So as the legends go SOTT was cannibalized from three records. Camile and Dream Factory are obvious but what about Crystal Ball? I'm sure this has been discussed before and maybe I even knew the facts once. Was the original three record set going to be composed of songs from the first or was Crystal Ball supposed to be something else?
Also: why does my bootleg copy of Dream Factory sound so good while SOTT sounds like it was recorded inside a fucking trash can?

SOTT is basically Crystal Ball pared down to two records because of the push by Warners to be a little more commercial minded on the scale of the product and the individual item price.

Thats what I was thinking, thanks. I still want an answer to my second question, though.

They EQ'd the boot tracks to sound sharper. You can do the same for SOTT and make it sound as good as those boots.
[Edited 1/16/10 21:28pm]

thanks

Just for info, here's the tracklist for Crystal Ball so you can see which tracks
didn't make it when it was pared down to Sign O' The Times. As you can see, one
new track (U Got The Look) was added.

CRYSTAL BALL

side 1:
01. Rebirth Of The Flesh
02. Play In The Sunshine
03. Housequake
04. The Ballad Of Dorothy Parker
side 2:
05. It
06. Starfish And Coffee
07. Slow Love
08. Hot Thing
side 3:
09. Crystal Ball
10. If I Was Your Girlfriend
11. Rockhard In A Funky Place
side 4:
12. The Ball
13. Joy In Repetition
14. Strange Relationship
15. I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man
side 5:
16. Shockadelica
17. Good Love
18. Forever In My Life
19. Sign O' The Times
side 6:
20. The Cross
21. Adore
22. It's Gonna Be A Beautiful Night

.

all in all it was a good move to release a 2 records set instead of 3, it was already difficult for double albums to get in the charts in the 80's

I feel that if UTCM had been a commercial success, Warner Brothers would have allowed Prince to release Crystal Ball. In 1986 Prince started out real strong with the success of "Kiss", "Manic Monday", and the Hit-n-run tour, but after the commercial flop of UTCM and the break up of the Revolution by the fall and winter of 86" Prince wasn't as hot as he was early in the year from WB's stand point. So in there eyes, they were not about to put any cash behind a triple album set considering the roller coaster ride Prince career was on at that time.
Aaron6ix

Aaron6 said:

This could be true if so...it another reason why WB mis handeled Prince's career, and why he was right to leave them...

Yea but from a business stand point, I don't blame WB for not allowing Prince to release Crystal Ball as a triple album set. Prince, musical genius he is, business man he is not.

BorisFishpaw said:

Side 3 and 4 would of been amazing. What a great sequence of songs.
Im gonna program that in my ipod now.

Aaron6 said:

Well they did the right thing didn't they, look at how poorly Prince promoted SOTT. 4 singles from a double album? At this time Janet and Michael were pulling 6/7 singles from single LPs. He then pulled the plug on the US tour. Bad 2nd single choice (IIWYG itself is stellar, and could've been a single down the line, but not #2). If he'd have done that with a triple album, it would've been even worse.

UTCM was a failure, again, because Prince had too much say in things, they gave him carte blanche and the film was a mess for general audiences. Again, poor single choices after Kiss (G&B as 2nd single should've been obvious... Again, Mountains is a great track, but too fruity for 2nd single after Kiss). And God, that premiere in Hicksville Nowheretown couldn't have done any favours.

Alls well that ends well I guess, SOTT is still regarded Prince's "critical masterpiece", even if the general audience aren't particularly familiar with most of the material on it.

The opinion that WB mis-handled Prince's career is hilarious, if anything they didn't put their foot down enough, he himself was the main culprit in mis-handling.

sometimes "less is more". SOTT is a perfect album

"SHERIDAN, WYOMING!!! YEEEEE-HAW!!!! 1! 2! !-2-3!!"

Hilarious... And the broad that won the contest wasn't even that interested in what was happening.
[Edited 1/18/10 7:42am]
[Edited 1/18/10 7:43am]

NouveauDance said:

I agree with u about P not promoting the project. However, he considered the "double a-sides" as singles. Therefore, the singles went like this:
SOTT
IIWYG
U Got The Look / Housequake
ICNTTPOYM/Hot Thing

So, technically it was 6 singles and one really big radio hit that never got released as a single (Adore).

I also agree with u about WB and Prince's career. It's funny to me to see how Prince and his fans sometimes confuse this era at WB with the mid-90s. Prince and WB were cool until he signed that bad deal. After the bad deal (and his taste of freedom with TMBGITW), he wanted out.
[Edited 1/18/10 9:23am]

maciat said:

Agreed.

Love this thread.

I think people forget that even Sign O' The Times received a certain amount of
criticism at the time for being too long and containing filler. Though overall
it was praised for it's scope and quality of material. If Crystal Ball had been
released instead, this criticism would have been even greater and might well
have tipped the balance between it being viewed as a sprawling, slightly flawed
masterpiece and an over-indulgent mess.

Much as I would have loved to have seen Prince release a sprawling 3 disc set,
I do think it was the right decision to cut this down to a double. Particularly
because some of the sequencing changes made in that process were much better
than the original. Having Sign O' The Times as the opening track was a stroke
of genius, and definitely had a hand in making the critics sit up and take
notice and also view the album in a much more serious light. Often drawing
favorable comparisons with Marvin Gaye's What's Going On.

Having said that, it would have been nice if Prince had squeezed an extra
track or two onto SOTT. There was certainly room, as the album wasn't long
for a double (the Beatles' White album was a over 13 minutes longer for
example). It would have been nice to see Joy In Repetition retained IMO.

Another thing that sealed SOTT's position as a masterpiece was also the SOTT
concert movie, which actually raised people's appreciation for many of the
songs on the album. Certain tracks benefitted massively from their much
livelier energy-filled live versions seen in the movie, compared with the
more demo-ey comparitively muted album versions. I Could Never Take The Place
Of Your Man is a prime example. I can remember many non-fans rushing out and
buying this single on the basis of the storming live video that was getting a
lot of airplay on MTV etc. Only to be disappointed with the much slower and
weaker sounding studio version.

I think Crystal Ball would have only stood a chance commerically if Prince had
continued to work on it for several months. Making the sequencing changes seen
for SOTT and re-recording 2 or 3 of the tracks once rehearsals were underway
and certain songs started to change and benefit from their live incarnations.

.
[Edited 1/19/10 7:28am]

^ True. Though Joy In Repetition and Good Love wouldn't have hurt SOTT, I really think that they ditched exactly the right songs from the 3 LP package.

JimRockford said:

lol yeah that was a bad decision
It should have been in Hollywood Minneapolis or Paris

Aaron6 said:

totally agree,

sometimes the artist can have such tunnel vision that they don't consider/see reality.

Also the way the Family was managed by Prince, not touring SOTT in the states, pulling the Black album

up until then WB did a pretty good job managing Prince, Prince just had a inflated opinion about himself, that he thought he should be able to do anything he wanted.

OldFriends4Sale said:

[b]
NOw pulling the black album listening to it now? I don't know if that one have been a hit. It was very dark and outside of superfunk.. and when 2 r in love
I can't imagine the rest of that album having chart impact. It was funky but dark and strange. NOW I love it mind you. I think it is one of the best he made but don't know if people as a whole love it.
As far as SOTT I love everything EXCEPT never take the place too long too boring even then I thought it sounded old and too pop. Good Love however would have been a better fit IMO

DecaturStone said:

the Black album was the better/next move following SOTT

I think it could have been marketed in a dark/underground fashion
sick videos, an afterhours video for Bob George, can you imagine the shows promoting this album? Prince, Cat, Sheila, Dr Fink putting out some wicked keys
Prince with the black cloud guitar...

This thread is a prime example of why we need a new edition of "The Vault".

Love reading stuff like this.

You guys listening? Do I need another annual "Where's the updated Vault" thread?

ufoclub said:

I wish I knew how to do this.

BorisFishpaw said:

I agree with that. With the exception of the title track, I like every song from the movie much better than the album version, which is one of the reasons I prefer that band to the Revolution.

Efan said:

I love the movie version better than the album version
but Prince has been doing that since Dez early on: I love the 1999 tour rock version of Dirty Mind

I love both bands, and remember a lot of the SOTT band were "revolution" members even if part time:Dr Fink, Eric, Atlanta, Mico & Sheila

I don't think this band had the synergy he had with the prior band and more specifically Lisa and Wendy & Susannah, for the output of music... This band profited from them.

OldFriends4Sale said:

I think SOTT was the first time I actively found myself liking live versions better than the released versions. But that said, I loved the Revolution. Ideally, I would have loved to have seen the Revolution continue, but with a meshing of the two bands. My dream Revolution would consist of Sheila, Wendy, Lisa, Erik, Dr. Fink, Atlanta Bliss, Miko, and Brown Mark. That would put a whole lot of chefs in the kitchen, but I think the creativity would have been explosive.

Efan said:

lol for the most part those people you mentioned were the Parade revolution,

I'd have to keep Cat there though

OldFriends4Sale said:

Oh, I'd definitely keep Cat. I just didn't list her because she wasn't a musician, so I don't think his sound would have benefited from her, even though she definitely spiced up concerts.

And yep, I mean it when I say I loved the Revolution. Maybe a better way of saying things would be this: There's a huge debate (vicious arguments, really) over how much influence Wendy and Lisa had on Prince's music. I would argue that Sheila had an equally profound effect. If those two effects had been combined (officially), I think the end result would have been incredible. I just rounded out the band with the rest of my favorite players, but it's the Wendy/Lisa/Sheila/Prince combo that I really want.