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Brought to you by FUNKNSTUFF.NET and hosted by Scott Goldfine — musicologist and author of “Everything Is on THE ONE: The First Guide of Funk” ― “TRUTH IN RHYTHM” is the interview show that gets DEEP into the pocket with contemporary music’s foremost masters of the groove.
Featured in TIR Episode 45 (Part 1 of 2): Keyboardist-composer-producer Monte Moir, best known for being one of the original members of Prince’s dazzling protege funk band The Time. Moir, along with Morris Day, Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, and Jesse and Jellybean Johnson, were the killer lineup associated with two amazing albums of the early 1980s — an eponymous debut and What Time Is It? — and then 1990’s reunion set, Pandemonium, and 2011’s Condensate using the pseudonym The Original Seven. Prince apparently blocked them from using The Time name, for what was otherwise a surprisingly terrific album that rates as one of the best funk releases this decade. Among The Time’s classic tracks are “Get It Up,” “Cool,” “Wild and Loose,” “777-9311,” “The Walk,” “Gigolos Get Lonely Too,” and without Moir “Jungle Love” and “The Bird.”
While Prince wrote and performed much of The Time’s first two records the band proved itself in performance and style as a super-tight, incredibly entertaining and funky act in its own right. And over the years the magnitude of the talent within its ranks made itself known as all members went on to great success outside the group.
Here is Moir in his Minneapolis-area home studio to discuss The Time’s glory years, how they splintered just as they were rising to superstardom, and subsequent reunions and ongoing challenges; his experiences with and perspective on Prince; his subsequent work with Jam and Lewis on big hits for the likes of Alexander O’Neal, Janet Jackson, Cherelle and others; his nearly 25 years since the 1990s back with Morris Day in The Time’s current touring lineup; and what he is up to today.
WHAT TIME IS IT? It’s time to get M-O-I-R’d!
Recorded March 2018