I think a lot of people are confusing two completely different communications that happened to be posted at around the same time at the NPGMC site. The first message was in the Paisley News section and was basically a tease about a live 7-disc Xenophobia Celebration release and the second was a promotional video for a new release called “One Nite Alone…Live” being mailed soon to members. Couple this confusion with the Launch article and you have the potential for a real mess. And in typical NPGMC fashion rather than clear up the confusion they add more to it by answering the confusion with another riddle. The riddle being “1+1+1=3”, which is of course is not only a Prince song, but the answer to how many discs are in the soon-to-be-mailed-out-to-members “One Nite Alone…Live” set.

There are two completely different sets of music that NPGMC is referring to:

Set 1:

A live 3-disc set entitled “One Nite Alone...Live”. This set is being promoted right now in the Member’s section.

Contents:

A complete “One Nite Alone” concert with the tracks culled from multiple “One Nite Alone” concerts. It sounds like it will be a sort of “best of” live set presumably presented in the order that the tracks are normally played in concert. This takes care of the first two discs. The third disc -- which no doubt will be later referred to by NPGMC as a “bonus disc” -- is entitled “It Ain’t Over” and is a live aftershow performance from The World nightclub in New York City. Given Prince’s perfectionistic nature it would be prudent to prepare for at least some studio manipulation of this live material.

This set has been completed for a few months and all three discs were playing at this year’s Celebration. This is the set that will be mailed out to members in the near future. Will this set also be released commercially? At the very start of the NPGMC this year it was stated that any and all of the Club’s releases could end up in stores, this set is certainly no exception. From what his publicist is saying, it sounds like he may already be exploring the possibility of and interest for releasing this commercially later this year or next year. Club members, however, are clearly getting this release, and are certainly getting it first (unless of course he changes his mind again

Set #2:

A live 7-disc set from this year’s Celebration. No title has been mentioned yet but let’s just call it “Xenophobia…Live” for consistency purposes.

Contents:

- Doing some quick math using the very detailed report of the “Xenophobia” experience by Harold Lewis you come up with 800 minutes (13 hours and 20 minutes) worth of Prince concert over the 7 days.
- Now you only need 5 of the 7 Prince performances, as the other two nights were near duplicate run-throughs of the “One Nite Alone” concert that you will already have in the 3-disc set described above.
- Since we don’t need these two nights of the Celebration, subtract the total of the two “One Nite Alone” concerts (310 minutes) from the 800 total minutes and you get 490 minutes.
- These 490 minutes (or 8 hours and 10 minutes) cover the 5-important days of Prince’s performances at this year’s Celebration.
- Now you take the 490 minutes and divide this by the 7 discs mentioned in the NPGMC post and you get a nice 70-minute per disc average for storing these additional 5 concerts.

With these 10 discs you’d have very little overlap, other than a few tracks that would be played both acoustically and electrically. You’d have a complete “One Nite Alone” concert culled from multiple shows, one complete aftershow, and the 5-unique concerts from the Celebration. Makes perfect sense and would please a majority of his fan base, which means it probably will never happen.

Since NPGMC mentioned 7-discs in their post making fun of those who already purchased the 12-disc Xenophobia bootleg, it would appear that this set is at least far enough along in the planning stages to determine that it would take 7 CDs to do the job. But of course if you know Prince that doesn’t mean this particular set will EVER get released. He’s teased his fans with many different ideas over the years, and a majority of those ideas have yet to see the light of day, so I would take this 7-disc set with a grain of salt until you hear an announcement that it’s actually being pressed.

Decoding NPGMC communications is more difficult than deciphering Russian transmissions during The Cold War, so it would be wise to also take this interpretation with a grain of salt.


*****
Addendum:

Of course another logical conclusion (I can't believe I'm talking about Prince and logic in the same sentence) is that the 3-disc set originally planned a few months ago entitled "One Nite Alone...Live" has since the Celebration grown/evolved to 7 discs. In other words, he’s added (or in the process of adding) 4 more discs to cover the "best of" live material from the Xenophobia Celebration performances.

The 3-disc set is merely the version that may get shopped to retail.

*****
[This message was edited Fri Aug 23 0:05:38 PDT 2002 by Brendan]

OK and what is the confusing part? Do you guys have a problem with letters or understanding big words? DUH!!!



stupid people

Thanks Brendan for the summary; I think I can agree with you on facts and opinion

udo

guys.. HE WORKS FOR NPGMC! GET'EM!


haha:) ok eye lost it

Thanks Brendan. I've been watching a lot of people here getting all worked up over two completly different things. Hopfully this might calm people down.

funkbible said:

I wouldn't be quite so smug. There were no "big" words used in the referenced communications, and you certainly don't need big words to be an ineffective communicator. Take your post for example.

All this hubbub is cracking me up...

Like Prince will ever get around to releasing a 7 disc live set, ever. We can dream, but I just don't see it happening.

It'd make a lot of sense to do it. To pull a "Pearl Jam" in a sense and release high quality versions of all the heavily bootlegged shows to take the business away from the bootleggers. If you notice, though, "it'd make sense" and if any of us have learned anything about Prince, we know he ain't about to start making sense...

Anywho, I'm sure we can have at least 50 more threads debating this topice before it goes away...

Good summary, though, Brendan!

endorphin74 said:[quote...

Like Prince will ever get around to releasing a 7 disc live set, ever. We can dream, but I just don't see it happening.
quote]

Prince did release Crystal Ball as a 5 Disc set. I can see this scenario that Brendan poses as quite a possibility.

At least I hope so...

squirrelgrease said:

If he does it, I pledge to listen to and not complain about "Cream" for 1 month!

(That pledge seemed to help me score my last minute celebration passes, maybe it'll work again!)