The Origin of Weekend Prince

photo by Bret Pittman

It is generally believed that the origin of Weekend Prince lies in the confluence of the impact of the beloved web TV show 'yacht rock' and the name of a certain over-the-counter sexual supplement.

While these are undoubtedly keystones in the formation of WP, they must be understood not as the foundation, the first and oldest chunks of stone, but as the sort of accidental lightning that awaken a lost, unconscious force. But even to say they awakened this force is to speak falsely. This force was never sleeping, because it was never awake, because it never was born until it was born again. This intervention that re-ignites a past that never was is what Walter Benjamin calls redemption.

The primal scene of Weekend Prince is on a small leisure boat operating at cruising speed at night just off the coast of Maui. My parents, the reader should understand, took their children to Maui countless times. My childhood is so marked by the manicured golf courses, the condos, the crystal waters and virginal sand, the happy fish playing among the coral, that for years I surprised to learn that my contemporaries did not identify. As if until the age of six my parents had taught me to count in base six and upon my first day of school I realize with cold shock that the world is in base ten.

On the boat with a handful of other tourists. That gentle, free air of white middle class paradise. The warm wind, the calm, loving water. The smooth grooves on the boombox, which, my mother learns from the captain, is the title song to a film, 'Lily Was Here', by Dave Stewart, performed with saxophonist Candy Dulfer.

It is literally the smoothest song ever. It is just so smooth in that button-down 80s way, you can't f**k with it. You can't f**k with it but you can imagine being fifteen and hearing it for the first time at night on a boat with your family on vacation in Hawaii. And your mother, who loves jazz and all music passionately, and who once asked you if John Coltrane was black, goes and finds the soundtrack and plays it all the time, and it's one of those songs you secretly like but you'd never admit it, because you're fifteen and you listen to Bad Religion and wear Doc Martens, even though you are like, maybe the least hard dude in the entire suburban high school you have just started attending.

You will note that 'Lily Was Here' is included in the latest Weekend Prince mix, The Casual Wizard.

It is a secret Beardo Disco jam of the highest order, and it is presented to you in video and audio forms below.

Dave Stewart and Candy Dulfer - Lily Was Here