The 1981 Listening Post - The Time - The Time

The Time - The Time 

#310

By Julia Talbot

July 29 1981

The Time

The Time

Genre: Minnesota Frankenfunktacular

Allen’s Rating: 2 out of 5

Julia’s Rating: 3 out 5

Highlights:

There are only six tracks. Two (Girl and Get It Up) were in the R&B top five. They are all awesome. Although warning: Get It Up clocks in at 9:04 minutes and Cool is 10:06 minutes so adjust your schedules accordingly. 

The Time or Morris Day and the Time is a funny little group. Like who hasn’t heard of them and their classic hits - Jungle Love, Jerk Out, 777-5311 and the Bird, among others. Formed in 1981, they put out five albums, two of which made it into the top five for the US R&B charts – and then they kinda just disappeared. I signed up to review this album mostly because it is the first album Prince produced and it seemed like a potentially interesting listen if only for that. I was not disappointed. The history of this musically solid album and the band that covered it is pretty fucked up. 

The Time, the band was created in 1981 via a clause in Prince’s contract with Warner Brothers that allowed him to recruit and produce other artists for the label. Apparently, Prince was inspired by the 1980 film, “the Idolmaker”, which was about a rock promoter who builds a band: “embarking on a destructive journey to control every aspect of his new act's image…. destroying everyone around him, including himself.” Sound familiar? It will after the next two paragraphs…. except that Prince didn’t destroy himself for another few decades. 

Following the Idolmaker model, Prince built The Time out of an existing Minneapolis funk R&B band, Flyte Time, with a few additions from another Minneapolis band called Enterprise. Morris Day, a childhood friend, was added in as the lead singer. Oddly enough, when you build a Frankenband whose sole purpose is to allow you to explore other genres you don’t exactly want to sign your full name to (Prince lists himself singing backing vocals as Jamie Starr), hijinks and hilarity do not ensue. Although to be fair, some excellent music was created, produced, and performed…in between the drama. 

While I would not portray myself as a Prince groupie or even much of an aficionado, I am smart enough to realize that the man was hella talented and, at least musically, too good for this world. That being said, everything I have ever read or heard about him has pretty much convinced me that all this genius came at very high price (like ultimately his own death – right?). The man was more than nuts and difficult is just a kick-off descriptor of what it was to work with his exacting savant highness. Hence, it comes as no real surprise that Prince A) thought The Idolmaker was a workable, record producing template, B) had this pretty insane clause in his contract in the first place, and C) thought that he could basically force performances out of this band of his creation – a band comprised of some awesome musicians who maybe might have their own musical ideas and interpretations and who might ultimately resent being treated as hired monkeys no matter how brilliant the master. This is all to say that The Time as an opening act to Prince’s 1981 The Controversy tour sounds pretty traumatizing for The Time and/or the tour was aptly named. 

It might come as no surprise that the studio album was almost exclusively written and performed by Prince. Morris Day sang lead vocals and Prince did everything else (with a few exceptions). Prince also produced the album. The Time only really performed the songs during the tour. As they were a talented and seasoned group of musicians, problems between the band and Prince started almost immediately as The Time quickly experienced commercial success as Prince’s opening act which Prince found threatening despite the fact he has song writing credit on five of the six songs on the album (I mean that’s hard to ignore, right?).  

So basically, you have a situation where Prince’s The Time songs as performed by The Time were better received than Prince’s own stuff being performed by Prince, and Prince was jealous of different aspects of his own song writing. The final showdown happened the last night of the tour (in Cincinnati) and resulted in various band members being doused in honey and handcuffed to a wall mounted coat rack. Trash and Doritos were thrown. This feud continued post-show with a food fight in the hotel. Prince made Morris Day pay for the damages. That’s not crazy at all.

The album itself is great. I am not a huge fan of the longer songs only because they are longer but other than that, I have no complaints. TLC did a nice cover of “Get It Up” if you want a different interpretation.  

Ditto Snoop Dogg’s cover of “Cool”. There is basically nothing not to like… except all the stories about Prince acting like a megalomaniac douchebag. 

https://open.spotify.com/album/6ydWIjC2UHYOWczdS2ilg0?si=hVFDU2DaSZC4zCqMeWen5A