Hello, everyone!

Actually, that's my first post here, so please don't be too nagging, if something is wrong about it.

I would like to share with you some information which I believe to be quite exclusive, though I learned about this facts about a year ago.

I was doing an interview with Candy Dulfer when she arrived to perform in Russia, Moscow at March 30, 2009 for the first time in her career. Though we were speaking about her career, of course, I couldn't help myself but to ask about Prince (she worked with him quite a lot). And finally we spend a good half of our interview speaking about Prince and how we both love him and his music. But besides many other little stories and facts about His Badness, she spoke about Musicology Tour and one fact was astonishing - Candy told me, that Prince got a crew filming every live performance. Always, all the time, including club afterparties, etc. - everything. And that he actually watch every video after performing, just like boxers do, watching their matches to learn some mistakes! Did you ever heard about that in any sources? What do you think about that? And where all this footage is resting afterwards, what do you think?

On many responses, here's the rapid summary/overview of our discussion about Prince with Candy Dulfer:


[Edited 1/18/10 5:39am]
[Edited 1/18/10 5:40am]

mayhnaus said:

What an interesting story you have! Unfortunately, I can't shed any light on your questions, except to state that many of Prince's concerts have been recorded over the years and mysteriously some quality ones have escaped into the CD world (video I don't know about). Hopefully, others more knowledgable can shed some light on this. Thanks for your input!

Spill the beans! All of the beans! We're all interested!

Thanks Mayhnaus, great experience there. I think it's reasonably well known, or at least assumed, that Prince records pretty much everything he does. It then gets placed in the mythical vault, never to be seen again by the civilised world, much to the dismay of the majority of the fan community, myself included.

I would love to hear the rest of your Candy stories, as I'm sure everyone else would too. We can never have too much info about Prince.

Thanks again and welcome to the org. Enjoy your stay.

TheEnglishGent said:

mayhnaus said:

I think DF said something to that affect as a way to conjour up excitment for the lotusflow3r.com website (just before it launched).


Come to think of it, I remember a camera crew during his Emancipation tour filming in Tampa, but he never released an Emancipation tour video or anything that. but I do remember seeing a few cameras, etc.---not amateur stuff, but actual fancy schmansey equipment.

I don't recall any camer crew during that evening's after party which he held at a local gay bar in the city though.

True. Prince usually has a film crew at his gigs. But more importantly, let's see those Candy Dulfer interviews.

poetcorner61 said:

Well, yeah, I know about the vault, of course, but I was surprised to know that he meticulously film and record every show, and more for educational/training purposes...

TheEnglishGent said:

Well, I'm reading org for quite a while, but just never post... Thanks anyway.

TheVoid said:

Well, I'm not sure whom you're referring to as a DF, sorry. If you mean Dulfer, that's not correct as long as she wasn't really aware about Prince late activities (actually I was the one to tell her about Lotusflower album and to recommend to hear it).



Yeah, exactly, that's the way Candy was describing the situation - professional crew filming the show, but not for release, just as a "training" material for Prince himself and the band...

squirrelgrease said:

Well, I would share the interview with you with a great pleasure, but the problem is it's all in Russian

Anyway, unfortunately nothing about Prince was published in the magazine, because the interview was more about Candy's career and music, and the space was really limited, and besides, the experience of discussing Prince and listening the stories about him was such a personal and important for me, so I decided to leave it for myself, not for the commercial publication...

Thanks everyone for your responses! Well, just like everybody ask, more little stories about Prince from my conversation with Candy Dulfer at 2009. None of this was published in anyway, just exclusively for you now, dear fellow-fans!

Candy described Prince as an extreme hard-worker. He is always very focused on music, and surprisingly he don't care about fancy clothes, glamorous things, etc., though he surrounds himself with tons of it. Also she said during Musicology tour he was so full of energy - after concert, he was ready to go to play aftershows right away, while the band was dying to catch a few hours to sleep, Prince was like "Come on, hurry up! Let's go, let's play!" But he always, even at 5 am after sleepless night, was absolutely perfect - no sweat, no bed smell, accurately dressed with a perfect hairstyle, and Candy was always extremely surprised by that as a woman and said that this was surreal and even a little inhuman about him, because no one really have any time to take a shower, fix the hair, etc. but Prince was always absolutely perfect in his style and look.

Speaking about the Musicology tour and whole filming thing, Candy said he was an extreme perfectionist. So sometimes after the show at backstage he was - "damn, the show was ruined tonight! Awful!" Everyone from the band goes bananas like "what the hell are u talking about, everything was fantastic!" and Prince is "well, (for example): at the beginning of the first song drummer miss one note - damn, the whole show was ruined after that" (and always referring to some ridiculous small things, that probably not even every crew member noticed, let alone the audience)! But Prince was always controlling 100% of the show, and every musician of the band - not simply the music, but also what they were wearing, for instance. He never told them what to do, but he was always makes remarks, comments afterward. With this videos he was also a maniac - once Prince sat with the band and watch the whole show right after the concert, in the tour bus, while it was still standing in the middle of the parking lot near the venue! It was like 3 am, everyone was dying to go to sleep, but Prince was fresh and full of energy, like he just woke up, and giving tones of notes on the performance and recorded show and everything. So according to Candy he is really working all the time, being super-focused on the music and always wanting other people to be that hard-working and concentrated too!

But besides that, Candy said that Musicology tour was probably one of the best in her life, and that they were having tons of fun and Prince was fantastic to hang out with. Also she said that on a personal level he is very-very nice person, one of the nicest person she ever knew, and in musical business by far the nicest, but she said that he is very-very suspicious and closed with strangers, and it takes a long time until he starts trusting you and you can see the real Prince, very friendly, easy-going and nice and not arrogant at all.

I tend to believe her actually, because Candy was working with Prince for quite a long time! She actually told me about their meeting. Candy and her first band was booked as a warm-up act on Prince concerts, posters around the whole city, local dutch newspapers writing "Our Candy to play with a fame Prince" etc., and suddenly everything is rejected at the last moment. Candy said she was outraged, and because her father always told her to be very pushing and aggressive (that's the only chance for woman to achieve success in show business), she came straight to the Prince and was in fury saying like "how dare you abandon me, you should pay some respect!" And it turned out it wasn't actually Prince's fault, he wasn't aware at all about opening act, and the promoter cancel everything without asking him. So that's why Prince invited Candy to participate in the show anyway, and after that he was impressed and promised her to work together. What they do successfully later on.

Candy said, that the only reason why she didn't join Prince on following tours after Musicology (he actually invited her) was her own extremely packed schedule with concerts. And she said she would be happy to play with Prince in the future, but really she can't approach him, and she only can respond to his invitation, because even to this day she still thinks she is not deserving to match the talent of Prince and for her he would always be the inspiration, the teacher, the musical guru, etc., not the equal fellow-musician.

Anyway, surprisingly at the time of our conversation Candy wasn't really aware about Prince activity prior to LotusFlower, and actually I told her about how freakin' awesome the 3CD-set is, and she promised to check it.

I would say Candy is extremely nice and easy-going, very pretty and her show (unfortunately I wasn't able to check the one right after the interview, but she was back in Moscow really soon, like in 5 months) is fantastic! She even played one Prince song - "Life of the party" (from Musicology), which is actually dedicated to Candy herself and which is her favorite purple song. Though I didn't really enjoy her latest album Funked Up & Chilled Out very much, and I think previous Candy Store was much-much better!

Sorry for such a long posting, for the uneven writing and bad english and I hope you would enjoy reading it!

mayhnaus said:

Yes, I heard that several times before. I also remember a picture where he is watching one of his performances, I guess it was in the sacrifice of victor book. And in 2004 I remember a report on his official website about him partying in a club after a concert where he and his crew were watching the performance of that night. There was also a picture attached with him playing pool in that club.

Cool story

He´s such a perfectionist, no wonder that he edits his live releases so much and uses different shows to create one live album, see ONA live.
However, I prefer the real deal over any edited and manipulated stuff. Even his rehearsals sound more interesting than most of his legit releases.

It baffles me that someone like Prince, who reportedly records and watches every single one of his performances, doesn´t seem to see how much releases like the Rave show and the Alladdin show suck in comparison to most bootleg releases.

KoolEaze said:

Exactly! Though, I really love One Nite Alone... Live and I'm perfectly happy with that album no matter if it's stitched up instead of as-it-is recording.

But I can't agree with you. I'm really sick and tired (I'm not trying to blame you specifically of course now) with fans endless moaning about so many good unreleased material and wrong selections of tracks for Old friends 4 sale, for instance, etc.

Well, being a hardcore fan (comparing with an old-timers on org of course I'm just a sissy-lame looser, but I really love Prince music the MOST) I believe that any fan can really skip all bootlegs and only with a officially published material there's enough Prince music to spend the rest of your life with. Well, he's such a unique artist to have TONS of unreleased stuff - be happy that it's somehow widely available, and that in the future we would probably be receiving a really valuable rarities collection, not those ridiculous "never released before" songs like with the Doors, Nirvana, Alice in Chains, even Michael Jackson's "This Is It", where everything we got is just a shitty D-minus leftover song and a few demos to live with...

mayhnaus said:

Really cool, thanks for sharing!

i don't think Prince should watch all his concerts. He's not supposed to enjoy them the way we do. Perhaps it's the reason he doesn't release live DVDs.

Thanks for posting, I LOVE LOVE LOVE Candy!! She's such a great musician and beautiful woman. I enjoy watching her perform, especially when she's with Prince, they seem to really like & respect each other.

Thanks for recounting your Candy encounter.

NONSENSE said:

He released that horrible Alladin show.. He could at least release a Musicology compilation dvd. Maybe even have a few interviews with the band in between.

daPrettyman said:

The Alladin show wasn't horrible, it was FANTASTIC, but the filming and editing for the DVD were really bad.

Good stories, thanks.

Serena said:

That's what I meant. The dvd of the show was pretty bad compared 2 the actual show.

daPrettyman said:

Put Alladin on the other night actually and forgot about the poor quality and editing, how could he have let that get released? concert was great though...