On today's show:

Behind the board with His Purple Highness

(Starts at 8:30)

The recent release from Prince's archival tapes, “Piano and a Microphone 1983,” reveals the inner working of a musical genius. Even more demo tapes of a similar nature are expected to see the light of day in the near future. The Prince estate is sitting on a huge amount of recorded material, thanks to the diligent work of Prince’s recording engineers. Susan Rogers is a studio engineer and professor at Berklee College of Music and she worked with Prince between 1983 and 1987 — one of the musician's most iconic and prolific recording periods. When she spoke with The Frame’s John Horn, she discussed being an aspiring engineer in a male-dominated industry and how she found a welcome space at Paisley Park. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAxbwQNa15Q

Guitar center demonstrates some pluck

(Starts at 1:02)

Neil Young once sang that "rock and roll can never die." But what if there's nowhere to buy guitars? John talks with Andy Hermann of Billboard Magazine about how the landmark L.A. store, Guitar Center, is fighting to stay afloat.

Have poems, will travel

(Starts at 20:02)

Dana Gioia is California born and raised — a Hawthorne boy who went on to chair the National Endowment for the Arts for six years. And now, he’s wrapping up his time as California’s Poet Laureate. During his two-year term, his goal was to visit all 58 counties in the state. Much of that travel has been done via road trip. KPCC’s arts education reporter Carla Javier tagged along for one of the last legs of that journey.