i've put them all together again with one extra track
to make a short, 9 track album


01. Purple House
02. My Medallion
03. Breathe
04. Madrid 2 Chicago
05. When Will We B Paid?
06. Cybersingle
07. Jukebox with a Heartbeat
08. Van Gogh
09. One Song

I guess you could argue that Habibi and Contest Song
might deserve a place in there somewhere but I've eh
kinda lost my copy of Contest Song, sadly and cannot
include it for that exact reason. Habibi just doesnt
fit with the mellow poppy/new power souly style of a
compilation like this.

I wonder why Prince hasn't put all these tracks in a
bundle together with a new song or 2 and released it
on the NPGMC since that's the same thing he did with
the other tracks from year 1 that came from roughly,
the same period.

And please don't say "because they're crap", since I
know that lol, but enjoyed for what they are and put
together like this little "album", they managed just
to surprise me when I played them. I even found that
"Cybersingle" sounded quite good!

I guess I'm just going mad, perhaps

I don't think Purple House was ever an NPGMC track.

.

langebleu said:

that's why I said at the top:

i've put them all together again with one extra track
to make a short, 9 track album

the love these songs get on the org just touches my heart

I did a disc called Funky Design that incorporated several of those tracks. Here's the tracklist:

1. Cybersingle
2. Funky Design
3. Mad
4. VanGogh
5. Splash
6. My Medallion
7. Breathe
8. Madrid 2 Chicago
9. Instrumental
10. When Will We B Paid?
11. Habibi (unlisted track)

I didn't include "One Song" or "Jukebox With a Heartbeat", since I didn't have those as individual tracks (a couple wonderful Orgers tried to hook me up with JBWaH, but I could never get the tracks to download). If I did have those tunes, I would put JBWaH after "My Medallion" and "One Song" after WWWBP.

Jukebox With A Heartbeat shoulda made Slaughterhouse.

love

JediMaster said:

I like your tracklist, but the reason why i didn't include tracks like
mad, funky design and splash is since they're so distinctly different,
coming from at 10 to even almost 20 years prior to the bulk of the cuts
from the npgmc.

regardless, like Anji said, Jukebox with a Heartbeat, should have indeed
made Slaughterhouse.

Anji said:

i don't even remember that song. what month was that from???

IstenSzek said:

I can understand that. I was just trying to consolidate all that stuff onto a single disc. Of course, I kinda like having the earlier cuts on there, since it gives it an edge.

I'll third y'all's motion regarding "Jukebox". Why it wasn't on Slaughterhouse is beyond me.

As sketchy as NPGMC was when it first launched, I rather enjoyed the NPGMC adio shows with the single songs. It was quite a fun time as a Prince fan

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

Yeah, I enjoyed it too. It was fun to see what you were gonna get every month. Sure, some months were disappointing, but there were quite a few cool tunes dropped in that time period.

JediMaster said:

It was a very good use of the service as opposed to it now collecting dust

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

I wish he would put up vault tracks or what not on a semi-regular basis. Even if he dropped a tune every other month it would be cool. Wasted opportunity.

JediMaster said:

W-A-S-T-E-D..... All that bitching about freeing the music and he's keepin it locked up too!

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

Except it cost something like $100 US a year, as opposed to the $25 "lifetime" membership with $ 0.77 per download/song. To some extent, what the club has become is exactly what some people wanted. They resented having to pay top dollars for mostly substandard material that never had any impact outside the hardcore. All things considered, I much prefer the present model even though we only get a song once in a while, because I've realized whatever he was willing to release on a monthly basis wasn't going to be his greatest material. In those days, when Prince released a track through the club, that was gnerally the end for that song, with few exceptions.

JediMaster said:

I much prefer the old club to the current configuration. You definately got something, usually some unreleased music in either the ahdio shows (remember all those live cuts?) or single songs, at least once a month. Now you can go months with nothing new and nothing to look forward to.

I disagree that the solo songs weren't of high quality - it's all a matter of personal taste - and I mean, are the released tracks from the current configuration, like United States of Division, Magnificent, that much better quality?

Besides, you didn't have to pay the $100 dollars outright for the year - you could pay for and download individual months, thereby avoiding months you thought were weak.

metalorange said:

True but a lot of fans paid the $100 fee and there was a lot of grumbling about the quality of the songs. While the model was fan-friendly in the short-term, I'm not sure it was in the long term and career-wise for Prince. Some of the songs were good but too many sounded like quickies he had no ambitions for, hence the club release. Whatever you think of these tracks, no one knows them outside of the hardcore, and that is not a great model. Can you imagine really great records of the caliber of PR, SOTT, etc., being released this way? TRC was an exception overall and he quickly released it on cd. Though it had next to no impact, it was at least reviewed.

I love me some Van Gogh...

Aerogram said:

I agree with you upto a point. I think he clearly had to make the club more accessible to less hard-core fans, hence the cheap life-time membership, from a commercial point of view. Still means I preferred it when it was just hard-core fans!

I think the whole reason why Prince has such a massive vault of unreleased tracks is because he is constantly recording 'quickies' with no ambitions for a specific release - therefore surely the club was/is the perfect place to release such 'lower quality' tracks. I'd still be happier with a half-assed track released every month than... nothing. But still, a 'quickie' that one fan finds poor another may love. If you're a hard-core fan you quickly learn to take the rough with the smooth with Prince!

I do believe that for most fans internet only tracks don't have the status of proper CD tracks, unfairly so. It's like, their 'ephemeral' nature somehow lessens them.

Hey, I paid my memebership only to find that NPGmusicclub was not MAC compatible. That makes me feel GRUMBLELY. They used to have nice quicktime videos. Now i can't download shit. Videos come out all out of sound-sync. I really wanted to download the Prince and Wendy thing too. grumble-grumble

I think year 1 was very enjoyable and good value for money.

For $100, people received:

Music files: 50 (one non-Prince) including one complete album

NPGMC Commercial
When Eye Lay My Hands On U
Funky Design
Mad
Peace
Splash
U Make My Sunshine
Letitgo - Live
Vikki Waiting Live
Return Of The Bump Squad Live
We March Live
Habibi
Northside
Daisy Chain
The Work Pt 1
Hit U IN The Socket
Props 'N Pounds
Sex In My Bones
Sex me, Sex Me Not
Supercute
Y Should Eye Do That?
Hypnoparadise
Instrumental (Holy River)
SM Groove
Van Gogh
Get Wild (Miami Mix)
Golden Parachute
Horny Pony
Judas Smile
My Mdallion
Rebirth Of The Flesh
Thieves In The Temple Remix
The Rainbow Children album
Live 4 Love live
The Undertaker live
Vavoom
Underneath The Cream
We Gon' Make It Funky live
High
Gett Off live
Silicon
Poorgoo live
Anotherloverholenyohead live
A Case Of U
Breathe
Face Down live
here On Earth
Madrid 2 Chicago
One Nite Alone
Ur Gonna C Me

Videos: 25

NPGMC Introductory video
When Eye Lay My Hands On U video
U Make My Sunshine video
The Daisy Chain video
The Ballad Of Dorothy Parker - Live video
Get Wild - Live video
The Work Pt 1 - Live video
I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man - SOTT video
Baby Knows - Live video
Prettyman - Live video
The Ride - video
Endorphinmachine - Live video
One Song - video
Bambi - live video
If I Was Your Girlfriend - Live video
Live 4 Love - Live video
Lovesign - video
The Undertaker - Live video
We Gon' Make It Funky - Live video
Gett Off - Live video
Dolphin - Live video
Poorgoo - Live video
Anotherloverholenyohead - Live video
Face Down - video
Prince - A Portrait - video

Images: 20

Wallpapers 2

Ahdio shows: 11 shows approximately 45 mins in length each

I do agree that the business model to attract the wider commercial market was not particularly attractive, and the early downlaodable player had its problems which ultimately resulted in it being scrapped.

.

langebleu said:

Boy, seeing it all written down like that makes me wish, more so than ever, that the club had never mutated into the worthless waste of webspace it has become.

langebleu said:

A lot of this material was either already released or rereleased later. The videos were generally low quality. I did enjoy quite a bit of it, but for $100 a year it's not what I was looking for. Now I'd rather he just concentrate on what he feels he can release on record and promote. I already know Prince can knock a song in a record time, he could always do that, but with the club he could release it the next day, whereas in the old days he could take his time selecting what was really worth releasing. Being prolific and having the means to release music right away are not necessarily a blessing. Perhaps for Prince it was just too easy.

langebleu said:

Yeah, when you look at that list, it is hard to grumble at a mere $100 - If someone payed $100 dollars and were given all that material on a dozen cds, no one would be grumbling, they'd see the value more clearly. And yet these days it is relatively easy to put that music on CDs by yourself.

I still think it comes back to my earlier point, people don't perceive ephemeral digital downloads with the same seriousness as a solid CD with a proper cover and booklet. Cheap one-off single downloads are almost always going to be perceived as 'throwaway' tracks, whatever the quality of the music.

And yet digital downloads are beginning to outsell CDs, we may have to face a future where almost all albums are internet-only, perhaps then we will be forced to take such music seriously.

Aerogram said:

I would disagree with that - for the vast majority of that list, it was the first appearance. Yes, a fair chunk was rereleased later - a few years later - so that fans who joined the club later could get it. I don't think that really harmed those who got it the first time, there was never an agreement that these tracks would never be released again.


That's true, but that's mainly because back then all the vast majority had was a 56k dial-up modem, you couldn't make the video files that big.


Now it costs $25 dollars plus $10 for each album you download. You can easily spend over $100 if you were new to the club and joined today and bought most of what is currently available. So I don't see it as that different. price-wise, although, yes, you have the advantage of picking and choosing more flexibly


See, this is what I've said about people not respecting internet-only releases the same way as an object in your hands. Humans are very tactile like that. Though you are probably right, he will try and keep what he perceives as the best stuff for a store-bought CD release (but also make it available online). But consider the real possibility that CDs could be dead in 10 years time, and if that happens and all music was purely online digital, the definition of 'best work' and 'throwaway' would all be mingled up.



I totally agree that with the resources to release any passing whim, Prince needs to be more critical and selective of his material if he is to keep his standards up - for instance, I personally thought SST, recorded in 1 night and released the next day, wasn't that good. Apart from that, he certainly hasn't been in a rush to put out immediately recorded material this year, despite the ability to do it. But being slower about releasing stuff does not inherently improve the quality of the music, since it is such a subjective thing (ie Prince might love it, but we hate it - even if he really took his time over it!)
[Edited 11/22/05 18:28pm]
[Edited 11/22/05 18:36pm]

One definite advantage of that first year was the excitement that came with the new ahdio shows. I haven't been excited about that site for quite some time.....

To me, I think it is fantastic that he did a $25 one time fee for a lifetime membership to the club. That is great! The problem is, he has the ability to release so much of his vault material through this medium, and he doesn't take advantage of it. Hell, if he'd release two songs a month, I'd be quite happy (although, I would probably wait until they built up to a full discs worth. Still, that would be a new album every six months!).

The fact is, Prince is sitting on loads of great songs. Many of them are tunes that only hardcore fans would give a flip about, so why not release them? Sure, some would bitch about the tracks he selects, but it would certainly be better than nothing. I wasn't too thrilled with SST, but I was still happy that he didn't just shelve it and let it gather dust.

JediMaster said:

i agree with this completely!

stuff like old (to us hardcores legendary) concerts and aftershows
and just weird one off songs he recorded that he could freely just
put up for release without having to think "but i might want this,
or that song included on a reissue one day" (as if those will ever
be released anyway).

if he has 1,000 unreleased tunes. and probably as many taped shows
than what would be the harm in giving us the crumbs from his table
once in a while?

i'm not even asking for his 80's outtakes since he obviously keeps
them under lock and key for god knows what in the future (if he'll
ever feel like is and will still be able to get the chance to do).
but 'outtake' and occasional recordings from 1993 up to now would
be just fine for me.

just surprise us and be like "you know, there was The Hits in 1993,
so I didn't release a regular album and all, but in fact, here's an
album I had ready for release at the time. It's called "Heart" and
it goes a little something like this..."

IstenSzek said:

Oh man, that would rock!