on the cd "rave onto the joy fantastic"?

Why he bother for? Ironically, it is the best song by miles on there, but making a then contemporary album, then thinking, "lets give it a really dated song with a really cheesy and dated title and then make the dated song the album title" was kinda stupid from a business point of view? Poor Prince, he has no idea at times does he?

Exactly my thoughts...
Especially when you consider that the term "rave" has taken a different meaning these days.
By the way, I dig your music taste and most of your very, hmm, "original" and unique posts.
And your choice of irritating avatars..
I mean most of your favorite artists are not my cup of tea, but still the soundtrack of my youth ( 1989-early nineties) .

KoolEaze said:

Thanx, My curent av ain't annoying is it? Its my most friendly one anyway.

It seems more people notice me more then I think.

I have always thought that he wasted a grand opportunity with that album. Imagine if the music on the disc matched the title. It should have sounded more like Beck's Midnight Vultures, which was released around the same time. Now that was a fun album.

The album came on the heels of a lot of retrospective projects from Prince, Crystal Ball, Roadhouse Garden, and 1999: The New Master. I think by including Rave, and making it the title track, he was clutching at straws to try and make an impact with the album.

By including a 'Vault' track, Prince probably thought he could rustle up interest in the release, which was an attempt at a commercial comeback. The "produced by Prince" label is a testament to that.

I think Rave is completely flacid. I remember when it started to circulate largely, as an out-take, amongst fans, before the release. I thought it was dire then, it sounded like a demo, of a very boring, sub-par Batman era track, then he releases it, and it's exactly the same.

KoolEaze said:

Nothing wrong with his current avayar, Toad is a legend and it made me smile.

One of the other worst things about this record is his use of flavor-of-the-month guest stars.

KoolEaze said:

get off his dick

MetroArea said:

But the live version was nice !
(Small Club, Pard van Troje, Den Haag 1988)

KoolEaze said:

True dat.

I think a lot of hard-core fans hate the modern version of 'Rave...' because they had already heard the earlier versions via boots. I mean, after reading thousands of threads, it always seems that fans on here prefer the older unreleased versions to the released re-workings. Blame it on Prince over-producing tracks that sounded better raw, but I reckon it's similar to cover versions vs. the original, the one you grew up with is inevitably the one you prefer.

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

Midnite Vultures was Beck doing Prince, when Prince couldn't ! ! !
Midnite Vultures was a Perfect and underrated Album.
Prince should hook up with beck and learn a thing or 2 about music today.

guestie said:

very true. "Guero" is ten times the album "Musicology" tries to be.
It's fun, interesting, fresh and new.

i'm not dissing Prince's ability to make great tunes but he needs
to accept that he simply doesn't know how to make contemporary
music the way the next generation does. People like Beck and Bjork
could do so much for his sound!

if only he'd let them in on his projects. just imagine Prince
being produced by Beck and Bjork

IstenSzek said:

He doesn't need them. Everything he releases is pure genius and miles above those artists./fam

JK, I kind of agree.

There are some good songs on that album then there are mediocre ones and few crap ones, Rave was in between mediocre and crap,,, it was crapiocre , but the dude is still a legend. i liked "manowar" "so far so pleased"

Waitaminute y'all,

1st, there NEVER EVER was a studio recording of this song circulating amongst fans b4 it was released. The only versions we used 2 have on bootlegs were live captions of the song from Lovesexy Aftershows. Maybe some of u here r part of an "elite" who used 2 have access 2 non-bootleged outtakes, but as far as i know, even Per Nielsen didn't have a recording of "Rave" in his hands b4 the song was officially released.

2nd, according 2 Prince (1999 interview), the song wasn't updated at all 4 the Rave album, & was released EXACTLY as recorded in 1988. That was the point with releasing it sided with new material: 2 show that he was 10 years ahead of his time in the 80's, able 2 record a song in 1988 that wasn't sounding "old" in 1999. I remember another 1998 interview where he asked the journalist if the 1986 stuff on Crystal Ball sounded old. The journalist said "no, Crystal Ball sounds like trip-hop, & most of it could have been recorded 2day, as far as we can hear", & Prince seemed 2 b very glad of this answer

Say whatever u want, i agree with Prince on this one : "Rave" didn't sound like outdated when released, & i think it's a great song, by the way. Would it have been released on "Lovesexy" or "Batman" instead of the "Rave" album, u'd all b saying it's a pure masterpiece
[Edited 7/20/05 9:38am]

shaomi said:

There is a bootleg of a studio recording with slight differences including some orchestral overdubs. I don't know when it first became available because I only obtained it when someone on here posted a link to it earlier this year. But just because I've only just got it doesn't mean it hasn't been circulating for a long while - I just don't know. But it certainly contradicts Prince's assertion that the song has remained unchanged since it was first recorded.

Besides, a lot of fans are/were familiar with the live version from the Small Club recording and I imagine most thought it would sound more like that. more uptempo.

As corny as it may sound, I think the answer lies with something Sheila E commented on regarding Prince's mindset when he works.

She alluded to the fact that "for him it doesn't matter what it sounds like as long as it comes from the heart".

The vast majority of consumers appear to perpetually be hankering for an officially released studio or live version of "Rave" that constitutes an approximation of how it ought to have sounded like in their minds.

I myself am a huge fan of the intense and scorching live rendition from 1988.

Perhaps there are times when Prince really doesn't set much store by how a song is recorded, whether it has to be technically perfect or not, whether it's reworked or polished.

Despite the often derided cheesy production and "space-invader"-sounding drum machine he used, it may be that the occasion of the recording of "Rave Unto The Joy Fantastic" carried a special significance for Prince or turned out to be a deeply heartfelt personal experience for him. We just remain oblivious to the fact.

On most occasions Prince will probably neglect this particular mindset and do the exact opposite, confounding expectations of what he should or should not do.

But hey, that's Prince for you.

.

metalorange said:

I never heard of this version b4, so i guess that, as u suggest, it began circulating very recently (the fact that, correct me if i'm wrong, it ain't on the "work" boot collection tends 2 confirm this). Though, the fact that it's different doesn't mean 4 sure that P lied when he said he released it without any update on it. Prince often records different versions of one song within weeks, changing something & adding something there, as we know from many songs that circulate on several versions, with minor changes amongst them.

shaomi said:

The original demo has been circulating for years on the boot circuit.

The reason it's missing from "The Work" series is due to the fact that the circulating demo is actually a very poor audio copy of said studio recording.
The compiler of "The Work" therefore deemed it unusable for inclusion on the boot set.

The same goes for Prince's own demo of "Get Wild", which is also currently available elsewhere in very poor quality.

.

The version I know has been circulating for years, and the released version isn´t really overproduced but edited.As far as I know he omitted the "Caravan" melody ( also featured on The Max and Days of Wild) and the Clare Fisher strings.

When I first bought Rave I was relatively new to Prince and didn't realise that the title track was an old song. Hence, I probably heard it differently to those who had heard it before. Personally, I think it's a great opening to the album (in fact I love Rave up until "Winding Road" ). It's got that trademark Prince sparseness like "When Doves Cry" or "Kiss" but it's also got this in your face funk sound and killer vocals. It's kind of has a post-Camille feel about it.

giotto said:

Wow ! I had never heard neither of this "rave" version nor the "get wild" one ! But i have 2 admit that i kinda lost tracks of new bootlegged outtakes since 1998 or 99, just got some infos here & there on the internet, & the work compilation. Apart from the Poet 99 tracks & the "rave" & "get wild" ones, have there been other stuff released since the work compilation (or missing from it)? (yeah, i know, i gotta get that Vault book, but i just can't happen 2 save 50$ these days )

KoolEaze said:

Thanx 2 someone , i eventually heard the boot version. As u say, nothing was added 2 the released version, only a few things were taken away from it (the "caravan" melody IS on the released version, it's mostly the strings that have disappeared, plus a few added sounds here & there). I still think that the 1999 version is actually the 1st recorded one, after which P probably added the strings & a few things.
The fact that he eventually released a "first, rough" version makes sense : he also did it 4 "the funky design": GREAT choirs on the chorus were added along with Sonny T's vocals a few months after the released version was recorded, though Prince eventually released the version WITHOUT the choirs. Same goes 4 "acknolwledge me": a more complex version had been entirly re-recorded 4 "exodus", & instead of releasing this version with his voice instead of Sonny's, P eventually released the 1st version on "crystal ball". I'm not 2 sure in which order they were recorded, but the released version of "something in the water (does not compute)" also is more "rough" that the bootleg one, which might suggest that Prince eventually decided 2 release the 1st version instead of the one with more complex arrangements, etc...

Anyway, even if the 1999 version of "rave" was edited in 1999 instead of 1988, it's still the SAME song with no updated sounds added, & it still PERFECTLY fits with the rest of the album, which sounds very "1999" (the year, not the album). Like the song or not, u have 2 admit that Prince deserves a bravo on this one!

shaomi said:

Ehh ?? You´re right about Caravan being included on the 1999 released version, I hadn´t listened to the Rave album for years, but I´m wondering what makes you think that the longer, bootleg version was recorded LATER than the released version.I´ll check my sources and try to find out when I first heard the longer version.But I´m pretty sure it was before 1999.

You got that right. It's one of the only songs I can stomach from that album. The guest stars were a real turnoff. Hell, I felt like I was listening to a Michael Jackson album rather than a Prince album.

If ever had the timing been right to release the unreleased follow up album to "1999", it would have been at this time because it was the actual year, 1999. Never in my wildest dreams, when listening to "1999" back in 1982, would I have believed that music as a whole would be so tired in the year 1999 as it turned out to be. I envisioned it all being futuristic like the album "1999" and the "spacey" type songs that were popular at the time such as "Planet Rock" and "Pack Jam". Instead, it was a bunch of dead ass midtempo hip hop shit. Prince might have made a splash with the follow up to "1999" in the year 1999 because everyone was all hyped up for the new millineum. Hell, it might have even influenced some of these dead asses (I doubt it though) and maybe we could have got back to jamming again.

IstenSzek said:

I don't know... I don't think he needs to make "contemporary music" at all anymore. He's had his fair share of that.But, maybe one day he will. Without any outside producer.
Personally, I'd be happy to get more albums with the sound of TRC.

The cheap-ass syntheziser that he used once too often, the one also used on One Nite Alone, should be stolen and burned though.