Sometimes It Snows In April

I've never been a real big Prince fan, but I must admit that he did indirectly touch my life with his life work and the day he passed away I was walking Australia's highest peak, Mount Kosciuszko, because it usually doesn't snow in April up there, and I was reminded by a sign while walking up the mountain that everything is connected.

A sign?

Mount Kosciuszko when it is snowing.

A sign? 
Everything is connected?!

The fool on the hill at the top of Oz, April 21

Proof that I was up on Mount Kosciuszko on the 21st of April, 2016.

Technically even though it was April 21st where I was, it was still April 20th in Prince's part of the world, so he hadn't passed away yet. 
In Australia, it is Autumn/Fall in April, not Spring like it is in Prince's part of the planet, so snow season is right around the corner in Australia.
The day I made it to the top it was 0 degrees Celsius with a chill wind blowing.
With the Fool card in the tarot being numbered 0 the joke wasn't lost on me.
I may not be that smart, but I am a Fool;-)  

A German sync-head wrote a very good post about a Prince film I had never watched before called, 'Under the Cherry Moon'.

But being a Spurs fan I wish he had of left out the Leicester City stuff in his post:-( 

I had recently had the pleasure of seeing Tom Jones play live at Bluesfest in March on Easter Monday and one of my favourite songs that he sings is 'Kiss', which of course is a Prince song.
Tom sang that song at Bluesfest to the delight of the crowd, including me.

Tom Jones on stage Easter Monday, 2016

Easter Monday at Bluesfest 2016

Tom Jones at Bluesfest 2016

Tom would lose his wife in April 2016, eleven days before Prince would also pass.
And in another bizarre twist Tom Jones and Prince share the same birthdate of June 7th.
7 also happens to be my life-path number.

Black star?

 Jones was awarded an OBE in 1999 and received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II for "services to music" in 2006.

Another black star passed away in April also, and perhaps the hit he was known best for was 'When a Man Loves a Woman'.

Released April 16, 1966

Percy Sledge passed away of liver cancer at his home in Baton Rouge on April 14, 2015.

Blackstar?

Hmm ... (Major Tom?)Jones and liver cancer ... where have I heard that combination this year?

Oddly enough, I posted on April (Fools' Day) 1st about meeting a singer named Darren Hart who plays under the stage name Harts.
Easter Saturday at Bluesfest 2016

Prince flew him over once to play for him, because Prince thought that Darren reminded him of himself when he was just starting out in the music business.

A road-trip and owls?!

That road sign on the CD cover is a sign with the number 23 on it, and to go from Canberra to Mount Kosciuszko I had to take route 23.

Route 23 from Canberra to Oz's highest point

Is that an owl on the cover of Darren's CD, or am I just dreaming?-)
What Do Owls Have to Crow About?-)

Looking at the Daydreamer tracks above and seeing song number 8, 'Feather', I thought it was rather synchy that a crow feather would blow onto my jeans leg as I was walking back down the mountain.

23 views?!

On the Road with Corvids

"The Black Album, originally titled The Funk Bible, is the sixteenth studio album by American recording artist Prince. 
It was released on November 22, 1994 by Warner Bros. Records. 
The album was originally planned for release on December 7, 1987, as the follow-up to Sign o' the Times and was to appear in an entirely black sleeve with no title or even a credit to Prince; hence it was referred to as The Black Album. 
Dubbed The Funk Bible by preceding press releases, and in a hidden message within the album itself, the work seemed to be a reaction to criticism that Prince had become too pop-oriented. 
It was his attempt to regain his African-American audience. 

16th album? 2016?

The album was withdrawn a week before its release date, and was replaced with the album Lovesexy, a brighter pop-oriented album with elements of religious affirmation. 
Just before The Black Album was released to the market, Prince recalled all copies and abandoned the entire project, leaving roughly 100 European promotional copies in circulation, and several American copies that would be widely bootlegged in the coming years. Several reasons, including speculative ones, have been given as to why the release was derailed:
Prince became convinced that the album was evil or represented an ominous portent.
Prince experienced a crisis of conscience and marketing identity over the eroticism and violence of its lyrics.  
Warner Bros. Records, his record label, reached the same conclusion.
Further evidence that Prince felt The Black Album was a mistake was that in his first music video of his next album, "Alphabet St.", the video can be paused after it shows him holding a cane (about 0:24 seconds) and the words "Don't buy The Black Album. I'm sorry" can be read running vertically.
Prince decided to scrap the album after an experiment with the drug Ecstasy that resulted in a bad trip. 
Former Prince associates have confirmed the Ecstasy story.
Immediately after the decision to pull The Black Album from stores, the album emerged on the streets in bootleg form, arguably becoming popular music's most legendary bootleg since  
The Beach Boys aborted 1967 album Smile. 

Several celebrities, including U2's frontmen The Edge and Bono, cited it as one of their favorite albums of 1988  
(Rolling Stone magazine celebrity poll)."
I thought it was interesting that in the Wiki article above The Beach Boys abandoned album 'Smile' was mentioned, as Brian Wilson performed the Pet Sounds album before Tom Jones hit the same stage at Bluesfest Easter Monday, 2016. 

Brian Wilson at Bluesfest 2016.

"Smile (occasionally typeset as SMiLE) was a projected album by American rock band the Beach Boys intended to follow their 11th studio album, Pet Sounds (1966). 
After bandleader Brian Wilson abandoned large portions of music recorded over a ten-month period, the band substituted its release with Smiley Smile (1967), an album containing stripped-down remakes of some Smile material."

Smile?
Batman vs Joker?
Prince?

I heard about Prince's passing on Friday morning the day after I had climbed the mountain and when I was leaving town to head back up highway 23 I stopped in the Jindabyne and bought a few things and one thing that caught my eye was a purple dancing skeleton bookmark they were selling ... and it had nothing to do with Prince's passing, as these were on sale at the shop when I got there on Wednesday.

The weird thing also is that on Wednesday night I saw 'Batman vs Superman' in the cinema that is attached to the shop the bookmark was sold in. 

And of course, Diana PRINCE is Wonder Woman in 'Batman vs Superman' .

424?

424s Again 
Then in Tamworth on Saturday I found a purple cup at the Golden Guitar. 

The Golden Guitar in Tamworth,
NSW, Australia.

Pop Culture and Synchronicity on the Road

The Gold Experience

"The Gold Experience is the seventeenth studio album by American recording artist Prince.
It was produced entirely by Prince and released on September 26, 1995. 
The album charted at number 6 on the Billboard 200 and number 2 on the Top R&B Albums. The singles "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World", "I Hate U", and "Gold" charted on the Billboard Hot 100 at numbers 3, 12, and 88 respectively."

Prince's Yellow Cloud Guitar at the
Smithsonian Institution Building

July 2016 will mark the 30th anniversary of Under the Cherry Moon, so maybe that's a good excuse for another party?

Purple Reign?

And the Joker strikes again, with me having never seen snow in my lifetime, the area I walked on April 21st would be covered in snow for the first time this year on my ex-wife's birthday, May 11th.
First significant snowfalls recorded at New South Wales ski resorts
Which kind of feels appropriate when it comes to a woman with a heart as cold as hers;-)