This is the one Prince album no one ever speaks about here, whether to praise it or shoot it down!

The story's well known: unhappy with 24, P gave Eric a load of tapes from the vault (including lots of tracks they'd recorded together during past jam sessions) and asked him to chose some, tinker with them and come up with a decent third Madhouse album. Leeds chose 10 tracks, worked on them and when he submitted the result (retitled 26) to P, P said "it doesn't sound like Madhouse, let's release it as an Eric Leeds solo album". Leeds later added his own song "Lines" to the tracklist.

Indeed it doesn't sound like Madhouse. Of note is that it's only time P allowed someone else to sort of produce a full album of his. He would sometimes allow some collaborators such as Levi, David Z or Ricky P to finish some random tracks for other artists, but never did he give someone the responsibility to toy with so much material at once for a full side-project.

The result is a much more polished smooth jazz album (some called it elevator jazz) than Madhouse was so far. I really dig Times Square, though, I mean it's Prince and Eric jamming! But I have to admit that I wonder how the songs sounded before Leeds finished them (we know, of course, how The Dopamine Rush sounded, and we have a very short, hardly audible, snippet of Overnight, Every Night in the 1989 NPG Radio Show that sounds like a rough mix of the released version).

I just think its main weakness in the end is precisely that Eric polished it too much, it didn't sound as dirty, as "fucked up", as "recorded overnight" as most of P's music did in the 80's. Symbolically it's interesting because precisely it was released right after GB and right b4 D&P. GB itself was in many aspects a compilation of outakes, and Times Squared itself is a compilation of outtakes, so it's a bit as if those 2 albums put an end to an era before the D&P/NPG reboot. At the same time it also has a very polished sound, something that would be one of the major changes in P's sound starting with D&P, and that would remain for the whole decade, so at the same times it closes an era it announces the next one.

I bought it in fall 92 IIRC, I was 15 and still something of a new fan. I liked it immediately but I never liked it as much as 8 and 16, though. I think it has more to do with the "clean" sound than the compositions in themselves.

A remaster with a second CD containing the original versions as bonus tracks could be a real cool thing!

How did u older fans who were into Prince for a while welcome this album? How was it perceived at the time?

And even if you weren't there back then, u can of course share ur feelings about it.

i like it, but i hardly ever listen to it for some reason. not as often as

i listen to the madhouse albums.

you're right about the 'too poslished' sound of it. "times squared" is

probably my favorit track on it, although i like "cape horn" a lot too.

Its ok, and the best of Eric's discs, but I feel its too polished. Like you said, Madhouse sounded more down and dirty.

Somehow I never knew that "Times Squared" started off as Madhouse 24. Thanks so much for all of that background info, databank!

I love this album...I see what you're saying about it being polished, of course...but anything by Eric Leeds makes my heart happy. The tone of his sax just kills me.

My favorite song by Eric has to be "Soldier's Things" from "Things Left Unsaid." One of the most beautiful, mournful songs ever.