The last 3 CD'S were purely geared towards the concerts [musicology for the 04 tour, 3121 for the Vegas residency and PE for 21 nights]. Many of us hardcore agree that he could have removed the filler from all 3 and come up with a 12 track killer CD. Not that I want to be an 'the eighties were great' bore but can you imagine his pride and care then allowing Mr. Goodnight on a cd!. P nails it live for me and is still a genuis in that respect BUT I get the feeling that the music industry , charts etc now makes him view an album as a marketing tool & thus preferring to express himself live instead.
I'll always love him and support him and indeed be frustrated by him!, i just hope that in the upcomming rock CD he lets rip and rocks hard like we know he can and be an artistic original rather than tone it down like he did on Fury.
[Edited 10/10/08 6:39am]

The last 3 CD'S were purely geared towards the concerts [musicology for the 04 tour, 3121 for the Vegas residency and PE for 21 nights]. Many of us hardcore agree that he could have removed the filler from all 3 and come up with a 12 track killer CD. Not that I want to be an 'the eighties were great' bore but can you imagine his pride and care then allowing Mr. Goodnight on a cd!. P nails it live for me and is still a genuis in that respect BUT I get the feeling that the music industry , charts etc now makes him view an album as a marketing tool & thus preferring to express himself live instead.
I'll always love him and support him and indeed be frustrated by him!, i just hope that in the upcomming rock CD he lets rip and rocks hard like we know he can and be an artistic original rather than tone it down like he did on Fury.
[Edited 10/10/08 6:39am]

funkyhead said:

I think where this line of thought gets murky is when we presume to know why Prince does things. I guess that could be said about the bulk of the threads at this website. Anyways, it's hard to know if/when Prince does something for artistic reasons or commercial reasons.

Prince does not have to release new material to continue to have massively successful tours. I think that he knows this. He has one of THE best reps as a live performer. He held in such high regard (nowadays even by the uninitiated know how good he is live) that he could stop releasing new music today and still tour with ease.

So, I think that he does make his music (as he always has) for artistic, ie his own, reasons first and that marketing is a secondary concern.

Just because you might not be feeling "the art" of something like Mr. Goodnight doesn't mean that Prince wasn't. This would be the drawback of us presuming to know why Prince does what he does...

Fair point, but your sentence about Mr. Goodnight is damn scary if P considered it an important track!.

1. I am not sure that I said Prince considered it important or not. I would guess that he thinks the song it part of the bigger picture/album. The song has it's place and, to me, it fits.

2.I can tell you really don't like the "Mr. Goodnight". That doesn't mean I don't. The song makes me chuckle, because it is in the same category as "international lover". It was tongue in cheek. Prince is playing...

The last 3 CD'S were purely geared towards the concerts [musicology for the 04 tour, 3121 for the Vegas residency and PE for 21 nights]. Many of us hardcore agree that he could have removed the filler from all 3 and come up with a 12 track killer CD. Not that I want to be an 'the eighties were great' bore but can you imagine his pride and care then allowing Mr. Goodnight on a cd!. P nails it live for me and is still a genuis in that respect BUT I get the feeling that the music industry , charts etc now makes him view an album as a marketing tool & thus preferring to express himself live instead.
b]

damn your light sabre. You did not just compare Mr. G to International Lover. The latter always made me uncomfortable as I felt I was listening in to a horny toad about to get it on!, whereas Mr. G feels like an old man chasing some young model [which is pretty close to how he is!] That aside I think the last 3 albums really have had way too much filler although I do love a lot of 3121.

The last 3 CD'S were purely geared towards the concerts [musicology for the 04 tour, 3121 for the Vegas residency and PE for 21 nights]. Many of us hardcore agree that he could have removed the filler from all 3 and come up with a 12 track killer CD. Not that I want to be an 'the eighties were great' bore but can you imagine his pride and care then allowing Mr. Goodnight on a cd!. P nails it live for me and is still a genuis in that respect BUT I get the feeling that the music industry , charts etc now makes him view an album as a marketing tool & thus preferring to express himself live instead.
I'll always love him and support him and indeed be frustrated by him!, i just hope that in the upcomming rock CD he lets rip and rocks hard like we know he can and be an artistic original rather than tone it down like he did on Fury.
[Edited 10/10/08 6:39am]

What I mean is that, Prince is being silly in Mr. Goodnight just as he is in International Lover. I take it as a joke.

Perhaps you are right, and now that he is 50, it is a bit of the creepy old man vibe. That said, I always felt that, if taken too seriously, the songs where he is coming on strong, could be seen as creepy.

I would say yes, to a certain degree.

I think he has definately relied more on the live experience as his main draw card in recent years - but really that's the way it should be. Originally, a record was simply the 'recording of the the event'. It wasn't until the 1960s that people really began to experiment in the studio and use the recording as the main artistic statement, with the live show second.

Having said that, I still think he does put a lot of effort in his studio work. It's still very high quality, and he still loves to add layers of vocals and experiment with different sound textures in the studio (though perhaps not as much as he used to).