prince

Pretty sure lovesexy will be rereleased but as an album that doesnt have any huge hits attached to it, it might be a while. Be cool to get the original versions of the songs though before prince went to town with his new studio though (you can hear the earlier versions on YouTube).

Interesting that as soon as he got PP up and running, his records became slicker and more polished (overproduced in some cases)

I love his Lovesexy demos. Many don’t seem overproduced and they date from ‘87-‘88 ish. Thinking of “Anna Stesia” in particular and “Positivity”.

here's that alan leeds quote -

"it would have had a bigger impact than either parade, sign, or lovesexy did. That doesn't mean it would have sold more, but to people who bought it, it would have meant more. its certainly a record people would either love or hate. and as such, it would have gotten an awful lot of conversation... i think the critics would have had a field day, arguing the pros and cons of the album and whether this was his move into the future, the next step in the evolution of prince the artist, or if it was just a sidetrack. pretend youre a critic in 1987 as this album comes out and youve never heard lovesexy or his subsequent work, are you going to sit there and say 'ok this is thew new prince, this is his next step, prince continues to lead pack in the the evolution of black music, he leads the way into the 90s with his take on hip hop'. or do we review this as a misguided sidestep from sombody who is not a hip hop artist but is trying to be? the critics would have had a ball... it would have been a kind of marker in a career, a turning point, for better or worse, at a time when he arguably needed one'

"Bob George" is the only essential TBA track, hence the only one I need, and I don't care for Lovesexy at all, the long mix of "I Wish U Heaven" excepted.

just reading that has forced me to grab it off the shelf to listen to 'Rockhard' and in my heart I need to believe you will also eventually consider that track essential

listen to the Thelonious horn line one more time and imagine how much fun that thing is to play, it goes everywhere

The distinctive horn arrangement/hook was written by Eric Leeds years earlier. It was part of his song called Pacemaker. This Pacemaker part was often played live as a horn interpolation in both I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man and It’s Gonna Be A Beautiful Night, in the latter cued by Prince shouting 'Kick some ass' and then accumulating in the hook from Duke Ellington’s Take The ‘A’ Train.

http://princevault.com/index.php?title=Rockhard_In_A_Funky_Place

Take The "A" Train / Pacemaker / I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man (Live In Utrecht) *****

Corrected! Dolphy not Monk

"Prince wanted this line for 'Rockhard in a Funky Place,' and I think I had it half done. He wanted something that was really out there. So I kind of completed the line for that."

Leeds says he was inspired by the '60s avant-garde jazz pioneer Eric Dolphy. "This cat was, like, really out there. He was an early influence on me. So I said, 'OK, I'm gonna try to be Eric Dolphy for a minute. It was very angular, almost a mathematical kind of thing. For every time the line went up, I wanted to turn it around and have it come down in a similar fashion, interval-wise."

sorry, just obsessed with that riff! worked it out on keyboard once. quality construction

https://diffuser.fm/prince-rockhard-in-a-funky-place/

the long mix of "I Wish U Heaven" excepted

part iii of this is top ten Prince for me

i think not liking "alphabet st." is incorrect

All the lovesexy singles are top notch

Finally got my sott SDE. Very weird to have it and then to hear these songs I've only known from iffy quality audio for years. Very strange and weirdly I feel guilty, even though I bet prince losyebrd to every jb or Hendrix note he could find out there. Both astonishing to have all this, so accessible now, and a bit sad, as I doubt it would ever have happened if prince was still around. Not everything, in fact a lot of this, isnt going to blow me away, but its just great to hear these dorothy parker horns, even if they are totally unnecessary lol

Such great horns, just not at all needed here!

lol yes agreed

what is revelatory is plenty tbh

cf. "when the dawn of the morning comes"

I just started listening to it. Skimmed the main album a bit to see if it sounded different, realised I wasn't actually bothered, then went straight to the vault discs

I'm listening to witness, thinking prince was such a studio rat, the ultimate studio rat maybe, then thinking fuck, he recorded all THIS, maybe out of fear it might not come to him in such volume again, or whatever, and he died in his own studio, which by that point, was also his house. He deserved better.

Lol never mind that. Thank god this 60s version of big tall wall never came out. Wendy and lisa were often good influences, but sometimes they deserve blame.

i am not really a "big tall wall" fan in general

thinking fuck, he recorded all THIS, maybe out of fear it might not come to him in such volume again, or whatever

not news to anyone obv, but I've been retagging this into the various albums he intended to release, for a listening exercise (downloading "missing" tracks for Camille and from the Crystal Ball compilation, etc) and:

basically between March -> July 1986 he wrote & recorded three versions of the Dream Factory album, ending up with a 1hr 24 double LP
and 30 minutes of songs dropped from early cuts of the album

in six weeks from mid-September 1986, but mostly in a few days, he conceived & recorded the 42min Camille album
(and wrote and recorded most of The Black Album)

across a few sessions, in five months of late '86, he writes and records another 44min of new stuff for the Crystal Ball triple LP (inc. one song for Sign O' The Times when Warners reject the triple)

from less than 13 months across December 1985 to Jan '87, there's two hours of unreleased songs* written and recorded (I'm quarantining the alt. Big Tall Wall and Dorothy Parker here for listening btw)

the box also includes a CDs-worth of worthwhile alternate takes and mixes (I'm adding the Mavis Staples Train and subscription club live Rebirth and Strange Relationship to push this to 81 mins)

...and the box generously remasters half an hour of unnecessary 7" edits for posterity's sake too.



*plus another hour or so of finished songs that the archivist & team whittled away as being lesser!

it's exhausting just thinking of listening to all this in album context, let alone writing and recording it

tl;dr

Or more like tl;dl amirite

Feel like I read the story of the three other unfinished albums a few times after he died and sort of grasped it for a while but now my head is exploding like a Paisley Piñata.

fucking hell

his output even crazier than i thought it was when it’s put into context like that

(looks like his only writing for other artists in 1986 was three songs for/with Brownmark's band Mazarati, plus the Bangles recording 1984-written Manic Monday)

and Miles Davis, no? "Can I Play with U?"

there was a lot of writing intended for other artists. "emotional pump" is, hilariously, a song for joni mitchell to sing. most of the songs he reportedly wrote for bonnie raitt are here xp

yeah, iirc four of the unreleased songs on the box were for Bonnie Raitt, and mostly rejected for being too horny

true that Can I Play With U was for/with Miles, I was just looking for any stuff additional to this release

and Miles Davis, no? "Can I Play with U?"

I thought Mitchell had made up "Emotional Pump." I wish she had sung, say, "Power Fantastic," arranged and written in her style.

Then after Miles died they requested Prince sweeten it up along with some other tracks for Doo-Bop but he turned them down.

i love "emotional pump" so so so much tbh, it's so slinky

yep

sharhp horn arrangement too

*sharp

four of the tracks were recorded for Bonnie Raitt in these versions, but had all been written for other acts:

I Need A Man and Jealous Girl were recorded in 1981 as The Hookers, and not overdubbed with Vanity vocals when that band turned into Vanity 6

Jealous Girl was re-recorded in 1985 for, and rejected by, The Bangles - this version was spruced and saxed up for Bonnie Raitt

There's Something I Like About Being Your Fool was also recorded in 1981, and mixed in the Controversy mix sessions but not used. He also offered it to Jill Jones in 1985

Promise To Be True was recorded in 1983 for Vanity 6's non--existent second album.

All those tracks feature first-person female protagonist too.

lol yes they all have alternate lives in the prince catalog xp

Just read that that was supposed to be on Tutu but Prince and Miles were not happy with it so Prince asked Warner Bros. to take it off.

It sounds a lot like what Miles did on Amandla. So clearly even if the track didn't work, the general aesthetic absolutely did.

Was the jill jones album recorded in 86?

Yep, but more of it in 1985: http://www.princevault.com/index.php?title=Album:_Jill_Jones
So I'll be the jerk: what would you cut from SoTT? For me, a few easy choices: "It", "Hot Thing" and "U Got the Look" (I know, but it grates).

Delete from SOTT or the crystal ball triple?

Sott I think is a brilliant set of songs but not a great album (the triple I think would have been even more unwieldy). It doesn't really hang that well (better to listen in vinyl sides, in short 3 song sequences) That's an issue with a lot of prince albums, as he used multiple aesthetics, didnt care much for cohesion, just song quality, but its more pronounced here. I like the camille album as a concept and just as a tight, super funky album so I'd delete all those songs from sott.

Good point, I have to make myself a playlist of that. All the tracks are out now, right?

Most of it's on the box - for my compiled version I nicked the full-length Feel U Up ("Long Stroke") from the Partyman single, the original Good Love from Bright Lights, Big City OST, Rockhard In A Funky Place from The Black Album, and used the full-length ("Extended," but actually the original) Shockadelica.

Thinking of princes funk out put in this period, I think 87 is a cut off point for his funkiest songs. Housequake, rebirth..., not only did these songs kinda mark and end his 80s funk style (chicken scratch rhythm guitar mainly), but he started channelling JB or more traditional funk lyrics on say, rebirth, or housequake, that p funk ish sort of self reflexive lyric writing I think, writing about being the baddest rather than anything else. Then he would get more openly JB derivative on sexy mf of course, then the work, and musicology (all lousy IMO). Theres also the use of horns. I mean, his horns during this period were generally great, but it does seem like he was inching towards a more traditional, or more expansive setup compared to say, head or lady cab driver. Then again, he was still using drum machines so obv he wasnt going retro, but it was obv more drawing from earlier influences.

Those little passages of funky guitar at the start of the raspberry beret and u got the look videos are two of his all time funkiest teasers

Going back to the box set, why is Dave Chappelle in this thing? Did they think Chappelle show fans would buy it?! The book is more notable for being so huge and heavy than what's really in it (not to downplay the essays, they're good, but I dont much like essays in my box sets, I just like liner notes like what Alan Leeds did in the hits compilations). A nice paperback would have been more practical.

Also I wonder how many units these re releases sell....

He wrote a few things for Miles D.
https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1114-inside-miles-davis-prince-obsession-as-detailed-by-davis-family-and-collaborators/