The Family

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The Family

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The Family are a spin off group of a spin off group.The Time sprang from Prince and The Family sprang from The Time.Lead singer Paul 'St.Paul' Peterson (a pretty boy blonde),Prince's girlfriend Susannah Melvoin,saxaphonist Eric Leeds and ex time member Jerome Benton make up the family.The groups one album is pretty funky overall but features a far more elegant and orchestrated sound then The Time ever had."The Screams Of Passion" is the best song here-dramatic,passionate romance that lives up to the lyrics.Eve the funkiest songs here "High Fasion" and "Mutiny" have the same quality-it shows Prince was moving his protege's in the same direction he was going in the mid 80's-away from his signiture,minimal Minneapolic sound.The utter jazziness of the instrumental jam's "Yes" and "Susannah's Pajamas" cry out to Prince's own 'Sign O The Times' era sound.The ballads "River Run Dry","Desire" and the groups errie,ironic take on Prince's classic "Nothing Compares 2 U" have so much emotional overflow one can swim in it.The Family were one of the most individual and musical of Prince's protege's and when this came out it likely wasn't linked close enough to Prince's sound to be successful on his merrits let alone there own.The Family's failier was due mainly to bad timing.But the group could have easily signled a new,modernized version of The Time.Prince would later re configure this band for his own use and augmented the Revolution but The Family are a wonderful example of a time when Prince was pushing the envelope of his own sound into brilliant,sophisticated,psychedellic and often highly innovative directions.I must have album in any format for any 80's "Prince Sound" or 80's music fan to own.

First off, The Family is an incredible album! It's Prince showing off another experimental/creative side but St Paul and Susanna add their personal stamp as well. I was extremely disappointed with the audio quality of the CD. The manufacturers did a very poor transfer of the master tapes. There are noticeable, very loud crackles before almost every song and at the point where the song Susannah's Pajamas is about to break into the last track Desire, it abruptly stops and after a few seconds, picks back up with Desire. Not worth the $30 dollars I paid for it. This was a French import. Maybe the Japanese import did a better mastering job. If anyone owns the Japanese import, please write a review about the audio quality. If it's better than this import I'll gladly spend some more money and buy it again. With The Family now reformed under the name fDeluxe and releasing a new CD Gaslight in 2011, one only hopes that an American domestic release of their first record is somewhere on the horizon as the album was never released on compact disc in the states. I'm sure they will do a better job.