The new tracks on Exile On Main Street have been promoted as "recently rediscovered". How lost were they?

Well, they weren't really lost. It was just no-one had really looked at them. There wasn't a bag at the bottom of someone's drawer.

Where were they?

They were in our tape store, mouldering away. Tapes don't have a very good shelf life - so you bake them in the oven, get them out, play them and transfer them to somewhere else.

And then the process started of listening to them and going, "that's really a good one".

Things have obviously changed a great deal since those sessions. What's your feeling on technology and music?

Technology and music have been together since the beginning of recording.

I'm talking about the internet.

But that's just one facet of the technology of music. Music has been aligned with technology for a long time. The model of records and record selling is a very complex subject and quite boring, to be honest.

But your view is valid because you have a huge catalogue, which is worth a lot of money, and you've been in the business a long time, so you have perspective.

Well, it's all changed in the last couple of years. We've gone through a period where everyone downloaded everything for nothing and we've gone into a grey period it's much easier to pay for things - assuming you've got any money.

Are you quite relaxed about it?

I am quite relaxed about it. But, you know, it is a massive change and it does alter the fact that people don't make as much money out of records.

But I have a take on that - people only made money out of records for a very, very small time. When The Rolling Stones started out, we didn't make any money out of records because record companies wouldn't pay you! They didn't pay anyone!

Then, there was a small period from 1970 to 1997, where people did get paid, and they got paid very handsomely and everyone made money. But now that period has gone.

So if you look at the history of recorded music from 1900 to now, there was a 25 year period where artists did very well, but the rest of the time they didn't.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8681410.stm



BTW An interesting viewpoint from Jagger on the treath of the Internet:

lawd i hope so too

Didn't Chronic Freeze say something about doing some archiving and digitising of mix downs of outtakes from throughout his career in the 90s?

I seem to remember an interview with someone in the late 90's, around the time he was re-recording old material, that the vault was being digitized? Maybe I dreamt it.

squirrelgrease, when was the latest period engineer interview that stated this? I imagine when chronicfreeze was working for Prince, this wasn't something they were concerned with. But since?

errant said:

Chronic Freeze was there from 1988-1996. Hans-Martin Buff was Engineer from 1995-2000, and has also discussed the poor state of the Vault tapes.

squirrelgrease said:

I missed that, is it online?

i thought the vault was some kinda posh temp controlled room not a dusty old cupboard so i really hope his tapes haven't gone all mouldy & manky.
however i think that a damp atmostphere in that particular environment is totally understandable & unavoidable.

DoffieParker said:

A temperature controlled environment will not save tapes that were manufactured with a built-in half-life far below that of the expected industry norm.

I'm not a "the sky is falling" type of guy and I wish that it wasn't the case, but the truth is that two engineers during an overlapping tenure of close to a decade and a half with Paisley Park have said the same thing regarding Prince not giving a shit about his past material. Prince has basically said as much in interviews as well, only referring to past works as "the past" in his vague "Prince speak".

He is someone who wants to be judged on his current catalog.

squirrelgrease said:

I'm not sure, I take the view that if he didn't care about the past why is he saving it? If it means nothing to him why not throw out all of those old tapes? An older song like "In A Large Room With No Light" meant enough to him that he re-recorded it so I'm sure that he has some attachment to his past material.

madhouseman said:

That's why he's playing 25 year old hits in concert?

madhouseman said:

That's why he's playing 25 year old hits in concert?

BartVanHemelen said:

Jeez, you roll this one out all the time! How does playing crowd favourites to, errr, paying CROWDS of people in any way indicate how an artist feels about their body of work? A majority of people attending Prince shows would want to hear the hits.

BartVanHemelen said:

It's a balance. You and everyone else on this site would be crying all over the place if he didn't play some of the old jams.

With his extensive and deep catalog, he does a great job of mixing new arrangements of old hits, obscure non-album tracks, new material and choice covers. I could do without some of the covers he has chosen over the last several years, but P is anything but predictable.