i think the majority of tracks on these where available in some form or another but there were a number of tracks that were "unknown"....although I'm sure there are those who are more hardcore than I who will argue that!!!!

i think only Make Yo Mamma Happy, PoomPoom, Da Bang and When The Lights Go Down were unknown to the hardcore vault raiders.

And that particular version of An Honest Man.

Pentacle said:

Would be interesting to see if Prince could assemble a CB2 with all unknown tracks, would it be possible?

mojo said:

Pentacle said:

i think only Make Yo Mamma Happy, PoomPoom, Da Bang and When The Lights Go Down were unknown to the hardcore vault raiders.

And that particular version of An Honest Man.

Cloreen?

I think Cloreen is a kinda....given it was played live in '83 (per Prince vault) in a brief set at First Avenue with Jah Wobble's band after a Jah Wobble gig. I certainly hadn't heard it/ heard of it prior to CB.

hw3004 said:

mojo said:

Pentacle said: Cloreen?

I think Cloreen is a kinda....given it was played live in '83 (per Prince vault) in a brief set at First Avenue with Jah Wobble's band after a Jah Wobble gig. I certainly hadn't heard it/ heard of it prior to CB.

Oh yes, Cloreen. I always forget that's on there. What as waste of space... Not that it shouldn't be on there, it should.

But if you only "have" 50 minutes, and 11 minutes is filled with jamming instead of All My Dreams, or My Pony or... etc.

Dandroppedadime said:

Would be interesting to see if Prince could assemble a CB2 with all unknown tracks, would it be possible?

Of course it would be possible, would it be any good though?

Pentacle said:

i think only Make Yo Mamma Happy, PoomPoom, Da Bang and When The Lights Go Down were unknown to the hardcore vault raiders.

And that particular version of An Honest Man.

Most tracks were known in similar or alternate (studio or live) renditions indeed. Entirely unknown were the ones u mention here (I wouldn't count A Honest Man since we had the instrumental and rehearsal versions) as well -if i'm not mistaken- as It's About That Walk and Extraordinary. In the end that's 6 songs out of 40 so that's one of the reason of the overall disappointment of hardcore fans regarding those 2 projects.

databank said:

Personally, I love the remixes, except for Tell Me How... (which had álso been released as part of Kirky J's B-side remix), but again: when you only want to fill 50 minutes a cd, because this is what the Pyramids of Egypt have told you to do, and you leave out non-remix vault tracks....

snakesineverycolor said:

databank said:

that's 6 songs out of 40 so that's one of the reason of the overall disappointment of hardcore fans regarding those 2 projects.

Oddly enough your saying that is the first time it has ever occurred to me that anyone might have been unhappy with Crystal Ball in particular specifically because it didn't have tracks that had never been heard. I didn't care then, and don't now, whether any of the tracks were new to me. Crystal Ball turned a positive into a negative for me specifically because the song selection was atrocious (remixes, songs that had already been officially released like "Good Love" and "Interactive," and things like "Cloreen Baconskin," which, at 15:37, represented real opportunity cost given how much of the very limited space it soaked up), the songs were delivered in sanitized versions (no "Purple Underground" speech means I can't retire my "Crystal Ball" bootleg), and the way in which direct orders were handled was nothing shy of reprehensible. For my money, Crystal Ball boiled down to, "not what I want, not how I want it, and why'd you have to crap on me while delivering it?" But, yeah, I suppose some folks might have liked deeper vault cuts too.

My only annoyance really was the fact that so little was new to me, I loived everything else that you hated but I totally understand that you and most others could feel that way.

I'm just deeply annoyed by the comment in bold: art isn't about making a CD profitable by the minute like you'd sell advertizing space.

Dandroppedadime said:

Would be interesting to see if Prince could assemble a CB2 with all unknown tracks, would it be possible?

The Crystall Ball II configuration would have been interesting - a shame this never saw the light of day.

• "3 Nigs Watchin' a Kung Fu Movie"
• "Adonis & Bathsheba"
• "American Jam"
• "Come Electra Tuesday" (not selected)
• "Electric Intercourse"
• "Everybody Wants What They Don't Got"
• "Evolsidog"
• "Eye Wonder"
• "Girl" (not selected)
• "Girl o' My Dreams"
• "Gotta Stop (Messin' About)" (not selected)
• "If It'll Make U Happy" (not selected)
• "Katrina's Paper Dolls"
• "Kiss" (Unreleased Xtended Version)
• "Love & Sex"
• "Lust U Always"
• "Others Here with Us"
• "She's Just a Baby" (not selected)
• "Strange Way of Saying Eye Love U"
• "Turn It Up"
• "U're All Eye Want"
• "Xtra Lovable"

snakesineverycolor said:

Crystal Ball boiled down to, "not what I want, not how I want it, and why'd you have to crap on me while delivering it?"

That about sums it up, spot on!

databank said:

yes 'cloreen' should of been a bonus track at the end of the album. then you could ignore it if you didn't like it. as an off-the cuff studio jam it's interesting to 'princeologists' but as a centrepiece track it doesn't cut the mustard. Also I always thought 'The Ball' should of been the opening track on CB, thus allowing CB the song to be the final track on disc one (or even disc 3) I find it a bit of a daunting track for an opener. Also when else would the ball get released?

Crystal Ball is a weird area. we'll never know how the songs really sounded because the leaked songs are from a 2nd or 3rd generation cassettes and a lot of the songs were never mixed properly. The Crystal Ball CD set is good but you can tell the mixes were "updated". Susan Rogers stated if Prince decides to release the vault stuff, release them as they are. But we all know that will never happen