunfadeSunfade 799 Posts
    asstro said:
    Most people didn't hear (or didn't like) Sucker MC's when it came out, it wasn't on the radio much outside of NY and it wasn't on MTV at all. "When Doves Cry" had the reach to, yes mesmerize, the vast majority of people who had never heard anything like that before.

    Nobody even noticed it had no bassline where I was. Or if they did I never heard anyone talk about. The first person I heard talking about it was Nile Rodgers on VH1. He wasn't too surprised it had no bassline, but was surprised a black artist would do a song with no bassline.
  • SunfadeSunfade 799 Posts
    More people talked about if it was an electric razor at the beginning where I was at.
  • batmonbatmon 27,574 Posts
    asstro said:
    Most people didn't hear (or didn't like) Sucker MC's when it came out, it wasn't on the radio much outside of NY and it wasn't on MTV at all. "When Doves Cry" had the reach to, yes mesmerize, the vast majority of people who had never heard anything like that before.

    Well then your on some Latte Pas shit then.

    Now who is tryin' to re-write history.

    The fact that "Sucker MC's" and "When Doves Cry" were such massive records just proves what a shocking sound it was back in 83-84.

    Massive = Most people didn't hear it. Which one is it?
  • billbradleybillbradley You want BBQ sauce? Get the fuck out of my house. 2,914 Posts
    Biz played it off his laptop backstage at Yo Gabba Gabba last weekend. Totally panned to the one side though.
  • JimsterJimster Cruffiton.etsy.com 6,960 Posts
    vintageinfants said:
    J i m s t e r said:
    We must also remember Prince is batshit crazy.

    totally.

    i just chalked it up to prince being really mad at his bassist the day he did the final mix because they ate his favorite lefties out of the studio fridge.

    He hates bassists after that tour he did opening for Rick James

    :shh:

    b/w

    I keed, he believes the one Larry Graham is the fount of all funk. Together they do their door-to-door JoHo ting in disguise, IIRC.
  • JimsterJimster Cruffiton.etsy.com 6,960 Posts
    I was thinking about other notable bassless hits, and "Nothing Compares 2 U" comes to mind. Another Prince ditty. I guess it was a phase he was going through. The OG has no bass either.
  • jamesjames chicago 1,863 Posts
    batmon said:
    Alot of Rap made after Run Dmc attempted to ape their style. That was a shift.
    Sucker Mc was without baselines in Black music before When Doves Cry.
    This is a surprising level of myopia, even for a New Yorker.

    Like, okay, let's say you're right--let's say that "When Doves Cry" doesn't sound all that different, that it's only, like, Level-Four Weird Sound, and coming in a year late and a buck short. I personally think that's bullshit, but okay, sure. The fact is that that song had Level-Four Weird Sound pumping out of pastel Soundesigns in lilly-white teenage-girl bedrooms in fucking Bozeman, Montana or wherever. That represents a far deeper--and far truer--"paradigm shift" than some Level-Ten Weird Sound that's barely rippling beyond the cognoscenti and the fans.

    In a discussion like this, I think scale means something, and while "Sucker MCs" might have changed rap, "When Doves Cry" changed pop, rock, and r&b a good couple of years before Run-DMC was having anything close to that kind of global effect.
  • HawkeyeHawkeye 896 Posts
  • asstroasstro 1,754 Posts
    batmon said:
    asstro said:
    Most people didn't hear (or didn't like) Sucker MC's when it came out, it wasn't on the radio much outside of NY and it wasn't on MTV at all. "When Doves Cry" had the reach to, yes mesmerize, the vast majority of people who had never heard anything like that before.

    Well then your on some Latte Pas shit then.

    Now who is tryin' to re-write history.

    The fact that "Sucker MC's" and "When Doves Cry" were such massive records just proves what a shocking sound it was back in 83-84.

    Massive = Most people didn't hear it. Which one is it?


    No late pass here man, I was 14 in 1983 and as a Queens native I was all over Run DMC when Sucker MC's dropped. I was also a Prince fan going back to "I Wanna Be Your Lover" and getting in trouble with Moms because she thought "Dirty Mind" wasn't appropriate for an 11 year old. And don't be disingenuous, you know what I'm talking about...

    Massive = When Doves Cry
    Influential = Sucker MC's
  • DustedDonDustedDon 830 Posts
    kinda seems like this is something only Prince fanboy bootleg tape collector types would really care about. would the average pop music fan notice if it had a bass line or not?
  • DJ_EnkiDJ_Enki 6,475 Posts
    Hank Shocklee says he deliberately tried to stay away from bass lines on Nation of Millions because he didn't want the tracks to be too groove-oriented.
  • batmonbatmon 27,574 Posts
    james said:
    batmon said:
    Alot of Rap made after Run Dmc attempted to ape their style. That was a shift.
    Sucker Mc was without baselines in Black music before When Doves Cry.
    This is a surprising level of myopia, even for a New Yorker.

    Like, okay, let's say you're right--let's say that "When Doves Cry" doesn't sound all that different, that it's only, like, Level-Four Weird Sound, and coming in a year late and a buck short. I personally think that's bullshit, but okay, sure. The fact is that that song had Level-Four Weird Sound pumping out of pastel Soundesigns in lilly-white teenage-girl bedrooms in fucking Bozeman, Montana or wherever. That represents a far deeper--and far truer--"paradigm shift" than some Level-Ten Weird Sound that's barely rippling beyond the cognoscenti and the fans.

    In a discussion like this, I think scale means something, and while "Sucker MCs" might have changed rap, "When Doves Cry" changed pop, rock, and r&b a good couple of years before Run-DMC was having anything close to that kind of global effect.

    Again, there were no direct musical changes in any of those genres when its comes to the baseline-less When Doves Cry.
    Yes the Minneapolis sound was being cloned by many, but were they taking cues from the baseline-less structure? No.

    Janet Jackson's Control comes to mind as a direct influence, but she had FlyteTime who werent biting Prince being co-architects of that sound.

    I dont know one R&B, Rock, or Pop song that came out right after(lets say within two years) that had the same formula as Doves.

    Sucker MC's (without any "OMG they didnt use a baseline" hype) made Hip Hop take heed and set the seeds for more of the same for the next 3 or 4 years until sampling took over.

    I just dont see how something was already being done gets over-praised because it was Prince or it was on Becky's Pop Radio.

    Well have to agree to disagree.

    Baseline-less song from Prince is a big deal to you. Its not to me.
  • Hotsauce84Hotsauce84 8,450 Posts
    I like how Bat spells it "bassline" in half his posts and "baseline" in the other half. Then when he's feelin' extra generous he'll throw a dash in.
  • jamesjames chicago 1,863 Posts
    batmon said:
    Well have to agree to disagree.

    Baseline-less song from Prince is a big deal to you. Its not to me.
    Well, I was really talking about music and culture and shit, more so than about you and me. Apart from being an interesting technical footnote, the absence of a bassline doesn't really mean anything to me personally; to me, the grabber has always been those opening airless drum hits and the 3-D guitar scrawl dissolving into that flat, buzzing whirlpool of hungry "yeah yeah yeah"s. In 2013, that shit still pricks up my ears.

    But yeah, I think we have an agreement.
  • jamesjames chicago 1,863 Posts
    Herm said:
    I like how Bat spells it "bassline" in half his posts and "baseline" in the other half. Then when he's feelin' extra generous he'll throw a dash in.

    Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
  • HorseleechHorseleech 3,830 Posts
    The fact that WDC doesn't have a bass line, while interesting to think about, is a footnote at best.

    Yeah, it was a really popular song, but at least 99.99% of the people who were buying this never noticed or cared about the lack of a bass. It didn't spawn any revolution in terms of other musicians/producers copying this approach either.

    To suggest that it was some kind of benchmark game-changer is imagined/revisionist history, imo.
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