2020 said:

I'm fairly sure it was P-nut himself that started the whole 'modern day mozart' stuff. See 'kingofpop' Jackson as another self proclaiming looniac.

He's prolific, but Zappa was moreso. You can't argue with facts and figures. No idea why people on here always try to make out Prince is the BEST at everything... Those threads that slag off anyone covering a prince track and then stating that his 'case of you' is better than Joni's. Barmy!

The last bit wasn't aimed at 2020, just an aside.



Erik

ernestsewell said:

First off I'd like to point out that you Ernest remind me of the kid in class starving for attention and always has something to say even though most everyone is really tired of hearing from him...just so ya know as most people like yourself that do this are somehow not aware how incredibly irritating and full of themselves they really are.
Second, yes I know exactly what prolific means there son...
Third...he is a Modern Day Mozart and will continue to be one until he dies regardless of anyone stating this recently.

2020 said:

It's a shame you've derailed the thread into your own bitchfest. I'm past that. But since you're going there, you remind me of someone who can only quote cliche, redundant, and boring media one-liners (or silly titles that Prince himself propagated like MJ with "The King of Pop", when he put his pal Liz Taylor out there to proclaim him as much), all while being a possible Prince ass-kisser, all in lieu of looking at things logically and with a bit of unbiased attention. I'm not full of myself. I'm looking at things logically, and giving good consideration to the fact that Zappa COULD be more prolific than Prince in the amount of original (not live concert recordings of existing and already-released material) sitting in his vault. It's possible. Sure, some Prince fans might lose their shit, and their 20/20 vision, on all things Prince, but whatever.

Or you might just need a new pair of shoes.

^^^ truth hurts I know but somebody had to say it.

Also note I stated IMO which is in my opinion regarding this thread and all I'm doing is providing a "logical" response to your oh so well statedfacts tha are truth be told nothing more than your opinion.

They are both prolific however I personally feel P is more prolific and provided a widely knownstatement to back up my opinion. Have a Grand day son..

2020 said:

LOL @ the son stuff. I get that you're trying to be condescending but you're failing as miserably as you did on the first attempt at a bitchfest. It's cute though.

my top three most prolific are as follows

1. Paul Mcartny
2. PRINCE
3. 2PAC

PEJ said:

Tupac for sure. He was SO young when he died, but has an incredible amount of stuff still sitting around. That much, in that short of time....definitely. Paul is like 154 years old....of course he'll put a lot out. hahaha Zappa is still in the top 5 though.

i'm REALLy confused how a discussion about most prolific artist can involve opinion?
That is, unless you CHOOSE to define "prolific" as he quick and abundant production of quality material. Thsi may be a worthwhile narrowing of the definition as I'm sure otherwise you could argue that a bunch of monkeys hammering away at pianos witha tape recorder running would win for most prolific!

So, if the issue is speed and quantity of quality material it becomes fairly subjective. So I would suggest that the "quality" issue be measured by wide recognition.

I know a little about Zappa, but I have no idea whether the massive material he released is generally considered to be consistently high level. I can say, that in general (even among many fans_) Prince's output (particularly since say 1990) is thought of as somewhat uneven.

So maybe the question should be which artist is the most prolific in creating quality material?

wasitgood4u said:

After that, we'll cover who uses more toilet paper, Prince or Zappa. I'm not being mean, just bouncing of reply #5 in this thread: http://prince.org/msg/7/328515 (there's truth in it).

ernestsewell said:

Yeah - not sure you're on point. I was just trying to clarify some of the confusion from earlier replies and make the thread more sensical.

wasitgood4u said:

I know. I wasn't attacking or anything. I meant that it's hair splitting at this point with some folks who are desperate to have Prince on top regardless of what the truth might be.

ernestsewell said:

Are there any facts or rumours surrounding the amount of material in Zappa's vault? I'm probably not as familiar with his body of work as you, but I get the impression his vault of original recordings and what-nots must be vast - and until you mentioned it, I hadn't even given much thought to just how much stuff he must've recorded or fiddled about with over the years that has never made it into the public (or at least my) domain.

As you seem to know your Zappa, are there any numbers (rumoured or otherwise) floating about?

And to (probably inadvisedly) lend weight to somebody else's 'Prince is more prolific' view, am I correct in saying that a majority (or at least a large minority) of Zappa's released work is a mix of live recording and studio? I know this is certainly true of some albums - and I don't just mean some live tracks / some studio tracks either, I mean live bits mixed with studio bits etc.

I still think Sun Ra has these guys beat.

Swa

Swa said:

Yeah, I remember somebody going into some detail about Sun Ra's output last time this topic came up. Sadly, I know no more about him than that (wouldn't even know if I was listening to him, although doubtless I have unawares heard quite a bit).

So if he's a contender, details would be good.

Come to think of it, last time this came up, 50 replies in there were a ton of contenders for most prolific, leaving Prince way back down the list.

AsylumUtopia said:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w...iscography

The Sun Ra discography is one of the largest in popular music.The eccentric American jazz keyboardist, bandleader and composer recorded dozens of singles and over one hundred full-length albums, comprising well over 1000 songs, and making him one of the most prolific recording artists of the 20th century.

AsylumUtopia said:

He died in 1993. There have been Zappa albums coming out since then, as recent as last year.

AsylumUtopia said:

the apostrophe/overnite sensation classic albums dvd has a bonus video called welcome to the vault. there is a huge amount of stuff that hasnt been heard yet! walls of master tapes in that vault. i highly recommend that dvd to zappa fans if you have not seen it. i would venture to guess that the stuff in zappas vault outnumbers princes.

wasitgood4u said:

Ding ding ding! This is not an opinion question. Either Zappa or Prince has recorded more. My guess is Zappa. Shame that people can't answer a question like this without getting all defensive, as if it any way denigrates Prince if another artist was more productive.

ernestsewell said:

A propos hair-splitting, I know that sensible is grammatically correct, but I was using poetical license to create a neologistic adjective for something that has been de-nonsensized (sensicalized ) ..

ernestsewell said:

Yeah, I knew he died in 93, but I wasn't aware of the fact that albums were still coming out. I guess that's partly because I haven't really looked - well I do have the odd rummage in HMV and various other places, but record shops aren't really the place to go to buy proper music any more - it's always the same old stuff - if you were to go by the available selection you'd think he'd only done a handful of albums.

The other part of the problem is that he is so prolific that it's hard to know what to get next (I have the same problem with The Fall) and that some of his stuff is a bit all over the place - not a very fair description but if some of it were less disjointed I'd be more inclined to take the time to listen to it more often. I already have a good few Zappa albums that I haven't given the time they deserve, so I'll be playing catch-up for years to come.

So far I only have a few:
The best band you never heard, Burnt weeny sandwich, grand wazoo, joe's garage (1-3), lost episodes, man from utopia, meets the mothers of prevention, sheik yerbouti, shut up n play yer guitar (1-3), sleep dirt, strictly commercial, them or us, uncle meat, weasels ripped my flesh, we're only in it for the money, you are what you is and zoot allures.

Of those I'm most familiar with burnt weeny, joe's garage, meets the mothers, sheik, weasels, we're only in it, and zoot allures. Some of the others I've only lisstened to a few times.

So he died 17 years ago and I still can't keep up with him. But I'll get there. Some day.

savagedreams said:

Thanks, I'll have a look out for that dvd.

wasitgood4u said:

Well, when nobody's in possession of the facts, it can only involve opinion. My fact free opinion is that it has to be Zappa. By a mile. No question.

wasitgood4u said:

I wasn't splitting hairs. I saw a red line under the word when I clicked reply, my computer noting it was misspelled, and thought you might have meant to type "sensible" or "sensibility" instead of whatever you did type. That's all.

A quick note about Frank Zappa's nature and ability to see how technology could take us in a new direction - in 1989, after starting a 1986-dated personal endeavor to remaster his albums from the 60's, 70's, and 80's for the new CD format, Zappa had an idea of replacing LPs, and "phonographic record merchandising".

He said that music could be a "direct digital-to-digital transfer" distribution, either through a cable television, or phone, with any royalty payments, and consumers to be bill through accompanying software that would make the whole process automatic.

Later that year, he said his idea was a "miserable flop". Remember, this was 1989 that he had that idea. Yet, how correct he was in his idealism of the transfer of music.

The advent of music stores was still a concept that didn't see the light of the internet in a big way until the mid 00's, especially when iTunes finally opened up it's store to PC users in 2003, and the iPod became an instant staple for carrying music around. Napster was long since over, and being changed into a real music outlet. Sites like Mp3.com and companies like Real.com were late getting into the retail game, but did get there.

interesting interview with Zappa, funny enough mentioning Prince pertaining to censorship and the song sister, funny to watch this and laugh at these guys...




http://www.youtube.com/wa...ISil7IHzxc
[Edited 1/25/10 14:53pm]

notjoemama said:

WOW: thanks for posting this video, notjoemama & Ernest,

like you said Notjoe, Zappa is mentioning that he is not selling Prince's records, saying this twice.

interesting video about censorship.... Zappa is so cool, denying censorship. But these 3 guys interviewing him are scary - and laughable - and sad too. I guess that's what americans are used to, some right-wings who wanna control and censor the music/ lyrics.

John Lofton, Washington Post - what an agressive scary and nasty man. He should try to live here in Denmark, nudity and explicit language is completely allowed in the media in Denmark, and we danes are still surviving,

These days Prince himself is putting self-censorship into his own music, has Prince become a right-wing himself..?? or where does it put Prince into this discussion about censorship... ??

Interesting...!!
[Edited 1/25/10 16:59pm]

Update: I think I will put this video in post #1, so more are gonna watch it.

Very interesting...

And for those who are really interested, Zappa's testimony at the PMRC Senate Hearing (4 parts).

(bits of which you'll have heard as Porn Wars on the meets The Mothers Of Prevention album - if you've heard it of course)

wasitgood4u said:

quality is very subjective. for a lot of people princes music is just weird, but zappa even more so. prince has obviously had more commercial appealing music than zappa, but to me thats still not a mark of quality. so i still dont think you could judge it on quality, but maybe in its mass appeal?

ok well not sure if i have to stay zappa specific here but first of all zappa was ok at times great but u know why does it hurt when i pee and the mud shark kind of remain on nastalgia rarely does he break truly amazing ground that just pulls me open like prince does ... as far as quality here goes .. and we know prince has a few clunkers too but what i want to bring to the conversation is a reality that yes prince gets a lot of press for prolific but there are many many artists out there that well its just quite common that we only here on the above ground market .. a small percentage of what is really there .. it is always a pleasure to find robert smith side projects and anonymous contributions to the creatures the glove siouxie and of course his main outlet the cure who not only release a ton of material as prince once did they have b sides and side projects and hundreds of unheard songs on basement tapes and the list is quite long theres tupac who seems to have recorded more in a few years than even prince did in the same duration yes yes i know prince played all the instruments but hopefully u see my point ...

pixies = frank black = grand dutchy = breeders = amps
ani difranco
weezer
paul westerberg replacements
jimi hendrix
and lets not forget james brown or johnny cash all whom have released some crazy number of records while writing hits for other artists
motown those writers where writing for dozens of bands at a time
then u have modern day like jay z or missy eliot who wrote for many others before even putting out her own records

wyclef
bobmarley
of course beatles who wrote tons and continued to do so prolifically after the split

all of thse musicians had it that burn and they all recorded music that rivals prince on and off the record .. i dont think prince is more prolific than those just gets more press for it because that is how he got billed sold to the public ...
stevie wonder
george clinton
actually george made a lot o records i wonder if for his whole career im thinkin hes got prince beet ...
id be curious to see the true track list dmsr style on dr. dre i bet his list is long
oooooh girl .... shock me like an electric eel ..
sorry got distracted
um not much more to say anyways

TrevorAyer said:

Juan Gabriel beat them all.