More Prince, and Coast to Coast AM

I was numb all day yesterday. I just couldn't believe it was true. I did my duty though. I wrote about it here, and I wrote about it on Biff Bam Pop! right here, and even did a short episode of The GAR! Podcast on it found here and here. I had to leave the South Jersey Writers' Group's Open House last night early because I was just worn out, and who knows, just maybe a bit depressed as well. When I got home, MTV was playing Prince videos, and then Purple Rain, still I was devastated, but unfeeling really. But it didn't really hit me that Prince was gone, until I was in bed listening to my nighttime nemesis Coast to Coast AM.

I had tuned in to the later half of the program, which sometimes, if we're lucky, will have some content of what Coast to Coast AM used to be known for. Otherwise it's typical radio drivel, the same old same old. Coast used to be unique, now for the most part, it's boring. But every once in a while, we old fans will get a scrap of what used to be. The guest last night was rock historian R. Gary Patterson. And of course the king of no-research, host George Noory.

Now I don't blame Patterson for saying it was Vanity was in Purple Rain instead of Apollonia, that's an easy mistake, especially for someone who admittedly had only a passing knowledge of Prince. He was a bit after the man's time, and Patterson does know his stuff when it comes to older rock stars and their mysterious deaths - I bow to him in that area.

It was George that infuriated. I can understand if he didn't do any show prep. Noory never does any show prep, no matter what he says. He comes in to interviews as empty-headed as he leaves, as if his mind was a sieve. Perhaps that's why details of Prince's life, that had to have been all over the news all freaking day, somehow eluded him. Yeah, he asked all the stupid questions that that seemingly unique person who had never heard of Prince would ask.

I was embarrassed for the guest, I was angry at Noory, and that's when it hit me, that's when the tears came. We've lost Prince, as surely as we've lost Coast to Coast AM, and David Bowie… Prince is gone. And when people stop talking, and when the radio and TV stop playing, he will still be gone. And, anger at a lousy dying radio show aside, I will still be mourning.