Thats a great story! Glad you shared this. I'm not familiar with his movies. But seemed like he was young.

HollywoodSt said:

Met Australian film director J Harkness and his then girlfriend actress Anastasia Seis at a Prince afterparty in a Sydney nightclub in 2003. Both were lovely to speak to and I discovered that not only did J share my passion for Prince but also loved his Rugby League. He asked me if I had any of Princes vast unreleased bootleg material and back then I didn’t as you really had to know a collector and couldn’t just search YouTube or torrents. We swapped postal addresses. A couple of weeks later a parcel arrived, J had sent me around 20 cds of rare Prince music; rehearsals, live shows, unreleased full albums, classical pieces, some stuff that even today I can’t find online. It was an incredibly kind gesture and forms a huge part of my Prince collection to this day including my favourite cd, a collection of unreleased sign o the times era tracks which became my Sydney pre night out soundtrack. I sent him a copy of my next book on its release shortly after as a small way of saying thank you. This was all before social media and the ability to stay in touch via that method. During lockdown I’ve searched online to see if J was still making films and if I could get back in touch. I was sad to find out he passed away some time ago, I’ll never forget his kindness, such chance encounters help light the way... RIP 💜

Great story.
By the way, we did have "social media" in 2003 and years before that. It wasn't FB, but was Usenet newsgroups, email, Prodigy, AOL, Compuserve.
Prodigy came on line in 1984, 19 years before "before social media".

laytonian said:

HollywoodSt said:

Met Australian film director J Harkness and his then girlfriend actress Anastasia Seis at a Prince afterparty in a Sydney nightclub in 2003. Both were lovely to speak to and I discovered that not only did J share my passion for Prince but also loved his Rugby League. He asked me if I had any of Princes vast unreleased bootleg material and back then I didn’t as you really had to know a collector and couldn’t just search YouTube or torrents. We swapped postal addresses. A couple of weeks later a parcel arrived, J had sent me around 20 cds of rare Prince music; rehearsals, live shows, unreleased full albums, classical pieces, some stuff that even today I can’t find online. It was an incredibly kind gesture and forms a huge part of my Prince collection to this day including my favourite cd, a collection of unreleased sign o the times era tracks which became my Sydney pre night out soundtrack. I sent him a copy of my next book on its release shortly after as a small way of saying thank you. This was all before social media and the ability to stay in touch via that method. During lockdown I’ve searched online to see if J was still making films and if I could get back in touch. I was sad to find out he passed away some time ago, I’ll never forget his kindness, such chance encounters help light the way... RIP 💜

Great story.
By the way, we did have "social media" in 2003 and years before that. It wasn't FB, but was Usenet newsgroups, email, Prodigy, AOL, Compuserve.
Prodigy came on line in 1984, 19 years before "before social media".

2003 I think I was all over friendster which was even more "real life" connected than this. I was part of a real community of artists and musicians and old friends. Maybe that was 2004. Then along came myspace.

Great story.
By the way, we did have "social media" in 2003 and years before that. It wasn't FB, but was Usenet newsgroups, email, Prodigy, AOL, Compuserve.
Prodigy came on line in 1984, 19 years before "before social media".

That's how real Prince fans operate.

I got my first bootlegs like that. A fan hooked me up.

Nice story. May he rest in peace.

Could you please share some info on what´s on those CDs? I´d like to know what kind of unreleased full albums you have there.

KoolEaze said:

HollywoodSt said:

KoolEaze said:

Nice story. May he rest in peace.

Could you please share some info on what´s on those CDs? I´d like to know what kind of unreleased full albums you have there.

Thank you for your kind words. So The Flesh project was one, Dream Factory (which blew me away), Madhouse 24, the original Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic, High then all the Chocolate Invasion material. Tougher to identify is an instrumental funk album that sounds very 70s and a classical collection.

Could the 70s instrumental Funk be the Loring Park sessions? And the classical stuff the Kamasutra album? Are you familiar with those?

The Rave album sounds very interesting and has been discussed here very often. Is it the configuration with Moonbeam Levels? Princevault lists three configurations: http://www.princevault.co..._Fantastic

KoolEaze said:

HollywoodSt said:

KoolEaze said:

Could the 70s instrumental Funk be the Loring Park sessions? And the classical stuff the Kamasutra album? Are you familiar with those?

The Rave album sounds very interesting and has been discussed here very often. Is it the configuration with Moonbeam Levels? Princevault lists three configurations: http://www.princevault.co..._Fantastic

I’m off work in a couple of weeks, I’m going to dig them all out and try and properly categorise everything.

that's quite a diverse selection. He did hook you up! Was the quality excellent across the board, or with the sometimes abysmal quality us mere mortals have always heard?

mediumdry said: