There are a lot of great theories out there, but most of them are all wrong.

First of all Prince doesn't like any of his material floating out of Paisley Park. And no he doesn't own any of these companies, I've heard that one also. You are right when you say a lot of his material used to creep out of Paisley. But now the security is much more tightened so "almost" nothing new comes out of there, with the exception of a few audience recordings. Back in the day Prince was very sloppy with his recordings. he would constantly leave them in the enginiering room just laying there. Or he would sometimes come in record a song and leave all the mixing to the engenieer, who would be all by themselves. This would happen alot at Sunset Sound in L.A.. I personally got the Black Album on tape six weeks after it was supposed to be released.

Somebody got smart and decided to themselves. At a time when bootlegs of Prince were never heard of across the world. I did not have to look too far to find something new and cool of Prince's around the Twin Cities area. I onced laughed when a freind of mine had a friend over from the U.K.. He was boasting how he bought the "third disc" of Sign 'O' the Times for $300.00 U.S. dollars. I had those songs for a couple of years for a trade.

Prince hates Sabotage and Thunderball. In fact he calls them "the Thieves In the Temple".For those of you on valume, Thunderball used to be Moonraker.

Also as an ironic twist Sabotage and Thunderball will send Prince a copy of each new bootleg they make. Why? that I can't answer. Maybe just boasting, who knows. Niether one of these companies make money, they make just enough to stay afloat.
This really hit the boiling point when Thunderball released Dream Factory. Prince was really pissed, he really never wanted that album to see the light of day and vowed it wouldn't. This goes along with anything that has Wendy & Lisa's names attacted to it. (ie Roadhouse Garden) I once read on a NPGMC chat that Prince said he would love to release Roadhouse, but that isn't true. Every notice how all the songs on Crystal Ball that they were on, they were taken off? (except for a couple of backgroud voices).

Keep in mind these companies still have some recodings left that any Prince Fam would love to hear. Ever wanted to hear the original version of When Doves Cry? They have it. Or the Purple Rain movie backgound music? They got it. But keep in mind they've had those songs for years now when the security was non-existent. Why don't they release them now or before? Well, every year they come out with a bunch of audience recordings, rehashed older boots that are "re-mastered". Then a couple of years go by when sales slump and boom you have your new "Dream Factory".

Just to let U no.

Prince...Forever.

'nuff said.
[This message was edited Wed Jul 17 18:14:18 PDT 2002 by chookalana]

So says you.

...and who are you?

Because unless you are personal friends with Prince (which doesn't seem to be the case) you are making a number of assumptions. How would you know that Prince was pissed when Dream Factory was released? How do you know how much money the bootleg companies make?

Much of what you said is probably true, but I believe that you are making many leaps in publishing this as fact.

All sounds fishy to this guy.

chookalana said:

What about "Splash" from year one of the NPGMC?


Edited to fix the messed up quote.
[This message was edited Wed Jul 17 18:25:53 PDT 2002 by lovemachine]

lovemachine said:

I know. You don't have to believe me. People asked and now I'm telling WHAT I KNOW.

lovemachine said:[quote]

chookalana said:

That is a good question. Like I said I told you part of what I know. I never said I knew everything. Then I would have to be a "personal friend of Prince. That I am not. Trust me on that too.

Folks, don't listen to this non-sense. 99% of this post is crap. Most of the DF track were are already circulating, not to mention that there are several DF configurations and the one released by TB is just one of them.

A great sounding copy of one of these DF tapes has recently been posted to ABMP. Anyway, for those interested how songs get bootlegged:

http://groups.google.com/...com&rnum=3

Well guys nice story though, but not really correct.
Thunderball is a huge company, not only for Prince bootlegs, but they bootleg almost every artist, so they do make cash! About the Wendy & Lisa story, that's totally made up, Prince would have loved to see Roadhouse Garden released, they even planned a Revolution reunion, but indeed Wendy & Lisa had no feelings for that. Prince told this in several interviews from 97 till 00. Prince have said a lot of things about releases which never came out, never were released but planned, like: the high album, npg sample set (7 discs) etc etc. He says too much and after a while he just do something else. Bootlegs were also went public due to band members or managers the City Lights Box is a good example for this, not only engineers are guilty
Don't talk mystic about Bootlegs or the labels, only when u have the facts and these aren't the facts for a 100%

Greetings,

PaisleyParkVault.Com!
The online resource for Prince Bootlegs, like:
Sabotage, Moonraker, Thunderball & Premium.

PaisleyParkVault.Com!
www.paisleyparkvault.com

MSN Messenger: style@paisleyparkvault.com
ICQ Number: 143870462

Stylecipation said:

Word.

I don't think that googlegroups story is that all-covering... true probably, but doesn't explain all.

Well, I would like this to be explained to my ignorant ass: If they really get the actual masters themselves how the sound quality ended up being so bad on so many of the circulating tracks?

According to my basic knowledge on audio technology recordings just don't detoriate like that naturally! It's just not possible (well it is, but this would require REALLY bad luck with circumstances), I've never heard anything similiar (Except the boots of some other artists). Some of these sound like deliberate attempts to release the music first with inferior sound qulaity to the more obsessed fans and then the masters later on (I'm just guessing, not making an accusation). Does anybody know what has happened exactly.

Who knows... no wait! Wow, it's the Sylecipation guy! I've always wanted to thank you folks!

WHAA? There's a third disk to SOTT??? :O

I'm such a newbie (where the boots are concerned)...

CalhounSq said:

Nah! I think this third disc refers to one of the original Dream Factory configurations (Prince wanted it to be a Triple Album but WB weren't keen and Prince released the double album SOTT instead) Most of the tracks on this disc would probably be on the Dream Factory/Crystal Ball boots and even on some of Prince's offical releases in different guises.

Novabreaker said:

I never said it was all covering, but basically that's how they get out in the first place. The longer the way to the bootleggers, the shittier the quality. Remember, most of these songs used to be copied to audio cassette. So a 10th generation copy that's been played for god knows how many years won't sound as good as a lower generation copy. You know, you can still notice the way things like this happen with those bootleg videos. Basically the same happened to audio cassettes.

Folks have had many of these recordings for years. If you don't think tapes can't deteriorate like that naturally, think again. Cheap tape decks and the ones that like to eat a tape every now and then will fuck up your copy pretty badly through the years.

Think again? I've had tons of bootleg tapes for years and years now (until I finally switched to MP3s). But what I hear on those recordings isn't the type of degeneration that occurs with just the magnetic tape wearing out. It's not the same thing. No one was saying tapes don't wear out. They just do not wear out and sound like THAT. A lot of the crap on those recordings sounds almost digital to me. Plus there are all kinds of bizarre distortion problems on some cuts (again, not tape saturation).

Of course one possibilty is that the bad-quality source tapes have been "remastered" with some sort of extremely primitive manner. As best reflected by the version of "Extra Loveable", which has a mid-scooped presence and bass best as awful as it gets - I've actually tried to "demaster" the same track myself using analog technique and tubepres to kill off that horrible high-end and the result is lot better. Though crappy still.

I'm sticking to my theory that Prince himself is responsible for many of these songs "leaking" out.He WANTS his fans to hear this stuff.In an interview,he even admitted that when he was young,he wanted every James Brown bootleg he could find.

So what are the best quality bootlegs of Unreleased Songs/Alternate Versions on CD out there at the moment? The best ones I have are probably Yellow and Platinum (although I recorded them onto cassette from a friend's CDs).

Novabreaker said:

Never said none of the songs have been fucked with, but not all bootlegged songs sound that bad either. People making copies of copies of copies, using shitty decks, cheap media, taking in consideration that a lot of people don't take care of their tapes, have them collect dust out of the case, tapes being eaten by the desk etc etc will make your copy of an early or mid 80's track sound horrible.

The digital noise you hear on a lot of the newer boots have to do with people who aren't really qualified to "remaster" trying to clean up tracks and usually not to mess them up.

I also never said that if someone has two copies of a song they're going to sell the best quality track.

Anyway, if you want to believe it's all a conspiracy that's fine with me too.
[This message was edited Thu Jul 18 2:51:36 PDT 2002 by joeycoco]

Awh, chillout Joey. We're all on the same boat. I wasn't throwing around conspiracy theories, just raising that sound quality issue.

You're right though. There is a lot of sheer mishandling of the tapes evident. 100MPH and "Rebirth of The Flesh" being good examples, altough the most obvious cases are the versions of "Just As Long As We're Together" and "Donna" - I'd like to know what kind of an idiot dolt has duplicated those with what was obviously a malfunctioning deck. "Donna" is heaven forbid FLANGING.

I personally believe (and this has everything to do with faith)that the truth is a mix of all the theories.. or something.

joeycoco said:

Hello, this was 1988-89 I there was NO Thunderball or real Organized bootleggers at the time. It was pretty much all word of mouth stuff.

Think b4 u speak

'nuff said.

chookalana said:

This really hit the boiling point when Thunderball released Dream Factory. Prince was really pissed, he really never wanted that album to see the light of day and vowed it wouldn't.

That's what I was referring to, dumbass.

DavidEye said:

Yeah, David...I've always thought that if Prince wanted to put a stop to the "leaking" which has occured over the years, he would have somehow...I don't know, perhaps by being a lot more protective over his material...and, that because it seems that Prince didn't do very much to stop it, that the "leaking" was...cool...lol...

chookalana said:

Sorry to break it to ya, but this is bullshit...
Sure the dude was pissed, but to say he never wanted that album to see the light of day is bullshit...


Original version??!!
Dude there are at least 3 different versions out there, all with bass parts that didn't work, if ya ask me I think he released the "original" version.


This isn't rare or something...

But for people who are interested in how prince's stuff really gets bootlegged, try a google search...

Neversin.

Yep I hate to jump on hate bandwagon; but I too have always felt that Prince has leaked a majority of the stuido bootleg material himself. Have you ever noticed how he would play a song that was never released mainstream (such as Blues in C) and the crowd would know the song by heart. Did you ever listen too the VIVA LOS VEGAS concert and listen to how Prince works the crowd with "Blues in C"? What would be the point of playing that song 10 plus years after it was done during the Lovesexy shows? No one would ever remember it; unless of course it was a fan favorite because it had been floating around on bootlegs for years. Same goes for Days of Wild. I heard a studio copy back in 94 and it became one of my favorite Prince songs, but the song was never offically released until the Crystal Ball set a few years ago. But Prince would play Days of Wild at EVERY concert he did and he drove the crowd nuts with it. ANd again the crowd knew every word to the song; which to me means that they had a copy of it prior to its "official" release. So my theory has always been that there were a few songs the Prince recorded that he wasn`t "sure" about releasing. Thus he would float them around on the bootleg circuit for the die-hard fans to get. Like I said it is my own personal theory that fits the facts as I see them. I have no proof to back up my theory so don`t put words into my mouth.

i think prince lets those boots out as well. he is too much of a control freak not to know how his stuff is getting out. i wonder if warners would clean up some of his
old boots and put out an all boot album. wait, wasnt that
old friends for sale??