Today, we’re continuing our 6 Degrees game with The List (see Part 1 here). And, again, because we’re doing a bit of a Prince-theme and will be timing the end of this series (Part 8) to land on the (8th) anniversary of him leaving us (April 21), we’ll be picking out some fun Prince-connections in/below each set.

Okay, here we go, carrying on from where we left off last time, i.e., the Medicine Singers’ self-titled album…

6 Degrees of Separation: Maja Ratkje to R.E.M.

Maja Ratkje – Voice (list number 221)
>> One of the collaborators on the Medicine Singers album from Part 1 is Ikue Mori, who has also collaborated with Maja Ratkje. Ratkje also appears on a 5+ hour-long Norwegian tribute to Prince compilation with…

Ulver – Shadows Of The Sun (188)
…Ulver. Christian Fennesz (or, “Fennesz”), who appears on this Ulver album, also collaborated a number of times (e.g., here) with…

Jim O’Rourke – I’m Happy, And I’m Singing, And A 1, 2, 3, 4 (226)
…Jim O’Rourke, who, from 1999 to 2005, was in…

Sonic Youth – Daydream Nation (835)
…Sonic Youth, whose Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo were at some point in the Glenn Branca Ensemble, as was Tim Sommer who then formed…

Hugo Largo – Mettle (116)
…Hugo Largo, whose first album was produced by…

R.E.M. – Automatic For The People (290)
…Michael Stipe of R.E.M. <<

Prince 6

Though we don’t have a Prince album in today’s list, here are some fun connections the above artists have to The Purple One:

• As mentioned above, there’s a 5.5 hour long compilation featuring Norwegian artists (including Maja Ratkje and Ulver) from a wide variety of genres covering Prince! Put out in 2008, this 5-CD box set, called Shockadelica: 50th Anniversary Tribute To The Artist Known As Prince, was released in honour of Prince’s 50th birthday, and was limited to 5000 copies. Available digitally: Songwhip.
  • Maja Ratkje’s contribution, which is the 1st song on the compilation, is a cover of “Solo” from Prince’s Come album.
  • Ulver’s contribution is a cover of “Thieves in the Temple” from Prince’s Graffiti Bridge album.
• R.E.M. recorded their Out of Time album at Prince’s Paisley Park (Youtube).
• R.E.M. and Prince were both on Warner Brothers around the same time. In a 2016 interview on Alec Baldwin’s “Here’s The Thing” podcast, Michael Stipe mentioned that, because R.E.M. owned their own masters when at WB but Prince didn’t, Prince “always hated me for that”.
• From an interview between supermodel Helena Christensen and Michael Stipe:
  • HC: “If you could save one song in the world from being turned into a ringtone, which would song would you choose?”
  • MS: “Probably ‘Purple Rain’ by Prince, because that would sound absolutely horrible as a ring tone.”
• Prince’s Lovesexy album came out the same year as Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation: 1988.

Tune in on Saturday for Part 3, to see how we get from R.E.M. to Tagaq!

https://1001otheralbums.com/2024/04/11/6-degrees-of-separation-part-2/