Susan Rogers was on the case during most of the important parts of the 80s, Im not sure which exactly, but Id have to say her, definitely!

Susan Rogers.

love

femi jeya did lovesexy and rainbow children (that's range)... and the I wish u heaven 12"

Don't forget Peggy Mac or Coke Johnson!

Susan Rogers to my ears. Her work just sounds "right" to me.

You have to give it to her for her work with Jesse and Wendy & Lisa too.

And if anybody as heard the 1st Slapbak album you will know just how good she really was and how lucky Prince was to find her!

Femi Jeya for sure. Everything he has done sounds very crisp and fresh without getting too 'clean' or smooth like the D&P era.

christopheries said:

I liked the dirty, warm funk feel Susan Rogers gave Prince's work. Under her fingers Prince's music blossomed and felt right at home.

She was the one that did the craziest things for Prince. Set up shop in The Warehouse in Eden Prarie. I just love the low-down nitty gritty stuff she and Prince pulled off back in the day.

What ever happened to them? After raising Paisley Park's too sheltering walls she was outa the door. Shame. Was it cuz she talked to Per Nilssen so extensilvely, sharing her recording sheets?

Susan Rogers..definately

rainbow children has the warmest sound of any prince album to me.... not as inventive as SOTT or Black ALbum or Lovesexy... but very warm.

HamsterHuey said:

ufoclub said:

To me it is the summum of being cooped up inside them walls of Paisley Park for too long and not getting out.

The instrumentation is okay; but the mood of the album is so cagey.

I don't care much for TRC's sound. I do, however, dig Lovesexy's. I found more warmth in Susan's engineering, mistakes and all. But, I'm old (school). P's stuff sounded brittle to me after her departure.

ThreadBare said:

If 'brittle' means too smoothened out, too clinical, too clean, then yeah.

HamsterHuey said:

Yup, that's what it means.

HamsterHuey said:

Ummm... I think "professional" is the word you're searching for.

whodknee said:

Well yeah. Maybe that too.

Sure boring often, though... uninspired.

Susan Rogers, all damn day.

There are a lot of engineers that worked well with him. Peggy Mac was influencial on his sound from Controversy thru Parade. She and her husband David Leonard were often tag teaming Prince's productions, to the point that they were on call whenever he'd be coming to town. When they decided not to move to Minneapolis, they were left behind.

Susan Rogers, although not trained in engineering stepped up to the plate in 1984 and was there for a lot of his best work. Does that make her the best engineer? I'm not sure, but she is listed on most of Prince's best songs.

Don Batts was instrumental in putting together Prince's home studio and making an enviornment that helped Prince create while he was in Minn. Often those tapes were then taken to Los Angeles and worked on by his L.A. teams, but Don was great at creating a place where Prince could wake up in the middle of the night and record.

Each engineer brought different things to Prince. Some (Bob Mockler) were great at bringing out some thick drum sounds. Others (Eddie Miller and Michael Koppelman) were great at programming sounds in the computers. Both of them brought sounds that Prince had never had.

Many of the engineers that Prince has used have not had a ton of experience. Prince likes to have them know how to work the machines, but doesn't like someone knowing more than him. Often, he asks the engineer to set up the board and then tells them to wait outside while he records much of the music himself. He'll even set up a microphone over the console and sing into it, playing with the sound as he is recording it.

Femi brings experience. Although he isn't the only one to bring experience, Prince does respect what Femi does because he brought him back to Paisley Park after he was away for many years.

The frustrating thing to a lot of these engineers is that Prince will do what Prince wants to do, regardless of the engineer. If he gets frustrated, he'll tell them to hurry up because he is "losing the groove" or he'll tell the engineer to set him up to mix, and then show up and demand to record (an entirely different set up) immediately. Most of the engineers or band members for that matter, feel like after working for Prince, they are able to do just about anything, because they become problem solvers for him.

The bottom line is that Prince likes to know as much as the engineer and is often like a sponge when it comes to knowing how these rooms work. When he has a question, he'll ask, but more often than not, he likes to be left alone in the room to make the music he wants to make, without having to explain it to anyone.

The last thing you have to remember, is that often the songs are tag-teamed by engineers. Prince works a lot of hours and often there are 2-3 engineers on a song over the course of several sessions. When it comes to giving credit, it often depends on what Prince's mood is the day he is listing the names for the album. More than once, people who worked on the song are left off because they had recently pissed him off!

The best engineer? Wow. Depends on what Prince wanted that day!

Femi lived in a motel "on call" close to Paisley Park during that re-employment time.

madhouseman said:

Great post!

excellent post - I love reading things like that.

Peggy.

madhouseman said:

Very true and an excellent post.

I only think it's not inherent on Prince's mood. It's true that most of the times, you can not exactly say who of the two or three engineers had done the 'important' work on a particular song. In fact, most of the times, I mean this is not only a Prince-thing, the recording of a song is very organic and an interactive process with the people involved. (the musician, the engineers, the technicians) Some ideas just evolve along the recording process and at the end, nobody can clearly say which ideas could be 'claimed' by a certain person. (I've had some really hard discussions about this with the people I worked with, and still work with)
Though the overall process (of recording), in which a particular engineer dertemines the whole direction, could be credited to a particular engineer.
I don't think it's the mood of Prince which defines the credits for the engineer, but the agreement on who is gonna be the one who outlines the direction before any recording is done.

In that perspective, I think Femi Jiya has done the best work, although I still prefer the overall recording of '1999'; it's rawer, much more unpolished, fatter in it's use of synths and uhh, well I can't find an other word for it, ingenious.

i havent a clue..my ears arent trained for this stuff..

but i love reading all of your responces.

susannah said:

Susan was great. One of his best overall.

Anji said:

madhouseman said:

I love the work he did with Susan Rogers, I haven't seen him mentioned, but what do u guys think of HM Buff?

NPG2045 said:

Did he do Emancipation? Or New Power Soul?

Who did The Gold Experience?

He did Emancipation thru Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic, I'm not sure who did The Gold Experience, I believe it was Chronic Freeze.

HamsterHuey said: