Ok, for those who've heard both, whats your favourite? I love the groove prince set up with this one, but i can never decide which version i prefer. Obviously the sound quality to Eye No is better, and its also slightly quicker, but there are things about The Ball that I love.

The bass is way better on The Ball, more prominent and less distorted. There's also more going on in this track, perhaps to its detriment, Eye No is certainly a more polished effort, but i love how much looser The Ball sounds. Id love to get hold of a crystal clear copy of The Ball just to make a closer comparison.

"Eye No"

"The Ball" sounds like a rough jam session.They're just playing around.But "Eye No" sounds more like a serious,focused song.

love em both. difficult one!

can't separate them. i agree it would be great to have a crystal clear copy of 'ball' - on the other hand, that murky bootleg sound is one reason i am fascinated by this song. i've noticed that cleaned up official versions of much-loved bootlegs can sound disappointing after years of listening to the track in a 'different colour'. e.g. 'crystal ball', 'last heart', 'movie star' and so on...

i'm not very good at these things, i never even knew they were
the same basic track until i read about it.

like them both a lot, for different reasons. if i had to pick
one i guess i would go for "I No" since it always puts one of
those cheshire cat grins on my face for no particular reason.

The Ball is for me the single most awe inspiring mix of sounds Prince has ever done yet. The din of the crowd, the surreal glass bottle sounding percussion touches, the slow motion funk lick of the wah guitar, the old 60's tone, its like a huge conceptual dream sound, the wild call outs to the crowd, its like what P-Funk mimed with their silly scifi funk concepts,but this actually hits the flavor with the muscle of a creative god.

I Know is a powerful statement, bold and strong, and it says very much. It is classiphied in my mind as one of those Rare statements of rightous truth.

It's so funny cuz one time someone posted that they loved I Know and I was sooooo damn confused. I didn't recognize the title of the Prince song in English

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

that was funny!

MickG said:

ufoclub said:

really nice description. reminded me just how much i love this track. you're right, it's an awesome soundscape. it always reminds me of some sort of psychosexual fruit machine world... incredibly hallucinogenic and bizarre.

eye no.

The Ball IMO just sounds so.....well crap.

muirdo said:

I love "The Ball" for its sounds, I think it's one of the most inspired funk-tracks written soundwise. However, I am not at all disappointed by the rewrite and that's also what I in the end still prefer. There's a cool, over-the-top -intro on it and the lyrics are a bit more interesting now as well. Also it's a rare case of a Prince song where the successive version has ended up sounding more fluent than the original. "The Ball" is a great secret for the fans, maybe it'll be oneday end up on a future "Crystal Ball" or NPGMC download release.

Back in the day, Prince still could do no wrong.

ufoclub said:

I





















LOVE




















YOU!