PRINCE Parade

Stung by the critics, March 1986 saw the Purple One come back swinging with this sporadically brilliant curio that — "Kiss" aside — you've probably forgotten

- BY HENRY YATES

PARADE BEGAN WITH a bruised ego. Two years earlier, in 1984, the 25-million-selling Purple Rain had set a sky-high bar. Now, the critical consensus was that Prince had fumbled the followup with Around the World in a Day. “A not very convincing approximation of McCartney-esque Beatles innocence,” sniffed John Rockwell of The New York Times, “clashing egregiously with his own image of defensive arrogance...”

While a lesser artist would retreat to lick their wounds, the Minneapolis peacock was so headspinningly prolific in that period — he fired out albums at one-year intervals all through the Eighties — that Parade arrived almost immediately to course-correct his career. In fact, flanked by his band of the era, the Revolution, Prince was spilling over with ideas to the extent that he reportedly sketched Parade’s four opening tracks — “Christopher Tracy's Parade,” “New Position,” “I Wonder U" and “Under the Cherry Moon” — in a single session.

The received wisdom is that Prince stepped away from the guitars on