?
[This message was edited Wed Feb 26 3:44:47 PST 2003 by IstenSzek]

Very well stated. I agree.

I like the new indie Prince.

Me too! He is doing it Right this way and yes he is Smart to Do it this Way. I always wanted More music and Warners would Never have Allowed him this opportunity. We are So much Better Off as Fans this way. I'm Diggin on him so much people you gotta Feel it Too! Come On!

I'ld like Indie Prince if his musical output was as crafted and inspiring as his old stuff.
Maybe I am a sucker for rather grinding than praying.
Also, it seems that some other things that used to be kewl are now plain silly. If I had a business agreement with Prince I would slap him silly about the cover art for New Power Soul, for instance, the inside was rather cool, but that cover...
"If :I: had U in my cage
:I: would Slap U Silly
If U would B my age
:I: would Slap U Silly
And becuz :I:'m kewl
I guess :I: 'll let U slap me 2
If only U were in my cage
'ld be Ur Slap U Silly tool"

Oh great, a new song!
The amount does not garantee the quality...

I think if WB had allowed Prince to release the 2 and three albums sets, things would have been different. They knew when they signed him that he as a musical prodigy and that being said should have meant a different approach to Prince.

They could have wracked up with his proteges like the Time and Shelia E too. Don't tell me they weren't bringing in $$$.

I think musically Prince is better off now, only because he does have the freedom to try different genres of music, which WB may not have allowed. However, I'm sure WB would have set him up with a killa website and more memorabilia available to fans and fams alike.

Life's a two sided coin, so just flip it!!!

peace

your damn right.eye don't get it why people still live in the past.he's music is just as powerfull then before.its not beeing pushed by the mtv's and the radio stations.put on the radio or the t.v or there strong songs on it not much.all you here is cheap r&b(eye loved r&b).lousy rock songs.in his 80's everybody loved his b-side and bootleg song the aftershowsongs.now hes giving them 2 u and u still complain.no other artist has the guts 2 do this like he's doing it.believe me 10 years later people will realise he was opening the way 4 them.2 b creative and make music from the heart again.

IstenSzek said:

If he had stayed with Warners we'd probably have remasters by now... Probably with remastered B-sides and outtakes...

Neversin.

I agree with you about the quantity, but as the old adage goes, "it's quality, not quantity that counts".

For example, there seems to be a general consensus that Emancipation was pretty dull. But also there is a general opinion that if it was shrunk down to two, or even one disc it would be brilliant.

And that’s the point. Sure, we have gotten more music (no doubt to the vault's loss), but the impressions left by the music have been dulled into unconvincing mediocrity.

If WB were still at the helm then P would be releasing less, perhaps the occasional double album, and the stuff that wouldn’t have made the final cut would have ended up in the vault. But the albums would have been so much better in their entirety than they have turned out to be.

Wonder why there is little bootlegging material from the 90’s compared to the 80’s? Its got nothing to do with tightened security, its because he puts most of them on these sprawling albums or albums that literally get released within months of the last, weakening the album as a whole or totally swamping the market with too much.

At the end of the day, if we could make up 6 single discs out of all the music he has released since parting with WB, we could make some fantastic albums that would be quite comparable to his much praised 80’s days. The man hasn’t lost the gift he has, he just doesn’t have the ability to control his impulse to give us everything. Its like he even throws the outtakes in there sometimes when they really belong to no one but the vault.

For us fans its great. Our insatiable appetite for more, more, more is probably one of the catalysts for him operating like he does, promising four albums in a year, monthly Ahdio shows, new singles and even time for official releases too. Talk about spreading yourself too thin…..

okay this is entirely off topic...Neversin is your avatar a still from the remastered version of the exorcist? there is one shot where the little girl's face is replaced by the demon's inside of her...they only show it 4 1 quick second but it looks just like your avatar pic...just wondering:)

AprilMichelle said:

It's a still from the dream sequence Damien Karras has of his mother at a metro station, this face flashes for a second when she's calling out for him...
I got a framed "Exorcist" movie poster of this head, so I took a picture of it and used it as my AV.

Neversin.

Jon said:

I disagree with your position on quality over quantity. It presupposes that if Prince were to have released fewer songs, he then would have only released those songs you deem as quality songs.

But what if Prince saw "quality" differently than you, and released six albums full of "Jughead"'s? Would you rather be there, or where we are now? There's no way you can guarantee that WB albums would be "better in their entirety" because you don't know what would have been put in, and what would have been left out.

You live in an incredible time, and I think you're on the right track when you said, "At the end of the day, if we could make up 6 single discs out of all the music he has released since parting with WB, we could make some fantastic albums that would be quite comparable to his much praised 80’s days."

The great thing is you CAN do that! We have the technology; we can build our own Prince CDs.

Think about it: You can gather all your post-WB Prince CDs, burn six custom-made CDs, and by the end of the day have a collection that I bet we'd both agree would be better than any other six-CD collection from any other artist.

And the really great thing is that I can make MY own, different, six-CD collection, too.

I know the most common response is going to be, "Yeah, but look at all the money I had to spend sorting through the junk to get to the good stuff". Yes, you did have to lay down the bones. But, since everyone's tastes are different (I'm sure there are some who think "Jughead" is the defining moment in Prince's career!), that's just the way it's got to be.

?
[This message was edited Wed Feb 26 3:45:10 PST 2003 by IstenSzek]

what is Cutz and Style?

old barber shop tunes

?
[This message was edited Wed Feb 26 3:45:26 PST 2003 by IstenSzek]

Prince is like the King of Indie artists!
I like the fact that he has the week long celebrations...& hopefully it'll continue.
Shit, I like the fact that the man is still in2 his music because I know I am!
I love u Prince, u r an .

If you want to see how good we've got it, go to any other artist forum in the world and say, "Would you like it if ARTIST did the following:

1. Released 185 songs over the last 6 years
2. Started a music club that, for $100, gives you:
a. Four brand new CDs over 12 months
b. Access to the best seats for concerts
c. Admission to the soundcheck
d. Chance to talk/jam with ARTIST during soundcheck
3. Held a week-long concert series at his personal studio, where:
a. Music club members get first dibs on tickets
b. ARTIST plays a concert every night
c. Each concert is different, including one acoustic
d. Each concert has a great and different opening act
e. Workshops for musicians are held during the day

If you can find any major artist in the world who comes within a mile of what Prince does, I'll eat my hat.

Ok. I fully agree to the statements and most has been said here. I really love the way it works now. He is the artist that creates the music and he decides what songs he puts out or not. Simple and plain.
You may like or dislike some of the songs, but in the end all that matters is that the creator decides what is to be published. Not some dull-head marketing directors at WB, who are spending millions of $$ to get surveys and try to figure out what we would like to hear. By the way we were paying for the surveys anyway. So as far as I am personally concerned I rather give my money to him, knowing that it will be used to make him comfortable and working on new music, than giving it to WB who will then keep a big piece of the cake. Because that will make our brother unhappy seeing that some guys who disrespect him and his art are getting most of the money earned by his music.
So I think for me and him we have a far better deal now...

I'm so predictable. Yes, the quality-versus-quantity argument would be mine. I don't think it's a problem of, say, overdriven nostalgia. But, pardon me for starting my rebuttal with these 4 words:

It used to be that the "weak" song on an album was simply not to my tastes (say, Darling Nikki, Tambourine, UTCM, Slow Love or When 2 R in Love). But, with such tunes, over time, I'd dig them and think: "Man, I was wrong. That's not weak, it's just a little different. My bad, Prince. Keep on..."

I'm finding the passage of time doesn't treat, say, Dig U Better Dead, Hot Wit U, any of his "I-hate-the-industry" songs and a chunk of Emancipation the nearly as kindly.

Take also into consideration that all of his (potential) fan base doesn't necessarily have the technology to create their own custom albums, or even the money to plunk down to join the club and the situation only becomes more dubious.

Is he still talented? Absolutely! Does he need better structure and quality control. Yes.

And, while people constantly portray the old Warner execs and greedy monsters and Prince a muse-driven artist who couldn't care less about making a profit, consider this:

Those execs were interested in reaping big profits, no doubt. With such a focus, they were bound to put together some fairly tight albums. The Vault was, perhaps, the most cohesive Prince album to be released in years. The musicianship was excellent and consistent. A really enjoyable disc.

Maybe they were focused on what would make them money. But, sometimes, artists benefit from having their music evaluated (before release) by someone who has distance and might be coming from a totally different perspective. And, with hope, such a person wouldn't be a yes man who praised whatever Prince recorded on a given day.

My suspicion is that P lacks that sort of objective sounding board these days.
[This message was edited Tue Sep 10 9:37:57 PDT 2002 by ThreadBare]

lovesexy4u said:

Yeah! what u said!

?
[This message was edited Wed Feb 26 3:45:46 PST 2003 by IstenSzek]

The liner notes of the Vault album states, 'produced, arranged and composed by Prince.' The flow sounds far too Prince like for me to think otherwise.

Interestingly, the 3 Crystal Ball cds do not sound like Prince sequenced them. A mish mash of sorts on all 3 discs, not how you'd expect Prince to arrange things at all. I think I read somewhere on the org that he actually left all of that to an engineer?!

I agree it's a lot of music but an album like "Sign O the Times" would probably have been 3 or 4 diiferent subpar releases but instead it was combined into one great 2 cd set. I think if he were to reduce his "official" releases to one a year they would be incredible, and then he could still do B-sides or extra tracks on the cd singles. For fans he could do special releases, but the official release would be kick ass, promoted well and get critical and commercial acclaim lik his old stuff. I want Prince on the radio!

DMSR said:

1. Arguably, without WB's advice on SOTT we would've gotten one 21 track set called "Crystal Ball" rather than 3 or 4 subpar releases.

2. As far as "official" releases go, aren't we still on the one release per year track? If we are talking about stuff you can buy at Best Buy, I think we are. The NPGMC stuff are equivalent to "B-sides or extra tracks".

obligatoryeditmessagegoeshere:
[This message was edited Tue Sep 10 17:46:15 PDT 2002 by Universaluv]

RodeoSchro said:

---

There are no other artist doing any of these things. Most artist will get dropped by a label and disappear into thin air. At least Prince as made a go at being a independent artist. However, some of the ungrateful fans who come to Prince Org do not see this.

Prince has king size balls for doing the things that he is doing!!! He should get more props from his fans.

ThreadBare said:

---

The Warner Brothers sounding board offered Prince his contract back after hearing the Dirty Mind record.

The Warner Brother sounding board did not like When Doves Cry.

The Warner Brother sounding board did not want to release "kiss" as single.


Stop making these executives out to be right all the time.

laurarichardson said:

I never said they were always right. Reread my post.

My point is that, with Prince no longer accountable to anyone, the music and his fan base have suffered.


durn edit!
[This message was edited Tue Sep 10 23:58:21 PDT 2002 by ThreadBare]

Sure he has released alot more songs but most of them are throwaway.I think if he had stayed with warners they would have made him deliver higher quality material.Just like Mike Tyson when surrounded with nothing but "yes men" they tend to lose the edge that took them to the top.Since Prince left WB there has been a steady decline in the quality of the music.The talent is definitely still there but something is missing(motivation).

Universaluv said:

I thought Sign O the Times had some tracks from the "Camille" record and some from "Crystal Ball" and maybe even another record? If we are on a one release per year track the quality has definitely diminished. Remember the days of getting a 45 single like When Doves Cry and to flip it over to hear 17 Days as a B-side?! Or Rasberry Beret and She's Always In My Hair? Now we get 6 months of "Silicone!"