I had an older cousin who lived in the city who helped show me the way. He hooked me up with a copy of the Black Album and a bootleg with camille/dream factory era tracks all over it. He told me where to go to get good Prince imports and generally got me hungry for the world of Prince beyond MTV and Musicland.

Then one day I sent away for a 'catalogue' of 'hard to find' music advertised in the Rolling Stones classifieds. That led me to some of my other cassette bootlegs and my VHS of Lovesexy Live. good stuff...


In my early Paisley Days we just heard of parties from random folks we knew working up at Calhoun Square. We met some folks early on as well and we'd do a phone tree if party rumors started to swirl.

Wow, things were A LOT more work back then!

i called one of those 1-900 numbers... they often had bad info. one time it said Prince was making a movie based on the Dirty Mind time period.

and my first prince related post was in Sept 1993!
[Edited 9/13/06 19:58pm]

endorphin74 said:

omg was it the one in Pacific Palisades? i got a ton of stuff (mostly VHS) from there!

I read all the NEWSPAPERS, Books, Watched VIDEO SOUL and HOT TRACKS and Friday Night Videos. Read AJ BENZA and LISA STASI'S COLUMN...ROLLING STONE and SUBSCRIBED to CONTROVERSY and UPTOWN....Also MTV NEWS would tell ya a bunch of stuff.

i didn't know

my routine when on a trip to the city...
check to see if there is anything new in the rack
check rs and spin to see if there is any news



and even online now i'm still more or less clueless

Rolling Stone Used to tell you all the CITIES PRINCE was TOURING and I would go Crazy to call out of State Ticketmasters and Scalpers...LOL...

Newspaper and trying to weed out information from the record store guy. lol

television of course, not so much radio or clubs. record stores.

SlamGlam said:

That was it!!!!

Crazy!

redsock34 said:

**** Hey, so Im not the only one, Prince speaking through my cat 2...lol

B4 I had internet I kept "informed" about Prince with Magazines, radio, tv....

There was The Prince Family newsletter that you could subscribe to. The lady that ran it also had a phone number you could call and hear prerecorded Prince news; it was updated reularly.

Also, there were two local record stores that would carry Prince bootlegs for me. The guy that ran the one place would specifically go to some kind of trade shows and hunt them down for me.

Also, on AOL, there was a a Prince message board that I used to frequent ALOT lol.

endorphin74 said:

I would imagine being in Minneapolis helped a lot...you had the Glam Slam store and other goings on up there.

What kind of info would uptown have? I think that was a Fan Club magazine. Speaking of Prince's Fan Club, wasn't stuff available through that?

seanski said:

Ahh yes, Black Beat and Right On. I got quite a bit of info from these two magazines back in da day.

Because of those mags I spent most of 1985 waiting for "the Dawn" to come out

I had a bootlegdealer here in town , that i lost contact with unfortunately

superspaceboy said:

Oh yeah, THAT How could I forget the We Are The New Power Generation store?

I may not have bought much there, but dang...I spent many an hour upstairs watching videos

endorphin74 said:

Did you sit in the car?

For me, it was through a guy in northwest Indiana named Brian H in the late 1980s and early 90s. I lost track of Brian after moving to Texas. But this guy had it ALL. He made his own "new power music" shows and distributed them on tape, where he would play DJ and spin unreleased tracks (like the full, unedited version of Batdance which he had before the soundtrack was even released [the version that's longer than the album version with different beat breaks], and he had a crystal-clear copy of Tick Tick Bang months before GB came out, and the version of Round and Round pre-Junior Vasquez long before GB was released). He was not a bootlegger -- but certainly had contacts who were -- and just wanted to share all this awesome (and unauthorized) material with anyone who would listen. He's how I got completely hooked on Prince to this day.

This is the kind of thing that Prince and his lawyers will never understand -- had I not been exposed to that kind of stuff, which obviously Prince would never have wanted -- I would never have bought every freaking thing Prince has released in his career. How many thousands of dollars does that add up to? Might be pennies to Prince, but if you took my salary and those thousands of dollars and scale it up to Prince's "salary," it's big.

This guy even called me to tell me that "Schoolyard" and "Horny Pony" wouldn't appear on D&P before it was released -- that, after he sent me copies of both songs in the early spring of 1991 (I think). I never asked any questions about how he knew what he knew or how he had the music he had.
[Edited 9/14/06 10:41am]

oldpurple said:

Mrs Murton was great, a real mother hen.
CHRIS DAWSON was the guy from Otley. He still owes me money

Doozer said:

Same here. Had it not been for the boot versions of Others here with us and Little Girl Wnedy's Parade, I prolly wouldn't be the fan taht I am. I do think P is aware that the bootlegs are part of the reason he has the rabid fans he does...but I think he doesn't care. He wants to release things as he sees it in the grand scheme of Prince's world.

Besides what I said earlier in the thread, of course I read Right On! and Black Beat. Still have clipings and posters from them as well as Creem, Rolling Stone, Ebony, Jet,and a few others. Also got my hands on a few copies of Controversy. I'll probably remember more later....

pacey68 said:

some place i have a note from her... probable tucked in with one of the controversy issues

superspaceboy said:

You're definitely right. But it just goes toward the difference between the perspectives of being a fan/collector and being the artist. Certainly a lot of Prince's longevity is tied to the bootleg industry, whether he likes it or not and whether he cares or not.

And I can't believe Brian H ain't trolling around this site or housequake.com right now. WTF?

Back B4 the internet in Philadelphia.....

There was Tower Records that carried Uptown Magazine,

There was the Official NEW BREED

Kurt Loder from MTV was a huge fan, and often Prince was a staple in This Week In Rock

One of the best sources was "GOLDMINE" an industry-type paper for the Music Industry/Collectors. I got half my boots (music/vids) from there.

Being in Philly I would travel to a little town Media PA, this guy had a used record store, and a ton of boots, if he didnt have it..he would find it.
I remember when i tried to find the Chocolate Box, it took him 2 months to get it. He was always informed bout Prince. I remeber when his store was going out of business, I saved all my money from my after school job, I must of bought every boot he had.

Sam Goody in Philly also had a large selection of Related artists, I remember getting CD versions of Madhouse and Jill Jones there.

Another is Barnes and Nobles they always had the Europe Imports of his music.

pacey68 said:

yeah thats the guy. you as well

When Uptown started in 1991 , was there already a way to get online also ?
Anyone here did that ?

And was there any extended fanclub based in the US , during the 80's ?
.
.
.
[Edited 9/18/06 9:30am]

All I can say is THANK GOD FOR VH1! Well, back in 1995 anyway, when my family was years away from getting the internet. I took notice of him when he did P Control at the fahion awards in December '05 (blew my 13 year old mind!). Then, he was January 1996 Artist of the month, and I saw tons of videos during that time. They showed Purple Rain that summer for their first "Movies That Rock" movie, and included him in many countdowns and video specials. It was almost overwhelming finding out that my new favorite star has an almost 20 year career already, and watching it all unfold was a trip. That fall, he released Emancipation, which was an experience all by itself! I was pretty lucky!

Fanzines for me - Controversy & Dream Nation. I then stumbled across "A Documentary..." by Per Nilsen which really helped open my eyes up. Record Collector ads introduced me to the world of bootleg cassettes (God, the money I spent on poor sounding tapes scares me!).

..but the Internet has really opened the field up - with Prince.Org & Housequake leading the field.

In the late 80's I was a student at the University of Minnesota. First Avenue and Glam Slam were places to go (saw Prince at both of them, unannounced), and local newspapers like City Pages and The Reader had almost weekly updates on Prince. Minneapolis was definitely the place to be in the pre-internet days.

Jeff