Just a random (but fun) rumor from a long time ago ...

I live in South Florida, just north of Miami. There was a mom and pop wreckastow that I used to buy all my prince bootlegs from in the early 90's. The store owner used to live in Minneapolis. One day I asked the this guy just how did these gems leak out as we all know Mr. Nelson has a tight lock on that vault.

The story goes that Prince used to drive around listening to his latest recordings or ideas in his car stereo on cassette. Often times, he'd drive over a bridge over one of those Minnesota lakes and throw it out the window into the water.

One day, an advid fan following him caught on to this and started camping out under that bridge and would scoop these tapes out with a net. Now these tapes obviously got some water damage thus the poor quality we got off these boots. This guy then would sell them to the "distributers" we've all become to know.

Like I said. Random rumor. But a fun one.

I was thinking of this just now because I've started to do the same thing at the end of the street from our own studio with my own recordings of "works in progress" where there is a bus stop. It's kinda fun knowing someone might be picking up those CDR's and checking them out.

Here's an old post from AMP:

T Apr 30 1998, 9:00 am show options
Newsgroups: alt.music.prince
From: t...@mindspring.com (T) - Find messages by this author
Date: 1998/04/30
Subject: Re: Bootleg questions HOW TAPES REALLY get out!!!!

greneg8...@aol.com (GReneg8844) wrote:
>2) And I STILL don't understand how tunes recorded in Prince's own house
>(Uptown) can end up as bootlegs. Is he behind his own bootlegs or are the
>people he invited to his house to engineer the sessions dishonest people?

Invited into his house???? DISHONEST??? Listen man.. NO ONE
INVITES>. Ppl get PAID to do what they are good at and THAT's why
they get "invited".. When you mix.. SOME Engineers like to test what
their mixes sound like on car systems.. That means dub a cassette
down / DAT / CDR and jump in the car and listen...

BUT the MAIN way this stuff gets out is this...

Prince records a demo.. Engineer dubs a copy... Mixdown engineer
dubs a copy of his mixes... In the meantime a Band member asks for a
copy to be slipped in his bag when Prince is not looking.... Send to
Publishing Co.... That's ANOTHER copy sent from DESK TO DESK getting
logged and cataloged... Somewhere down the line the tape gets
taken...

A new album project gets sent to the mastering co. Engineer make a
master disc and a few test discs.. One goes home with him.. etc...
New LP demo's gets sent to a lable... An executive gives the tape to
a nephew who loves Prince / Accuaintance who gets him drunk enough to
give him the tape (Yes I'm telling your story you punk A*s b*tch!)

OR MY FAVORITE!!!!!
Prince likes a girl.. Gives said girl a tape of stuff... New girl
tommorrow night will get another tape... ETC. ETC. ETC!!!!!

So how do these ppl become DISHONEST????? Looks to me like Prince
gives the stuff out most of the time! How do I know??? I have A FEW
of those actual tapes he GAVE to girls!!!!!

>I'm interested to see what you all think. Thanks.

This is FACT!!!!



T

yamomma said:

That's not a story, but a tale.

The AMP post explains how it used to happen. Nowadays, Prince is obviously wiser and more cautious.

Yeah, or it could be just that no engineer or publishing company worker is SO DISHONEST these days that they'd let the world hear outtakes from Prince's well-kept-secret-eras like the 1997-1998 Drum'N'Bass experiments (during which he attempted to program breakbeats with his LinnDrum), or the time when he was really into his Garth-Brooks-As-Chris-Gaines -period and trying to switch over to Alt.Country.