Prince - Purple Rain

Movie soundtracks in the 80's all together were just so good. I would say my brother Mike was THE biggest Prince fan. (Although when you're only 5, you don't know that many people.) I distinctly remember his Purple Rain poster hanging up in his room. I saw this movie on VHS when I was a kid, but I had no understanding of it at all. As an initiation ritual... to "Purify your body in the waters of Lake Minnetonka" was just a hilarious practical joke.

MORE PRANKS
Another antagonizing joke my brothers took from the movie was to drive away a little bit when someone riding along is trying to open the car door to get in. Prince did this to a girl with his motorcycle, and it was pretty funny. Unrelated to Prince, my brothers would beep the horn if you walked across the front of the car. I've gotten people with that joke, and it startles the living crap out of people. :)

IS PRINCE WEIRD?
Prince seemed like a weirdo, but he fit right in with other rockers like Kiss, Nugent, or Van Halen where they all put on some sort of "act." It's hard to explain unless you lived through it. The 80's seemed to be very accepting of musical artists that were "unique." In contrast, the 90's that followed were more about fitting specific mold. Prince was the embodiment of purple from then on. Guys and purple? Prince made it work. This was WAY before all the Prince drama. This was back when Prince was THE MAN. Women wanted to be with him and in effect guys wanted to BE him.

MOTORCYCLES
Despite Prince's superstar persona, there was only one thing about him that could have been cooler. Growing up, I noticed Prince drove a Kawasaki motorcycle. I grew up in a Harley family, and it seemed wrong that a big rock star would be on anything BUT a Harley. Kawasaki had this commercial with a theme song "Kawasaki - Let the good times roll" and my brothers (in Weird Al fashion) effectively changed the words to "Kawasaki makes the junkyards grow."

GUITARS & BASKETBALL
Prince is probably one of the most underrated guitarists of all time. The guy shreds. And according to Charlie Murphy (Eddie Murphy's brother) he's pretty good as basketball too. : )

In the mid-2000's, Eddie Murphy's brother was an actor/comedian on the Comedy Central's Chappelle Show. There was a really funny skit series they did called Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood Stories... or something like that. Charlie Murphy would tell all these crazy stories about being in Eddie Murphy's entourage, and the friends / situations he got into. They were hilarious... almost too crazy to be true. But when you consider the people in these stories, they're probably not embellished at all. One of the funniest ones was his story about Prince.