Persuasion Bleach

The original live recording of Purple Rain

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After Prince died in 2016, a bunch of Prince videos suddenly flooded onto YouTube. These included both the legit, MTV videos, which Prince wasn’t allowing on YouTube before, as well as crazy bootleg recordings of various Prince concerts.

Among these, you can now find the original live recording of Purple Rain.

​​It turns out the album version, the same one that’s in the movie, was really recorded live in 1983 at a benefit concert in Minneapolis. I find this pretty incredible — but it’s a testament to how tight of a band Prince ran and how crazy talented they all were.

I think there are a bunch of persuasion and influence lessons that could be squeezed out of this whole story and the live performance that Prince and the Revolution put on. ​​But for today, I want to give the persuasion stuff a bit of a break — something I called “persuasion bleach” in an earlier email.

Instead, I just want to share with you the original live recording of Purple Rain.

​​If you’re not a Prince fan, this probably won’t be meaningful to you and you will want to pass. ​But if you do like Prince or at least his particular song, then this original version is definitely worth a look and listen. ​​Here it is if you’re curious:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE8gScJGfa4

2 theories about the turkey and its name

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There are two theories how the turkey got its name:

Theory one says that confused colonizers thought the turkey, originally a native of Mexico, was a type of guinea fowl, which Turkish merchants were already selling in Europe.

Theory two says that the turkey traveled around the world before making its way to England, where it was imported by Middle Eastern poultry peddlers.

Either way, the beast became known as a turkey cock or turkey hen. Eventually we dropped the cock and the hen, got out the cranberry sauce, and the party started.

I bring this up because today is Thanksgiving, and everybody in the marketing space is sending out emails and writing Facebook posts saying, “I’m grateful for you, dear reader.”

Perhaps they really are grateful. Perhaps it’s just the pilgrim bandwagon everybody has to jump on. “You gotta build a relationship with your subscribers!”

Which reminds me of something I read from Travis Sago. Travis is a very successful marketer and one of the very best at building a relationship online with a bunch of people who don’t really know him. Says Travis,

“You don’t make friends by dropping off Encyclopedia Britannica’s at somebody’s house.”

My gut feeling is that you don’t make friends by sending out emails either, as long as their gist is, “I’m so grateful for you, and here’s a coupon for 10% off.”

But what do I know. Maybe I’m all messed up in the head. Maybe I’m just envious, and irritable because I’m dreaming of the pounds and pounds of turkey cock, the ladles of mashed potatoes, the fat slices of pumpkin pie many people will be eating today.

(Where I live it’s unfortunately not a tradition, although I did develop a Thanksgiving tooth during my long life in the US.)

Anyways, if you are celebrating today, happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy your feast. And we will get back to our regular relationship-building program tomorrow.

Persuasion bleach

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About a week ago, I decided to make some changes to these posts and as the first step, I made a list of possible topics to cover in the future. The list starts with…

a the basics of persuasion
b marketing
c comedy
d magic

… then it keeps going with 20-odd topics and finally concludes with…

w political systems
x physical violence
y cults
z competitive debate

All that is good and wohl. But honestly, I find it exhausting to constantly harp on about influence and persuasion and manipulation of one form or another. It needs a break on occasion, at least once or twice per woman’s cycle.

After all, the world is a big place, filled with sociologists and ballet dancers and urban planners and radiologists. Many of these are smart and good people, even though they’ve never heard of Gary Halbert. What are they all doing?

I don’t know. But I can tell you what a group of volunteers is doing in Kuterevo, Croatia. Kuterevo is in the Lika region of Croatia, which is the wooded, hilly, and deserted center of the country. And you know what you get in wooded, hilly, deserted areas? That’s right, bears.

So if you can find your way to Kuterevo, you can visit the Kuterevo bear sanctuary. This is apparently not a zoo, but a large enclosure, consisting of rescued or orphaned bears, living in pretty much their native habitat, except their basic needs, such as honey pots and picnic baskets, are taken care of. And according to Lonely Planet:

“From spring to late autumn, volunteers will happily take you around the large enclosures, explaining the history of each bear and touching on the wider issues of bear conservation. Your best chance of seeing the bears in an active state is in the couple of hours before sunset.”

So there you go. A bi-weekly dose of completely different content to bleach out the deep stains that persuasion and influence can leave over time. Maybe your brain needed it. Mine certainly did.