Help me out orgers,

I have just converted my sister-in-law to a Prince fan, she asked what is Prince's best album??

IMO, it's SOTT, knowing it was going to be a 3 disc set until WB cut it down, what songs would of been the 3rd disc??

bds70 said:

Actually, that's kind of complicated.

SOTT's songs borrow from two other albums that it was originally meant to be. In some instances, Prince changed a little bit of the songs, in others, he eliminated them altogether.

3 LPs:

> Crystal Ball

Side 1
Rebirth of the Flesh
Play In the Sunshine
Housequake
The Ballad of Dorothy Parker

Side 2
It
Starfish and Coffee
Slow Love
Hot Thing

Side 3
Crystal ball
If I Was Your Girlfriend
Rock Hard In a Funky Place

Side 4
The Ball
Joy In Repetition
Strange Relationship
I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man

Side 5
Shockadelica
Good Love
Forever In My Life
Sign of the Times

Side 6
The Cross
Adore
It's Gonna' be a Beautiful Night

NouveauDance said:

Thanks, where would "crucial" fit in to this equation???

bds70 said:

It doesn't, unless you personally want to stick it somewhere.

Despite what the '98 Crystal Ball booklet says, Crucial was never part of any known configuration of Sign O' The Times.

NouveauDance said:

it does sound like it was from that era???? no???

i woulda took off it, play in the sunshine and gonna be a beautiful night for starters.

all the camille tracks woulda been on it.

joy in repetition and rock hard in a funky place would b on it too.

NouveauDance said:

Thanks! I knew you'd come through!

NouveauDance said:

The CB Book LIES it's staples off the spine!

bds70 said:

It is.

Recorded Sept. 1986, for a proposed movie musical, 'The Dawn'.

As for the Crystal Ball booklet, I'd put it down to one of several things:

a) Prince was plain wrong. Recording so many songs, it would be hard to keep track of the 'whens' and w'heres' and 'for whats' - especially since tracks are often banded around on different projects over the years.

b) It was placed on an otherwise unknown configuration of SOTT/Crystal Ball.

c) Prince had it in mind to place Crucial on the album, but never actually put it on an configuration when he placed the similar Adore in it's place.

//

My bet is either a) or c)

NouveauDance said:

the second lp/cd would have been amazing

If the powers that be can release a box set and accompanying CD like Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and those Motown albums got, with mono, stereo, alternate takes, studio demos, bathroom demos, single edits, married edits dadadadaDA, then why can't we get a remastered 3-disc original configuration of one of the 80s greatest* albums?

*According to just about anyone with ears.

CinisterCee said:

because warner's is the dirty uncle that mollested him..and he don't wanna get mollested no mo!

NouveauDance said:

True, though the '98 Crystal Ball booklet isn't so much lying as condensing/simplifiying the truth.

It's true that 'Crucial' never appeared on any configuration of 'Sign O' The Times', but then
'Sign O' The Times' only ever had one configuration; the one that was released. However,
'Crystal Ball' (the original 3 disc version of 'Sign O' The Times') did not arrive fully formed, and
'Crucial' did appear on some of it's first configurations. It was dropped after Prince recorded
'Adore'.

BorisFishpaw said:

Well, thanks Boris, you solved that one!

Kinda like Electric Intercourse/The Beautiful Ones?

This is the first I've seen mention of alternate Crystal Ball tracklists, which I expect, with a 3LP set, had several.

Giving that SOTT pretty much represents meerly a truncated CB, is it fair to say that the majority of CB/SOTT remained in tact through the configuration process? I.E. Crucual was the last/next to last track on the LP?

NouveauDance said:

Yeah, exactly like Electric Intercourse / The Beautiful Ones or G-Spot / Darling Nikki.

Even though the earlier configurations of Crystal Ball are not exactly known, I think it would
be highly likely that Crucial would've appeared in the same place as Adore on the sequence.

(The original) Crystal Ball was concieved and completed within the space of a month, so I
expect there wasn't a huge amount of variation in it's initial configurations. Also, sometimes
Prince places songs on early album configurations that he knows he will replace by the time
it's finished. They'd be songs that have the same 'tone' or 'vibe' that he thinks is needed at
that particular place on the album, but hasn't yet written the song that needs to be there. It's
similar to a film-maker using bits of other films or pictures of storyboards/animatics in the
first test-cut of a movie so they can see how the whole thing flows and whether it's too long
or the pacing is out etc. (Not saying this is necessarily the case with Crucial, but it's worth
bearing in mind when seeing lists of early configurations or so called 'original versions' of
albums).