[HN Gopher] Why Prince Changed His Name to an Symbol 30 Years Ag...
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Why Prince Changed His Name to an Symbol 30 Years Ago, and What
Happened Next
Author : thunderbong
Score : 54 points
Date : 2024-01-10 07:54 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (variety.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (variety.com)
| beenBoutIT wrote:
| It's sad to think that if Prince had lived in the EU he'd have
| been taking blister pack pills and likely wouldn't have died as a
| result of taking counterfeit ones.
| PraetorianGourd wrote:
| Wow I didn't know that grey/black-market dealers used blister
| packs in the EU. Unless you are implying that the bogus Vicodin
| he took was pharmacist provided, which is absolutely absurd.
| The US has a lot of problems, but the safety of legally-
| obtained medicine is not one of them.
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| Even in the EU there are still occasional counterfeit
| problems. The recent counterfeit Ozempic scandal comes to
| mind
| atdrummond wrote:
| You can get Oxycodone (usually Mundipharma) in blister packs
| in the UK/EU from dealers. More common than lose pills.
| PraetorianGourd wrote:
| My larger point is that if the dealers can make identical
| looking counterfeits, including imprints, then I am pretty
| confident they can make legit looking blister packs as
| well.
| mock-possum wrote:
| Spoiler: he likely took 'why' to his grave. All this article does
| is tell stories that suggest guesses, while also taking care to
| reiterate how every single anecdote was likely the artist
| creating art, and not a genuine or complete explanation.
| jsbisviewtiful wrote:
| Can't help but wonder if the primary reason was simply a
| marketing opportunity.
| Projectiboga wrote:
| No it was part of his dispute with his record label, he
| wanted to leave them the Prince name and be something new. It
| was of course marketing but it was intended to create a
| separate listing in the old Flying Fish record catalog.
| Record stores used to have a huge loose leaf book with most
| recordings listed, it was a way to see if you could get older
| records. Sometimes you had to just look around, I had to buy
| the first two Yes albums from a flea market seller who also
| carried those old vinyl bootlegs. I'm dating my self as an
| early Gen-Xer with all this obsolete arcane 'knowledge'.
| jsbisviewtiful wrote:
| I appreciate the insight and that's a much more fun
| backstory than expected. I was born a few years after
| Purple Rain so Prince's era is mostly unknown music history
| for me.
| Beldin wrote:
| You forgot to mention (or left a deliberate opening for
| other "millenials" like yourself ;) that at one point, he
| had "slave" tattooed on his cheek - for the same reason.
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| That site is so goddamned annoying, with page content jumping
| around, blanking, and reloading (on iPad) that I just gave up.
|
| Amateur hour.
| scottymac wrote:
| If you're on an iPad use Reader view by tapping "AA" in the
| address bar and selecting Show Reader. You'll get just the
| article's text and images.
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| Thanks for the tip. I use Reader view in Safari on the Mac,
| but Apple has obscured it on mobile by making the icon look
| like only a font-size option. Heaven forbid they use
| consistent icons in their own products.
| cityzen wrote:
| I recently turned reader view on by default for all sites in
| safari on iOS and it is glorious.
| noqc wrote:
| >Prince had always been provocative, perplexing and often strange
| artist, and frequently used symbols (such as an eye for "I") or
| numbers (such as 4 for "for") in his album artwork.
|
| This sentence is perhaps the new best example of fluff.
| WhyOhWhyQ wrote:
| Why is it fluff? I know nothing about Prince other than that he
| changed his name to a symbol (and that is because Eminem told
| me). Knowing that he used symbols in other ways could add
| context to his choice to change his name to a symbol.
| gwern wrote:
| I'd say it's fluff because the first half adds nothing you
| don't already know by that point, and the second half is a
| longwinded way to say 'he liked rebuses'.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| TIL that "rebus" is a word. Thanks!
| PokemonNoGo wrote:
| I could have sworn we in Sweden used another word for
| rebuses and I was proven wrong many times in a pub
| discussion recently but I'm on a hunt for my word. (Very
| interesting I know...) If you don't mind what word did
| you use before for rebus? (I haven't given up there is an
| archaic or "brand name" out there I saw in my youth...)
| noqc wrote:
| The evidence for him being provocative, perplexing, and
| strange, is that he used 4 instead of 'for'. This is not
| evidence of anything except that the authors want you to
| think that Prince is provocative, perplexing, and strange.
| This sort of writing is more or less the definition of fluff
| mlyle wrote:
| > > Prince had always been provocative, perplexing and
| often strange artist, and frequently used symbols (such as
| an eye for "I") or numbers (such as 4 for "for") in his
| album artwork.
|
| I don't interpret the second clause primarily as evidence
| for the first. I view them as two related statements--
|
| He was already known as provocative and strange; he'd
| already used symbols more than most people before.
|
| This is important context to his strange move of changing
| his name to a symbol.
|
| It's more longwinded than necessary, but it's not awful.
| ink_13 wrote:
| It's certainly idiosyncratic, I might go so far as
| provocative or strange myself, but perhaps perplexing is a
| bit far, because it's not like what he meant was unclear.
|
| (Unless one finds the question "buy why mean it that way?"
| to be perplexing)
| amalcon wrote:
| That was _much_ more unusual when Prince did it in the
| early '80s than it is today. The article is a bit fluffy,
| yes, but I'm not sure that line is the best example.
| krunck wrote:
| https://archive.is/XH3af
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _The symbol, originally a combination of the common gender
| symbols for male and female, previously had appeared in slightly
| different form in the artwork of several Prince albums, first on
| "1999" and later on the sleeves of "Purple Rain," "Graffiti
| Bridge," on tour laminates and the like._
|
| Also, his motorcycle from _Purple Rain_ :
| https://www.flickr.com/photos/minneapolisorg/30142462774
|
| And of course, there's an ASCII version: O(+>
|
| "Prince and the Warner dispute": https://goldiesparade.co.uk/new-
| power-generation/
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(page generated 2024-01-11 23:01 UTC)