"Move over baby, gimme the keys ..."

Prince died this past Thursday. I heard about it on the way back from lunch with my neighbor, Nancy, a freelancer who coincidentally is working in the same 83-floor office building as I do. She prefers her coffee from Caffe Rom, not Starbucks. While her order was being prepared, the counter girl started telling me about Prince. She said it with such urgency. it was like she was handing off plutonium. I was surprised that someone so young (late teens?) cared so much. She was more upset about it than I was, and I'd lived Prince's 80s heyday.

I can't claim to be much of a fan. I have just six Prince songs on my iPod. "When Doves Cry," "Purple Rain," "1999," "Kiss," "Let's Go Crazy" and my favorite, "Little Red Corvette." It's that last one that is etched indelibly in my consciousness.

When it was popular, I was in the first flush of a very passionate and ultimately very destructive affair and that song summed the powerful lust that had overtaken me. It was reckless and distracting. We couldn't keep our hands off each other. I remember that spring was unusually warm and we did it everywhere. And that song seemed to be playing everywhere -- in bars, from passing cars (radio still mattered back then), through open windows, in the bars, in my head.

A 12" single! Remember them?

Then there was "So Emotional." That relationship devolved into something very unhealthy very quickly. We were still lovers but no longer friends. The affection dissipated but the lust remained. By the time Whitney's song had taken over the airwaves and the jukeboxes (jukeboxes still mattered then), this was who we were. "I remember the way we touched, I wish I didn't like it so much ..."

So when I see that meme that's going around of Bowie and Prince, meeting up in heaven for a super jam, I shake my head. You guys have it wrong. In my celestial 80s oldies concert, Prince opens for Whitney.