can somebody please tell me EVERYTHING they know about the dreams album and the work cds?

was dreams put together by prince and then just shelved? or have they both been put together by fans? when was the first time someone saw them? have u got them? do u like em?

just tell me anything, please, i wanna hear your opinion and i want loads of info on both.

thank u in advance!!

I believe both those titles are bootleg compilations. Though it is possible that Prince has albums on the shelf with those title.

The Work Volumes 1-5 are a comprehensive and extremely good quality collection of outtakes and demos. There are 5 volumes of 4 cds each covering a cetain time period.

I have Volumes 2 and 5. They have been compiled by Thunderbird.

Yeah, they're not official albums, they're bootleg collections of unreleased tracks. 'The Work' series was a kind of swan song for Thunderball (the bootleg label who released it), IIRC. It was an attempt to release all widely circulating out-takes at the time in a chronologically format.

'Dreams' was an earlier 3CD also by Thunderball, that was in a similar series of releases, but wasn't chronological - the other 3CD sets, were Fantasia, Deposition, Cosmos, H2O, I think that was it. These were released between 1996-1998 IIRC. The Work succeeds them, so if you have The Work, you wouldn't need any of these sets, although the artwork is especially lush as Thunderball/Moonraker were known for at the time.

The Work volumes came a little later, and were great for newer fans or people who couldn't get hold of the older releases, but there was really hardly anything on them that you couldn't find elsewhere, they were really just a rehash series, albiet a comprehensive one.

Vol.6-9 of The Work were not released by Thunderball and are fan CD-R releases. This is all moot of course since these days most people look to the internet for their bootlegs, not CDs.


Sigh... Good times
[Edited 10/3/08 6:40am]

thanks 4 your help so far!


so, overall, there r 9 volumes of The Work?

do all the work volumes 2gether cover the dreams cds or is it good 2 have that one 2?

apart from all sorts of live boots, is there anything more 2 get when i have all the work volumes plus the dreams cds?

Dave1992 said:

Off the top of my head, yes. Have a look here for tracklists: http://www.thedatabank.or...inpage.htm

Dave1992 said:

You probably don't need Dreams if you're going for a more comprehensive out-take set like The Work (9 volumes, first 5 released on CD, the rest fan-made). There's a few others comprehensive sets, 'Work It' is a good one, tweaked to sound 'better' than The Work I think.

Testament/Revelation (I forget which of these two is the earlier and which the later) is also another comprehensive fan-made set, but only available as mp3 iirc (Work It is available in loseless audio).