gandorb said:

Doozer said:

1. Open Book

2. In A Large Room With No Light

3. I Wonder

4. Baby You're A Trip (Prince vocals)

5. Chocolate (Prince vocals)

6. Heaven

7. Go

8. Cosmic Day

9. Turn It Up

10. Purple Music

I Wonder is a favorite of mine, but the sound quality is quite good on the boot compared to many of the others that I wonder (yes, I said it)if the vault version would sound significantly better.

I have always gotten the impression that the boot is an unfinished take on the song and that somewhere in the vault there is a whole lot more to it. It also fades out rather abruptly implying that it may go on for longer too if there is a finalised version of it somewhere.

--- said:

My wish: just release the albums 1978-1988, from For You till Lovesexy...

especially:

1999
Around The World In A Day
Parade
Sign "O" The Times
Lovesexy

With bonus, concert-dvds etc, right?

.
It never ceases to amaze me how Prince fans can be so narrow-minded to be so obsessed with Prince's mid-80's output. I don't mean to insult, I even deleted the poster's name here because it doesn't matter – I'm talking about the vast majority of people who claim to be Prince fans. I mean, a fan should know better than the casual radio-listener, right?

Obviously, the mid-80's were Prince's commercial peak, that's when he sold the most records and that also means the cultural impact of those records, especially of Purple Rain is by far the biggest. THAT DOESN'T MEAN THAT IT WAS HIS ARTISTIC PEAK.

Prince continued to make great music right until the very end, and more importantly, he has continued to evolve and grow both as a musician and a composer, writer!

So I'm most interested in his 1976–2016 output, thank you very much. I would love to see his work made between 1976 and 2016 be given EQUAL attention and care, being reissued in deluxe editions, box sets with tons of bonus material and a comprehensive series of BluRay concert videos. Yeah, I'm dreaming, I know. But I refuse to dream narrow-mindedly.
.

[Edited 5/24/17 4:39am]

MiceElfAgin said:

--- said:

My wish: just release the albums 1978-1988, from For You till Lovesexy...

especially:

1999
Around The World In A Day
Parade
Sign "O" The Times
Lovesexy

With bonus, concert-dvds etc, right?

.
It never ceases to amaze me how Prince fans can be so narrow-minded to be so obsessed with Prince's mid-80's output. I don't mean to insult, I even deleted the poster's name here because it doesn't matter – I'm talking about the vast majority of people who claim to be Prince fans. I mean, a fan should know better than the casual radio-listener, right?

Obvously, the mid-80's were Prince's commercial peak, that's when he sold the most records and that also means the cultural impact of those records, especially of Purple Rain is by far the biggest. THAT DOESN'T MEAN THAT IT WAS HIS ARTISTIC PEAK.

Prince continued to make great music right until the very end, and more importantly, he has continued to evolve and grow both as a musician and a composer, writer!

So I'm most interested in his 1976–2016 output, thank you very much. I would love to see his work made between 1976 and 2016 be given EQUAL attention and care, being reissued in deluxe editions, box sets with tons of bonus material and a comprehensive series of BluRay concert videos. Yeah, I'm dreaming, I know. But I refuse to dream narrow-mindedly.
.

Thank you. I'm 100% with you on that one

Anything Ive never heard.

thx185 said:

Rave Unto The Joy Fantastic (1988/89)

That gets my vote as well.

MiceElfAgin said:

--- said:

My wish: just release the albums 1978-1988, from For You till Lovesexy...

especially:

1999
Around The World In A Day
Parade
Sign "O" The Times
Lovesexy

With bonus, concert-dvds etc, right?

.
It never ceases to amaze me how Prince fans can be so narrow-minded to be so obsessed with Prince's mid-80's output. I don't mean to insult, I even deleted the poster's name here because it doesn't matter – I'm talking about the vast majority of people who claim to be Prince fans. I mean, a fan should know better than the casual radio-listener, right?

Obviously, the mid-80's were Prince's commercial peak, that's when he sold the most records and that also means the cultural impact of those records, especially of Purple Rain is by far the biggest. THAT DOESN'T MEAN THAT IT WAS HIS ARTISTIC PEAK.

Prince continued to make great music right until the very end, and more importantly, he has continued to evolve and grow both as a musician and a composer, writer!

So I'm most interested in his 1976–2016 output, thank you very much. I would love to see his work made between 1976 and 2016 be given EQUAL attention and care, being reissued in deluxe editions, box sets with tons of bonus material and a comprehensive series of BluRay concert videos. Yeah, I'm dreaming, I know. But I refuse to dream narrow-mindedly.
.

[Edited 5/24/17 4:39am]

People have different musical tastes. Just because you love his entire career doesn't mean that everyone should and if they don't they've commited some kind of sin.

PurpleYoda3121 said:

MiceElfAgin said:

.
It never ceases to amaze me how Prince fans can be so narrow-minded to be so obsessed with Prince's mid-80's output. I don't mean to insult, I even deleted the poster's name here because it doesn't matter – I'm talking about the vast majority of people who claim to be Prince fans. I mean, a fan should know better than the casual radio-listener, right?

Obviously, the mid-80's were Prince's commercial peak, that's when he sold the most records and that also means the cultural impact of those records, especially of Purple Rain is by far the biggest. THAT DOESN'T MEAN THAT IT WAS HIS ARTISTIC PEAK.

Prince continued to make great music right until the very end, and more importantly, he has continued to evolve and grow both as a musician and a composer, writer!

So I'm most interested in his 1976–2016 output, thank you very much. I would love to see his work made between 1976 and 2016 be given EQUAL attention and care, being reissued in deluxe editions, box sets with tons of bonus material and a comprehensive series of BluRay concert videos. Yeah, I'm dreaming, I know. But I refuse to dream narrow-mindedly.
.

[Edited 5/24/17 4:39am]

People have different musical tastes. Just because you love his entire career doesn't mean that everyone should and if they don't they've commited some kind of sin.

True. I think however that intolerance invites intolerance.

Too often do I read here "X is crap/great" or "X is a terrible/good album/song" and too rarely things like "I don't like X but I respect the fact that it's an interesting song/album, it's just not for me", or "I think X is a masterpiece because...".

"I like/dislike X" is expressing taste.

"X is great/X is shit" without further explaination is expressing an opinion while trying to disguise it as a fact, which is a sin in some people's book.

Now people can do what they want, we're all different, but I've recently come to realize that here you have a lot of different people with a lot of different cultural backgrounds, lifestyles, personalities, education, values, etc., and that the only thing that makes many of us end-up chatting in this virtual room is our taste for Prince's music, and for some of us not even all of it.

This enough is the source of a lot of tensions and misunderstandings, because if not for Prince, certain people here would never talk to each other if they met in real life.

MiceElfAgin said:

--- said:

My wish: just release the albums 1978-1988, from For You till Lovesexy...

especially:

1999
Around The World In A Day
Parade
Sign "O" The Times
Lovesexy

With bonus, concert-dvds etc, right?

.
It never ceases to amaze me how Prince fans can be so narrow-minded to be so obsessed with Prince's mid-80's output. I don't mean to insult, I even deleted the poster's name here because it doesn't matter – I'm talking about the vast majority of people who claim to be Prince fans. I mean, a fan should know better than the casual radio-listener, right?

Obviously, the mid-80's were Prince's commercial peak, that's when he sold the most records and that also means the cultural impact of those records, especially of Purple Rain is by far the biggest. THAT DOESN'T MEAN THAT IT WAS HIS ARTISTIC PEAK.

Prince continued to make great music right until the very end, and more importantly, he has continued to evolve and grow both as a musician and a composer, writer!

So I'm most interested in his 1976–2016 output, thank you very much. I would love to see his work made between 1976 and 2016 be given EQUAL attention and care, being reissued in deluxe editions, box sets with tons of bonus material and a comprehensive series of BluRay concert videos. Yeah, I'm dreaming, I know. But I refuse to dream narrow-mindedly.
.

[Edited 5/24/17 4:39am]

To me P did generally great music from 1978 to 2016, with some fault here and there but on a general level that not many artist ever reached.

Anyway, I can't understand in which way the 80'S (specifically the 1999-Lovesexy run) are not to be considered his artistic and commercial golden era (and commercially talkin' add also Batman).

There were the times in which Prince was fresh, original, genial, an artistic thunder with influences on many other contemporary artist, older or younger.

With D&P, Prince turn his music from "leader" to "follower", searching to merge his style with current trends instead to be a trend himself.

BoraBora said:

MiceElfAgin said:

.
It never ceases to amaze me how Prince fans can be so narrow-minded to be so obsessed with Prince's mid-80's output. I don't mean to insult, I even deleted the poster's name here because it doesn't matter – I'm talking about the vast majority of people who claim to be Prince fans. I mean, a fan should know better than the casual radio-listener, right?

Obviously, the mid-80's were Prince's commercial peak, that's when he sold the most records and that also means the cultural impact of those records, especially of Purple Rain is by far the biggest. THAT DOESN'T MEAN THAT IT WAS HIS ARTISTIC PEAK.

Prince continued to make great music right until the very end, and more importantly, he has continued to evolve and grow both as a musician and a composer, writer!

So I'm most interested in his 1976–2016 output, thank you very much. I would love to see his work made between 1976 and 2016 be given EQUAL attention and care, being reissued in deluxe editions, box sets with tons of bonus material and a comprehensive series of BluRay concert videos. Yeah, I'm dreaming, I know. But I refuse to dream narrow-mindedly.
.

To me P did generally great music from 1978 to 2016, with some fault here and there but on a general level that not many artist ever reached.

Anyway, I can't understand in which way the 80'S (specifically the 1999-Lovesexy run) are not to be considered his artistic and commercial golden era (and commercially talkin' add also Batman).

There were the times in which Prince was fresh, original, genial, an artistic thunder with influences on many other contemporary artist, older or younger.

With D&P, Prince turn his music from "leader" to "follower", searching to merge his style with current trends instead to be a trend himself.

.

The thing is: popular music (and popular culture in general) is always expected to be revolutionary, creating new trends – and that is certainly one of its important values. But people naturally calm down as they age so artists gradually lose their interest in setting trends too. They learn that there is so much more to art than just trying to be different in the eyes of the masses. You can grow without being a rebel too, in fact you slowly realise that it can be far more satisfying to explore the depths of your talent and fine-tune your artistic skills than to get to the top of the mountain again. (He said it: "I've been to the mountain top and it ain't what you say"...)

I agree with you on D&P being guilty of trying to follow a trend. However, I don't think it matters that much. It's certainly not like Prince's output only went in one direction from D&P onwards, is it... He kept experimenting right until the very end, and he kept being voodoo, wicked, as Tom Waits once put it. And he kept developing himself both as a musician and as a composer.

Think of Glenn Gould. Early in his career, people hailed him as the rebel, the young revolutionary with his fresh approach to Bach. He was a star, he reached the mountain top. Then he matured. His record sales slowed down. He wasn't considered to be that hip anymore, he wasn't setting trends anymore. Instead, he has continued to grow inside, to develop his artistry to ever higher standards he has set for himself, regardless of the public getting it or not. He continued on his own path.

When you're already a fan of an artist, especially when you became a fan in your teens as (I guess) most of us here did, it's way too easy to overestimate the artistic values of the records that grew on you. The records that were the soundtrack to your life when you had sex the first time, when you were madly in love, when you went through breakups and schools and whatnot. Of course they have a very special place in our hearts – especially when they happened to be global cultural phenomenons the way Purple Rain was. But if you want to learn about music and try to be objective about it, you'll have to dig far deeper than that.

If you meet a musician who never really paid attention to Prince and show him some of his recent records, you will easily see him being very impressed. If you show Purple Rain to the same guy, he might go "that's cool, but not that great". Because he won't look at that record through the tinted glasses and all the emotional connections we have. He'll just listen to the music. And boy, Prince did sooooooo much great music all through his career, right 'til the very end!

MiceElfAgin said:

BoraBora said:

To me P did generally great music from 1978 to 2016, with some fault here and there but on a general level that not many artist ever reached.

Anyway, I can't understand in which way the 80'S (specifically the 1999-Lovesexy run) are not to be considered his artistic and commercial golden era (and commercially talkin' add also Batman).

There were the times in which Prince was fresh, original, genial, an artistic thunder with influences on many other contemporary artist, older or younger.

With D&P, Prince turn his music from "leader" to "follower", searching to merge his style with current trends instead to be a trend himself.

.

The thing is: popular music (and popular culture in general) is always expected to be revolutionary, creating new trends – and that is certainly one of its important values. But people naturally calm down as they age so artists gradually lose their interest in setting trends too. They learn that there is so much more to art than just trying to be different in the eyes of the masses. You can grow without being a rebel too, in fact you slowly realise that it can be far more satisfying to explore the depths of your talent and fine-tune your artistic skills than to get to the top of the mountain again. (He said it: "I've been to the mountain top and it ain't what you say"...)

I agree with you on D&P being guilty of trying to follow a trend. However, I don't think it matters that much. It's certainly not like Prince's output only went in one direction from D&P onwards, is it... He kept experimenting right until the very end, and he kept being voodoo, wicked, as Tom Waits once put it. And he kept developing himself both as a musician and as a composer.

Think of Glenn Gould. Early in his career, people hailed him as the rebel, the young revolutionary with his fresh approach to Bach. He was a star, he reached the mountain top. Then he matured. His record sales slowed down. He wasn't considered to be that hip anymore, he wasn't setting trends anymore. Instead, he has continued to grow inside, to develop his artistry to ever higher standards he has set for himself, regardless of the public getting it or not. He continued on his own path.

When you're already a fan of an artist, especially when you became a fan in your teens as (I guess) most of us here did, it's way too easy to overestimate the artistic values of the records that grew on you. The records that were the soundtrack to your life when you had sex the first time, when you were madly in love, when you went through breakups and schools and whatnot. Of course they have a very special place in our hearts – especially when they happened to be global cultural phenomenons the way Purple Rain was. But if you want to learn about music and try to be objective about it, you'll have to dig far deeper than that.

If you meet a musician who never really paid attention to Prince and show him some of his recent records, you will easily see him being very impressed. If you show Purple Rain to the same guy, he might go "that's cool, but not that great". Because he won't look at that record through the tinted glasses and all the emotional connections we have. He'll just listen to the music. And boy, Prince did sooooooo much great music all through his career, right 'til the very end!

Again, I agree with everything. I turned one of the best skilled musicians I know into a Prince fan by playing him Newpower Soul back in 2000 or 2001, when he was familar with the hits and had never really bothered.

.

To add to everything MicElfAgain said, from a creative perspective (and I should know, having been at it for 25 years or so), there's a natural limit to how much you can, and want to push yourself as an artist. There comes a time when, after experimenting with many themes, formats, styles and palettes, you kind of find what you like doing the most, and tend to stick to it. Nearly all artists in all disciplines do that at some point. You have established a frame of sorts, that defines the boundaries of the territories you are willing to explore, and you have filled in a toolbox that contains the tools you have mastered to explore said territories. That would be Prince from 1996 on. And then of course every once in a while you get bored, you snap, you try something different (that would be Kamasutra, The War or NEWS...) or you reexplore certain things from your youth with a more mature perspective (that would be Mpslound or 20ten). And of course there's a temptation to follow new trends every once in a while because you see the new blood coming with fresh stuff, and you just need to prove (to yourself if not to the world) that you can do that, too, and that you haven't lost your connection to what's going on the the world (that would be D&P, Rave or Phase One). But most of the time you just do what you do. And whatever people may think of it, there's a "this is what I do, period" statement that's there in your mind, a statement beyond "good" and "bad" and "innovative" and "derivative", it's just the way it is and anyway, whatever you do, you'll always be derivative of yourself after a certain point.

.

So in the end you grow, you mature. There are certain things that you have achieved that you won't ever achieve again. But on the other hand there are things you now achieve that you wouldn't have been able to achieve in your 20's (TRC, Lotusflow3r or HitnRun Phase 2 are records Prince couldn't possibly have recorded in 1985, because he wouldn't have known how to).

.

To make a long story short: I'd say you're much more in charge than you used to be, but maybe a little less spontaneous.

.

Obviously, the creative process is much more complex than that, you could (and some have) write whole books about it so I won't deny that all of the above is ridiculously reductive, but it's nevertheless what I'd call an artist's perpective on another artist's evolution, which is very different from a consumer's perpective. Clearly, from a consumer's perpective (your primary impulse is to evaluate), P's career reached its most interesting moments in the 80's. From an artist's perspective (your primary impulse is to understand), it's much more complex than that, and not necessarily true. Professional critics and scholars are somewhere in the middle, their role being at the same time to understand and evaluate.

.

We're getting a little off-topic here though, but the whole point is that, to some of us, the vault's content is as interesting after 1990 than before.

.

There's also the whole argument about whether certain people here really like Prince's music, or whether they just like a certain era of it (which is entirely different IMHO), but I won't go there because each time I do people get offended and start calling me names.

databank said:

MiceElfAgin said:

.

The thing is: popular music (and popular culture in general) is always expected to be revolutionary, creating new trends – and that is certainly one of its important values. But people naturally calm down as they age so artists gradually lose their interest in setting trends too. They learn that there is so much more to art than just trying to be different in the eyes of the masses. You can grow without being a rebel too, in fact you slowly realise that it can be far more satisfying to explore the depths of your talent and fine-tune your artistic skills than to get to the top of the mountain again. (He said it: "I've been to the mountain top and it ain't what you say"...)

I agree with you on D&P being guilty of trying to follow a trend. However, I don't think it matters that much. It's certainly not like Prince's output only went in one direction from D&P onwards, is it... He kept experimenting right until the very end, and he kept being voodoo, wicked, as Tom Waits once put it. And he kept developing himself both as a musician and as a composer.

Think of Glenn Gould. Early in his career, people hailed him as the rebel, the young revolutionary with his fresh approach to Bach. He was a star, he reached the mountain top. Then he matured. His record sales slowed down. He wasn't considered to be that hip anymore, he wasn't setting trends anymore. Instead, he has continued to grow inside, to develop his artistry to ever higher standards he has set for himself, regardless of the public getting it or not. He continued on his own path.

When you're already a fan of an artist, especially when you became a fan in your teens as (I guess) most of us here did, it's way too easy to overestimate the artistic values of the records that grew on you. The records that were the soundtrack to your life when you had sex the first time, when you were madly in love, when you went through breakups and schools and whatnot. Of course they have a very special place in our hearts – especially when they happened to be global cultural phenomenons the way Purple Rain was. But if you want to learn about music and try to be objective about it, you'll have to dig far deeper than that.

If you meet a musician who never really paid attention to Prince and show him some of his recent records, you will easily see him being very impressed. If you show Purple Rain to the same guy, he might go "that's cool, but not that great". Because he won't look at that record through the tinted glasses and all the emotional connections we have. He'll just listen to the music. And boy, Prince did sooooooo much great music all through his career, right 'til the very end!

Again, I agree with everything. I turned one of the best skilled musicians I know into a Prince fan by playing him Newpower Soul back in 2000 or 2001, when he was familar with the hits and had never really bothered.

.

To add to everything MicElfAgain said, from a creative perspective (and I should know, having been at it for 25 years or so), there's a natural limit to how much you can, and want to push yourself as an artist. There comes a time when, after experimenting with many themes, formats, styles and palettes, you kind of find what you like doing the most, and tend to stick to it. Nearly all artists in all disciplines do that at some point. You have established a frame of sorts, that defines the boundaries of the territories you are willing to explore, and you have filled in a toolbox that contains the tools you have mastered to explore said territories. That would be Prince from 1996 on. And then of course every once in a while you get bored, you snap, you try something different (that would be Kamasutra, The War or NEWS...) or you reexplore certain things from your youth with a more mature perspective (that would be Mpslound or 20ten). And of course there's a temptation to follow new trends every once in a while because you see the new blood coming with fresh stuff, and you just need to prove (to yourself if not to the world) that you can do that, too, and that you haven't lost your connection to what's going on the the world (that would be D&P, Rave or Phase One). But most of the time you just do what you do. And whatever people may think of it, there's a "this is what I do, period" statement that's there in your mind, a statement beyond "good" and "bad" and "innovative" and "derivative", it's just the way it is and anyway, whatever you do, you'll always be derivative of yourself after a certain point.

.

So in the end you grow, you mature. There are certain things that you have achieved that you won't ever achieve again. But on the other hand there are things you now achieve that you wouldn't have been able to achieve in your 20's (TRC, Lotusflow3r or HitnRun Phase 2 are records Prince couldn't possibly have recorded in 1985, because he wouldn't have known how to).

.

To make a long story short: I'd say you're much more in charge than you used to be, but maybe a little less spontaneous.

.

Obviously, the creative process is much more complex than that, you could (and some have) write whole books about it so I won't deny that all of the above is ridiculously reductive, but it's nevertheless what I'd call an artist's perpective on another artist's evolution, which is very different from a consumer's perpective. Clearly, from a consumer's perpective (your primary impulse is to evaluate), P's career reached its most interesting moments in the 80's. From an artist's perspective (your primary impulse is to understand), it's much more complex than that, and not necessarily true. Professional critics and scholars are somewhere in the middle, their role being at the same time to understand and evaluate.

.

We're getting a little off-topic here though, but the whole point is that, to some of us, the vault's content is as interesting after 1990 than before.

.

There's also the whole argument about whether certain people here really like Prince's music, or whether they just like a certain era of it (which is entirely different IMHO), but I won't go there because each time I do people get offended and start calling me names.

.
Thanks for all that. It's always great to discover a sign of intelligent life on the org occasionally.

Speaking of NPS: some of the professional musicians I know are also heavily into that album! It's funny how often it is considered to be a pile of sh.. amongst Prince fans, yet for someone who truly knows about musicianship it's a monster. The same goes for NEWS, for example. One of my mates is a badass drummer (regularly playing with the world's greatests) and when I showed him NEWS his jaw dropped. Fact is, no matter that NEWS was never trendy, it's dismissed by most die-hard Prince fans too, but it's freakin' brilliant.

If records like NPS or NEWS were standing out there on their own, by some previously unknown musician, without all the weight of hit records surrounding and overshadowing them, they would still be cherished by musicians who actually listen.

MiceElfAgin said:

databank said:

Again, I agree with everything. I turned one of the best skilled musicians I know into a Prince fan by playing him Newpower Soul back in 2000 or 2001, when he was familar with the hits and had never really bothered.

.

To add to everything MicElfAgain said, from a creative perspective (and I should know, having been at it for 25 years or so), there's a natural limit to how much you can, and want to push yourself as an artist. There comes a time when, after experimenting with many themes, formats, styles and palettes, you kind of find what you like doing the most, and tend to stick to it. Nearly all artists in all disciplines do that at some point. You have established a frame of sorts, that defines the boundaries of the territories you are willing to explore, and you have filled in a toolbox that contains the tools you have mastered to explore said territories. That would be Prince from 1996 on. And then of course every once in a while you get bored, you snap, you try something different (that would be Kamasutra, The War or NEWS...) or you reexplore certain things from your youth with a more mature perspective (that would be Mpslound or 20ten). And of course there's a temptation to follow new trends every once in a while because you see the new blood coming with fresh stuff, and you just need to prove (to yourself if not to the world) that you can do that, too, and that you haven't lost your connection to what's going on the the world (that would be D&P, Rave or Phase One). But most of the time you just do what you do. And whatever people may think of it, there's a "this is what I do, period" statement that's there in your mind, a statement beyond "good" and "bad" and "innovative" and "derivative", it's just the way it is and anyway, whatever you do, you'll always be derivative of yourself after a certain point.

.

So in the end you grow, you mature. There are certain things that you have achieved that you won't ever achieve again. But on the other hand there are things you now achieve that you wouldn't have been able to achieve in your 20's (TRC, Lotusflow3r or HitnRun Phase 2 are records Prince couldn't possibly have recorded in 1985, because he wouldn't have known how to).

.

To make a long story short: I'd say you're much more in charge than you used to be, but maybe a little less spontaneous.

.

Obviously, the creative process is much more complex than that, you could (and some have) write whole books about it so I won't deny that all of the above is ridiculously reductive, but it's nevertheless what I'd call an artist's perpective on another artist's evolution, which is very different from a consumer's perpective. Clearly, from a consumer's perpective (your primary impulse is to evaluate), P's career reached its most interesting moments in the 80's. From an artist's perspective (your primary impulse is to understand), it's much more complex than that, and not necessarily true. Professional critics and scholars are somewhere in the middle, their role being at the same time to understand and evaluate.

.

We're getting a little off-topic here though, but the whole point is that, to some of us, the vault's content is as interesting after 1990 than before.

.

There's also the whole argument about whether certain people here really like Prince's music, or whether they just like a certain era of it (which is entirely different IMHO), but I won't go there because each time I do people get offended and start calling me names.

.
Thanks for all that. It's always great to discover a sign of intelligent life on the org occasionally.

Speaking of NPS: some of the professional musicians I know are also heavily into that album! It's funny how often it is considered to be a pile of sh.. amongst Prince fans, yet for someone who truly knows about musicianship it's a monster. The same goes for NEWS, for example. One of my mates is a badass drummer (regularly playing with the world's greatests) and when I showed him NEWS his jaw dropped. Fact is, no matter that NEWS was never trendy, it's dismissed by most die-hard Prince fans too, but it's freakin' brilliant.

If records like NPS or NEWS were standing out there on their own, by some previously unknown musician, without all the weight of hit records surrounding and overshadowing them, they would still be cherished by musicians who actually listen.

I don't doubt they would for a second. I keep saying that if D'Angelo or Maxwell had released any of the records P has released in the 2000's, critics would have raved instead of writing "good but not as good as SOTT" in each review.

.

When NEWS was released at a time when I was myself still a musician (I quit and focused on writing soon after that), and after years of being mostly a funk and pop and electronic music listener, I was in the middle of an intense Bill Laswell phase (Laswell has released hundreds of experimental records, playing with the best musicians, toying with nearly every possible genre you can think of from classical Indian, Chinese, African or Arabic music to drum'nbass, dub, ambient hip-hop, free jazz, rock, you name it...). When I first heard NEWS, particularly the intro to East, I was like "whew, this is it, awesome, Prince is going Laswell! Yeah!!". To some, it was muzak, to me it was one of P's most daring records, one where he really dared go outside his comfort zone. And I was blown away by the musicianship, of course, but also by the power of the narrative (the album is very narrative, it does tell stories about those 4 directions/continents it evokes, and the people who live on them).

.

I can't blame people for not "getting it", there are masterpieces that I don't "get", don't "enjoy". Hell, Proust and Joyce bored me to death and I've never manage to finish those books. To me it's crap. Only I know it's not. And I have the sense to acknowledge that I'm missing something, that there are brilliant things in certain books, movies or records that's can be denied, that I can see even, but it's not for me, not enough for me to trip on them at least. Maybe one day i'll finally get it and be able to give those books another shot...

databank said:

MiceElfAgin said:

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Thanks for all that. It's always great to discover a sign of intelligent life on the org occasionally.

Speaking of NPS: some of the professional musicians I know are also heavily into that album! It's funny how often it is considered to be a pile of sh.. amongst Prince fans, yet for someone who truly knows about musicianship it's a monster. The same goes for NEWS, for example. One of my mates is a badass drummer (regularly playing with the world's greatests) and when I showed him NEWS his jaw dropped. Fact is, no matter that NEWS was never trendy, it's dismissed by most die-hard Prince fans too, but it's freakin' brilliant.

If records like NPS or NEWS were standing out there on their own, by some previously unknown musician, without all the weight of hit records surrounding and overshadowing them, they would still be cherished by musicians who actually listen.

I don't doubt they would for a second. I keep saying that if D'Angelo or Maxwell had released any of the records P has released in the 2000's, critics would have raved instead of writing "good but not as good as SOTT" in each review.

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When NEWS was released at a time when I was myself still a musician (I quit and focused on writing soon after that), and after years of being mostly a funk and pop and electronic music listener, I was in the middle of an intense Bill Laswell phase (Laswell has released hundreds of experimental records, playing with the best musicians, toying with nearly every possible genre you can think of from classical Indian, Chinese, African or Arabic music to drum'nbass, dub, ambient hip-hop, free jazz, rock, you name it...). When I first heard NEWS, particularly the intro to East, I was like "whew, this is it, awesome, Prince is going Laswell! Yeah!!". To some, it was muzak, to me it was one of P's most daring records, one where he really dared go outside his comfort zone. And I was blown away by the musicianship, of course, but also by the power of the narrative (the album is very narrative, it does tell stories about those 4 directions/continents it evokes, and the people who live on them).

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I can't blame people for not "getting it", there are masterpieces that I don't "get", don't "enjoy". Hell, Proust and Joyce bored me to death and I've never manage to finish those books. To me it's crap. Only I know it's not. And I have the sense to acknowledge that I'm missing something, that there are brilliant things in certain books, movies or records that's can be denied, that I can see even, but it's not for me, not enough for me to trip on them at least. Maybe one day i'll finally get it and be able to give those books another shot...

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YES, I can totally relate to what you're saying about NEWS. It is an awesome album indeed – and I love Bill Laswell too. Laswell is definitely someone I would've loved to see Prince collaborate with, just as I would've loved to hear him collaborate with John Zorn or Pat Metheny. These guys are a truly brave enough to constantly go far beyond their own safety zones and that's a hugely important ability for a great artist.

As Miles said, "music is about change, evolution – it ain't about standing still and becoming safe". And contrary to rumours, Prince has never stopped exploring new territories either. He was experimenting right until the very end and I can imagine how much he must have hated reading "I wish he played like he used to" or that "he was fine back in the day" or "he should reunite the Revolution" about himself...

Another one of my favourite quotes from Miles: (I think it was by the end of the 60's at a concert when) someone from the audience shouted to him "Play 'My Funny Valentine'!" – to which Davis replied: "If you want to hear 'My Funny Valentine', go home and put on the record, because I'm someplace else now!".

databank said:

MiceElfAgin said:

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The thing is: popular music (and popular culture in general) is always expected to be revolutionary, creating new trends – and that is certainly one of its important values. But people naturally calm down as they age so artists gradually lose their interest in setting trends too. They learn that there is so much more to art than just trying to be different in the eyes of the masses. You can grow without being a rebel too, in fact you slowly realise that it can be far more satisfying to explore the depths of your talent and fine-tune your artistic skills than to get to the top of the mountain again. (He said it: "I've been to the mountain top and it ain't what you say"...)

I agree with you on D&P being guilty of trying to follow a trend. However, I don't think it matters that much. It's certainly not like Prince's output only went in one direction from D&P onwards, is it... He kept experimenting right until the very end, and he kept being voodoo, wicked, as Tom Waits once put it. And he kept developing himself both as a musician and as a composer.

Think of Glenn Gould. Early in his career, people hailed him as the rebel, the young revolutionary with his fresh approach to Bach. He was a star, he reached the mountain top. Then he matured. His record sales slowed down. He wasn't considered to be that hip anymore, he wasn't setting trends anymore. Instead, he has continued to grow inside, to develop his artistry to ever higher standards he has set for himself, regardless of the public getting it or not. He continued on his own path.

When you're already a fan of an artist, especially when you became a fan in your teens as (I guess) most of us here did, it's way too easy to overestimate the artistic values of the records that grew on you. The records that were the soundtrack to your life when you had sex the first time, when you were madly in love, when you went through breakups and schools and whatnot. Of course they have a very special place in our hearts – especially when they happened to be global cultural phenomenons the way Purple Rain was. But if you want to learn about music and try to be objective about it, you'll have to dig far deeper than that.

If you meet a musician who never really paid attention to Prince and show him some of his recent records, you will easily see him being very impressed. If you show Purple Rain to the same guy, he might go "that's cool, but not that great". Because he won't look at that record through the tinted glasses and all the emotional connections we have. He'll just listen to the music. And boy, Prince did sooooooo much great music all through his career, right 'til the very end!

Again, I agree with everything. I turned one of the best skilled musicians I know into a Prince fan by playing him Newpower Soul back in 2000 or 2001, when he was familar with the hits and had never really bothered.

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To add to everything MicElfAgain said, from a creative perspective (and I should know, having been at it for 25 years or so), there's a natural limit to how much you can, and want to push yourself as an artist. There comes a time when, after experimenting with many themes, formats, styles and palettes, you kind of find what you like doing the most, and tend to stick to it. Nearly all artists in all disciplines do that at some point. You have established a frame of sorts, that defines the boundaries of the territories you are willing to explore, and you have filled in a toolbox that contains the tools you have mastered to explore said territories. That would be Prince from 1996 on. And then of course every once in a while you get bored, you snap, you try something different (that would be Kamasutra, The War or NEWS...) or you reexplore certain things from your youth with a more mature perspective (that would be Mpslound or 20ten). And of course there's a temptation to follow new trends every once in a while because you see the new blood coming with fresh stuff, and you just need to prove (to yourself if not to the world) that you can do that, too, and that you haven't lost your connection to what's going on the the world (that would be D&P, Rave or Phase One). But most of the time you just do what you do. And whatever people may think of it, there's a "this is what I do, period" statement that's there in your mind, a statement beyond "good" and "bad" and "innovative" and "derivative", it's just the way it is and anyway, whatever you do, you'll always be derivative of yourself after a certain point.

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So in the end you grow, you mature. There are certain things that you have achieved that you won't ever achieve again. But on the other hand there are things you now achieve that you wouldn't have been able to achieve in your 20's (TRC, Lotusflow3r or HitnRun Phase 2 are records Prince couldn't possibly have recorded in 1985, because he wouldn't have known how to).

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To make a long story short: I'd say you're much more in charge than you used to be, but maybe a little less spontaneous.

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Obviously, the creative process is much more complex than that, you could (and some have) write whole books about it so I won't deny that all of the above is ridiculously reductive, but it's nevertheless what I'd call an artist's perpective on another artist's evolution, which is very different from a consumer's perpective. Clearly, from a consumer's perpective (your primary impulse is to evaluate), P's career reached its most interesting moments in the 80's. From an artist's perspective (your primary impulse is to understand), it's much more complex than that, and not necessarily true. Professional critics and scholars are somewhere in the middle, their role being at the same time to understand and evaluate.

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We're getting a little off-topic here though, but the whole point is that, to some of us, the vault's content is as interesting after 1990 than before.

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There's also the whole argument about whether certain people here really like Prince's music, or whether they just like a certain era of it (which is entirely different IMHO), but I won't go there because each time I do people get offended and start calling me names.

Wonderful post, i agree with you on everything