“Why Should You Wait Any Longer?”—Getting Back On Track

It’s always humbling and terrifying when I post a new blog entry—especially after being inactive for some time. I am not off to a very good start toward my goal of regular blogging in 2012, but there’s still time!

Obviously, I need to create a schedule. I’ve decided to devote each Saturday to research, and I will summarize my progress/findings in a weekly Monday blog post (eventually, I want to work up to more than one post per week).

So, what’s new? Well, in my absence, I’ve continued my freelance writing, and I got a full-time job managing social media for a customer relationship management company. The position has kept me quite busy, but I hope to apply what I’m learning to my Prince-related social media efforts. I’d like to get more involved with fansites prince.org and princefams.com; podcasts Purple Knights and Peach & Black ; and Prince-related Twitter personalities like @drfunkenberry and @2_tha_9s. If you have any suggestions of others to follow, please let me know!

In terms of interviews, I tried contacting Denise Matthews (a.k.a. Vanity of the Prince-created girl group "Vanity 6") multiple times. Prince’s former press agent Howard Bloom considered Matthews a friend, and suggested that mentioning that I’d interviewed him may help. Unfortunately, she has not responded, and I don’t expect her to. She didn’t respond to Alex Hahn for his biography on Prince; I just don’t think she talks to the press about Prince. Besides, she probably has to parcel out her time carefully; she still does dialysis three times per week, according to her website.

I’m getting a bit anxious about talking to Larry Graham. I’ve been in touch with his management for over a year now. We haven’t been able to set anything up. I know he’s been busy with his “Funk Around the World” tour. Hopefully we’ll get in touch when that winds down.

I was happy to locate producer Chris Moon and engineer Steve Fontano
online. As most Prince fans know, they worked on the artist’s first album. I’d love to interview them. I’m also planning to contact guitarist Mike Scott, who played guitar with Prince during the “Musicology” era.

I was most excited to learn that Jill Jones, Prince’s backup singer during the 1980s is following me on Twitter! I hope to talk to her. I may be wrong about this, but I don’t think she has given any extensive interviews about Prince in recent years.

I’m going to choose one day per week to write interview questions for a few people before I contact them. As I learned from contacting Roberta Burroughs to schedule an
interview a couple months ago, some people may be ready to talk on the spot!

I’ll let you know what happens!

Peace y’all. Stay funky!

Follow me on Twitter: @miss_ethompson