Part of the inner clique, which would come to include Morris Day, that incubated Prince, and a member of Prince’s touring band through 1981, bassist André Cymone left Prince in 1981, for a solo career that would lead to a renewal of his famous friendship.
In the 1980s, Andre released three albums of various degrees of Prince influenced (though who began what, right) before disappearing into production and session work. All three albums, Minneapolis sound funk based bass workouts all, which sounds remarkably like what it was, with only the Prince gift “The Body Electric” -just a Prince groove when all anybody wanted was a Prince groove, hitting the charts.
Some 30 plus years laters, Andre has remastered all three albums and released for digital sales and streaming and self-released a new album this year, a hard rocking pretty good album which sounds little like his 80s material. Not bad stuff which should fly off the stage with precision and power.
At the very least, Andre was central to those early Prince gigs (he even sang on “Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad”) and as an early friend, playing with Prince in Grand Central, his influence on Prince’s bass sound is self evident and it should be very interesting to see how he manifests himself on stage. Andre is a multi-instrumentalist but it is the bass you’ll be staying for. Remember, the bassist is much more important in funk than rock.
And you can go and find out for sure tonight here
