Sheila E.
 |
She wants to lead the glamorous life —Sheila E., "The Glamorous Life"
|
 |
Drumming runs pretty big in Sheila Escovedo's family: her father Pete is a famous percussionist, her uncle Alejandro drummed for various punk bands before starting a solo career, her other uncle Coke played with Santana, her other other uncle Javier founded the seminal punk band The Zeros, and Tito Puente was her godfather.
It's little surprise then that Sheila took up drumming and quickly became really good at it, playing with such luminaries as George Duke, Marvin Gaye, Alphonso Johnson, Herbie Hancock and Lionel Richie before her early twenties.
Prince first met Sheila E. when attending a concert where she was playing with her dad. He quickly brought her into her entourage, where she contributed drums and percussion in the studio and provided vocals to "Let's Go Crazy"'s famous B-side, "Erotic City" (and some other vocals here and there, like the "transmississippirap" on "It's Gonna Be a Beautiful Night"). She secured herself the position of drummer for Prince after The Revolution disbanded, but left Prince in 1989 due to a collapsed lung. This split has notably been free of the really bad blood that other splits engendered, and the two have collaborated occasionally to this day.
While Sheila did attract attention for her vocals on "Erotic City", she quickly proved she was not another Vanity: while Prince did produce her first two solo albums, she got some co-writing credits and added her drumming all over the place. Most notably, Sheila at first broke from the very explicit "personas" that had been assumed by Prince's previous Girl Groups: her lyrics were decidedly PG-rated, dealing with love (not Intercourse with You, at least not yet) and sung in a pleasant, girl-next-door voice. In fact, many of the funk-pop songs existed solely for the sake of lots and lots of percussion solos. Nobody seemed to mind though. These two albums, The Glamorous Life and Romance 1600, were well-received and spawned two really long hits, the super-catchy ditty about how materialism's, like, superficial, man, "The Glamorous Life" (9 minutes) and a duet with Prince entitled "A Love Bizarre" (12 minutes!). Prince was noticeably less involved with Sheila E., letting David Z. produce the album and writing only a few songs.
Sheila's solo albums after leaving Prince's organisation were New Sound Albums somewhat, introducing Latin and jazz influences into her upbeat pop-funk. She took a long break from her solo career after the horribly-titled Sex Cymbal, presumably out of embarassment that she put out an album titled Sex Cymbal[1], and played with various other musicians (including being part of three versions of Ringo Starr's All-Starr Band). She also reunites with Prince every once in a while for live concerts and contributed to his album 3121.
- The Glamorous Life (1984)
- Romance 1600 (1985)
- Sheila E. (1987)
- Sex Cymbal (1991)
- Writes of Passage (2000)
- Heaven (2001)
- Epic Rocking: "The Glamorous Life", "Oliver's House", "A Love Bizarre", all of which fall squarely into Ear Worm territory.
- Foil: She played this role in the All-Starr Band concerts, especially during the solos where Ringo would comically fail to keep up with her.
- Incredibly Lame Pun: Sex Cymbal, so bad it hurts.
- Piss-Take Rap: Averted - her Motor Mouth reading of Edward Lear's "The Table and the Chair" on "It's Gonna Be a Beautiful Night" is actually good. (The liner notes credit it as "transmississippirap" since Prince recorded her doing it over the phone from, well, the other side of the Mississippi River.)
- Self-Titled Album: Interestingly, done for the third album.
- Spoken Word in Music: "Toy Box". It sounds like a normal funk song at first, and then right at the end Sheila blind-sides you with a long, shouty rant that makes you wonder who spiked her coffee and with what.
- Word Salad Lyrics: "Dear Michaelangelo", "Toy Box", "Romance 1600" and "Bedtime Story" have a special ability to make you scratch your head and go "huh?".
- Word Salad Title: "Merci for the Speed of a Mad Clown in the Summer"... what?
- You Make Me Sic: Michelangelo, not Michaelangelo.[2]