prince

Yes, LCD is a good call

I actually don't know if sheila e being a major crush for me as a teenager is making me overrate her as a drummer but I'm going to say no

Batman is largely done using preset sounds on the Roland D-50 iirc which was a very popular kinda hybrid sampler-synth

👍🎹🥁

I wish he did more songs like alphabet street actually. Prince in ultra sparse mode is usually incredible.

yeah he's great on the Linn obv! but he stuck to that one machine

Although, by 1987 and Sign o' the Times he was often using his Fairlight to program his backbeats. Certainly on the title track.

Shame he never found a new machine after the 80s ended.

Lots of Fairlight on Parade and SOTT.

a lot of people think of "slow love" as the worst song on here but from an arrangement perspective it's one of the best. so many gorgeous things happening at once by the end. i didn't get a chance to talk about the remaster (which is necessary and valuable just because it replaces the old digital version, which had remastered singles sitting alongside unremastered album tracks, disjointed and horrible, the digital music revolution wasn't worth it, etc.) but it in particular benefits from the raised detail

Slow love is wondrous. So lovely and detailed. Even his vocal sounding a boy detached seems to make it better.

Yeah it’s the zenith of that dreamy orchestral style he was shooting for on Parade

Yep, Slow Love is pure chills-down-the-spine soul. One of the best songs on the album

'Yeah it’s the zenith of that dreamy orchestral style he was shooting for on Parade'

check out the 86 version of old friends for sale.
unbelievable that he never released it (only the weaker, 90s re-recording made it out)

a lot of the outtakes have really generic late 80s production/sounds that are quite annoying i find. cocoa boys has a cool u got the look type of synth running through it, but otherwise sounds a bit sterile. and that version of i need a man, is just monotonous, though i guess it has the novelty of hearing prince appearing to sing to another man. i hate soul psychodelicide, its the kind of thing thats cool live, but on record, gets repetitive. id rather they put other outtakes on here instead. most of prince's instrumentals kinda suck (though and that says what isnt bad).

still, just having all my dreams here, is almost worth the price of the whole thing.

prefer an allusion to soul psychedelicide in "Joy in Repetition."

Cocoa boys is like a less good battle of the bands type of joy in repetition narrative song. I found myself giving zero fucks about the story in it

One thing about several of these songs is they have a lot more extended sections compared to anything he released after 1999. Sometimes, I don't really need all that, though I so love the 12" version of wonderful day (a rare prince song where the snares aren't all on the bloody 2 and 4 for once) and I actually think one of the best things on here is the shep remix of strange relationship, to my surprise. He really made it a bit special.

The edit of crystal ball really was a good idea too. Well done prince. Makes the song much more focused and teasing rather than 'where TFare they going with this' as with the long version

Yeah, I noticed most of the outtakes, as thrilling as they are, went on a minutes more than necessary at least (e.g. " “Adonis and Bathsheba" "Walkin' in Glory").

Yeah, prince usually kept things to the point, or in my view, was better when doing that (by and large), so many of these songs, even all my dreams I hate to say, could use an edit. Some of the extended sections are either unnecessary or just a bit indulgent. Fun for the band I'm sure, but that's it. I think I've overdosed on prince with this set. Starting to get irritated with prince-isms. Need to escape the oppressive all engulfing nature of the super deluxe edition bulky mass

Fantastic review, Brad.

Lovesexy was my first Prince LP, and many days it remains my favourite.

each of the outtakes should be 20 minutes long imo

i vote 60 mins.

Drums aren't Prince's strongest instrument obv, but he's great as a drummer with no technique but his immense sense of groove & composition. Lady Cab Driver is my fav, playing over the drum machine. I remember an old interview with him in Modern Drummer where he talked about starting tracks with the drum machine and then overdubbing live percussion until it felt good & human.

Also there's nothing wrong with that Sheila E solo imo, although arena drum solos are dumb anyway and it's mostly the sound that makes it sound a little rough (it's pretty hilarious honestly, the very tight/thin drum sound + the sound engineer turning the gated reverb on and off).

I wish he did more songs like alphabet street actually. Prince in ultra sparse mode is usually incredible

The spine of the song - vocals, rhythm guitar, drum machine - is sparse enough, but this is where he really starts to go overboard in layering stuff on top and imo ends up busier than anything on SOTT bar maybe “Play In The Sunshine”

One of the attractions of SOTT is hearing the restraint and his confidence in the bones of the material; Lovesexy has its merits imo but it’s certainly nothing to do with that

Alphabet st only gets busy in its second part. The first part (the single version) is perfectly minimal. But yeah prince was really good at stripping out superfluous parts. Maybe that's a James brown trick he applied to songs that had nothing to do with jb.

discovered an old cd single by pj harvey and josh homme which has a cover of 'it' on there. musically its great, a sort of sludgy stomp, but when josh homme starts singing, sounding devoid of any actual sexual impulse, and like he is just bored being there, you realise just how much of princes music is really all about his voice, his persona, etc. plenty of his songs just dont work in other artists hands for that reason (as well as the fact they just deliver poor vocals).

Another thing about Prince songs, which becomes really clear when my brass band has thought about doing instrumental arrangements, is how many of them A) have a melody that's more or less one note, at least in the verses, and B) have the exact same melody for the verse and chorus, just different lyrics.

Nothing wrong with that, it's just very depending on lyrics and delivery. It's also very different to, say, MJ's music, which works perfectly for horns because every section is distinct and identifiable regardless of lyrics.

thats interesting. i was actually going to add to my last post that sometimes i wonder if princes songs arent musically all that comple/interesting from a compositional point (i can only play drums half-decently though so i dont know much about playing them on other instruments), just because most covers of his music really suck, and its HIM that makes them so good as recordings.

A) have a melody that's more or less one note, at least in the verses, and B) have the exact same melody for the verse and chorus, just different lyrics.

immediately thought of "i wanna be your lover" here, but yeah a lot of his songs do this, which isn't a problem in his hands because he was a master of melodic rhythm and phrasing.

Yeah IWBYL was my main candidate (and I'd say that's not a super representative Prince song, as great as it is). There are others of course, but it's surprising how many of them don't work as instrumentals, especially among the hits.

I Would Die 4 U is another one that immediately comes to mind.

to my ears, the verses of i would die 4 u and the chorus do not sound alike?

They don't, although the verse is a classic one-note Prince verse. Reductively the vocal lines are very blocky, square phrases, but when all the elements come together it's amazing.

the verses are pretty much the same note with occasional variations (and the added harmony in the 2nd verse). there is more variation in the chorus but it ultimately comes back to the same note, especially on emphasized “YOU”, making it the focal point again (since the verses are about him, not “you”) to an amazing effect.

I missed out didn’t I
Deluxe CD edition seems pretty scarce

Looks like Amazon still has all versions still available.

ugh

*dances with devil*

I know. I did hesitate to post that. You're right though, it doesn't look like it's very available elsewhere.

im selling mine.
will copy the discs then sell them on.
dont see the point in keeping it just for a book i will prob never read more than once (and dont actually see the point of - its just a massively padded out booklet), if that, and a huge box.
i already own the original album on all 3 formats!

https://lithub.com/prince-was-one-of-the-loneliest-souls-ive-ever-met/

Thanks for that link. I’ll read karlen’s book

Those beck covers of prince at paisley last year are uniformly poor. Just saw them.

More sott formats for rsd in case you need to buy it again -
https://recordstoreday.com/SpecialRelease/13269

That Karlen thing above and the extract from his book over on Rolling Stone seem really padded-out and poorly written.

agree

Anyone read the Duane tudahl book on 83/84? I was kind of interested but the way it has prince quotes scattered throughout rather than just focus on session notes made me put it down after a while. Glad someone has done this kind of book but idk, it seems more to piece together the geneology or chronology of the songs rather than any details on tur actual material?

finally diving into the SOTT super deluxe and how does this thing slap so hard for 8 hours lol

that guitar solo on "crucial"! the backwards "a place in heaven"! the entirety of "when the dawn of the morning comes"!

really happy to hear a good quality version of “train”, that song rules