On the whole a very interesting piece, especially clips from the BBC Interview of 1981 when Prince talks about reading his mums dirty magazines inspiring the music,although i was disappointed by the fact that Graffiti Bridge was ignored apart from 1 track. Come was too.
However, it was very interesting, with Chaka Khan saying that she's seen the vault, and she thinks that there would be enough for him to release albums every two weeks for the rest of his life. She says it looks like a bank vault but is also used as a shelter from tornados.
Also there was talk of the celebration and at the end a very interesting track he's worked on recently with George Clinton called something "Paradigm".
Also they mentioned "Oilcan" as a 90's release although i've never heard it before, was it ever released?
On the whole very interesting and some good contributions from Prince related people like Susan Rogers (she talked about the Black album incident)+ critic Nelson George (Bob George was an almalgamation of his name and Bob Cavallos') and Dr. Fink.

DAMMIT! I forgot all about this!

Freaker said:

Paradigm was recorded about 2 or 3 years ago and is fairly easy to find and Oilcan is on the Goldnigga cd.

During the first Celebration they showed us the Vault and it was basically a bank vault.

Oh my, wish they would show this here!

Anyone know when if I can check that on Satellite Dish Networks?!

Some great, great little tidbits! Bob George! Hah!

And "release albums every two weeks for the rest of his life", whoooeee!

Thanks for the post Freaker!

"DAMMIT! I forgot all about this!"
Don't worry, FirstAve. You can still listen to it at your own liesure for the next 7 days or so. Check the site.

It was very interesting and informative. Just the parts about, and I quote (more or less), "...married a young german dancer..." & "...gave birth to a baby girl..."

Somehow, they just doesn't fit this otherwise great program!

Yeah, they got that info wrong!!
Mayte was born in Puerto Rico, but lived for some time in Germany, so she wasnt German, per se !!
Also, it was a baby BOY, not a Girl!!

Also the UK reporter that was interviewed said that the Crystall Ball Set was not available in the USA!! WRONG !! When we lived there, eye brought Crystal Ball at a record store there!!

Also eye remember, when we lived near Minneapolis at the time we went 2 the Sam Goody Megastore in the Mall Of America, and eye went up 2 pay for a couple of CDs eye brought and in the cashiers island there was literally piles and piles of Crystal Balls stacked up behind the cashiers!! Obviously Paisley Park thought they were all gonna sell, so they over-shipped copies out 2 everywhere!!

A pleasure..flycloud man!

They said Mayte was German but i thought she was Spanish but they met in Germany..any advances??

Gold319 said:

He (Pete Doggett, who has written some well-informed articles on Prince) actually said he believed it wasn't sold through retail in the US (and implied in the way he said it that he wasn't sure on this point).

Freaker said:

As lovemachine says, the Vault was shown to numerous people in 2000. Given that Prince records everything (live performances etc) it's bound to look full. It was also suggested during 2000 that he doesn't store everything in

the Vault

I believe it was Susan Rogers who was saying this.Old

track circulating

Yes, as mentioned, on Goldnigga. This was aired during the section that was described as 'the best Prince '90s montage in the world - ever - and they provided an eclectic mix of tracks which included Sexual Suicide (recorded during the '80s, although released in the '90s), Joy In Repetition (??!!) and Oilcan (an interesting instrumental - but part of his best work during the '90s?).I agree it was interesting. The vox pop recordings of UK fans seemed to present their views fairly, as well.

Contributions over the two weeks? Susan Rogers and Alan Leeds' comments were interesting and perceptive. Nelson George was very complimentary about Prince's recent output. I found the prefacing of almost every contribution by Matt Fink with 'Hello, this is Dr Fink. I used to play keyboards with Prince' came over as if he desperately wanted to announce himself - I half-expected him to suddenly say he had a new album out! His comment that Prince told him that his step-father had been physically abusive - followed by 'And Prince, if you are listening to this recording, please forgive me' - sounded pretty pathetic.

Good idea to choose a presenter who was interested and appreciated his work. A few inaccuracies. A great plug for the NPGMC (I have visions of people's interest suddenly being rekindled and logging on to find nothing to join). As a general overview of Prince's contribution to popular music and more, it covered a fair bit of ground, and general music and former fans would have had their curiosity piqued.

In addition to what people have already pointed out, for the most part I liked their selection of songs to match whatever the interview was stating presenting at any given point. However there were some weird off time kinda backing tracks, like playing "I Hate U" after they had already discussed him coming out with "Emancipation" and had Jimmy Jam presumably speaking about it.

All in all, I think it needed a better editor to catch some of those errors (the baby girl, P kissing Wendy on keyboards, etc.), but I would like to see this redone as a TV documentary. Time to update that BBC documentary.

NuPwrSoul said:

They've been filming in Minneapolis this last week haven't they?

When I bought a Black Album bootleg in 1988, never in a million years did I ever think that "Bob George" would be played on Radio 2. It was very, very weird. For people outside the UK, I can't really describe how strange it was. The station has become a lot more eclectic in recent years but in the past it was always seen as playing safe, banal, easy-listening for the over-50s. Strange.

I admit that there were a few inaccuracies and some of the music they picked to accompany the speech was odd, but over all it was a great crash-course in all things Prince.

I'll admit, I'm a lapsed fan. I have every album up until the NPG's Newpower Soul record. I also have every single up to The Greatest Romance Ever Sold - and then I gave up. I really don't know how I'm going to catch up now. I don't have a credit card, so God knows how I'm going to join the NPGMC. Damn.

Someone asked Femi Jiya about Prince's Vault at last year's Celebration. His answer was "Who's to say there's one Vault...?", implying there may be several. Hmmm...

Lovemachine - this is the first I've EVER heard about people being given access to the Vault!!! Tell us more!

God, IMAGINE Prince giving you the keys and saying "I'm going away for the weekend; take a listen...". I think I'd faint!

Found it boring on the whole actually, at least first part spoke on Madhouse which was unusual. Only bit of interest to me was Prince using his vault as a shelter from hurricanes etc.

Noticed the German/daughter error yeah, as for Nelson George saying "Wendy on keyboards" that's his own lack of knowledge. No wonder P hit out with "Bob George", that said I dig Nelson otherwise.

The Prince interview segment is available on CD.
[This message was edited Sun Jan 26 8:38:12 PST 2003 by Essence]

onenitealone said:

We weren't allowed exactly allowed access to the Vault . We were walked by the vault which had it's door open and we could kind of peak inside, but there was tape in front of the actual entrence. I was told that someone broke the seal of the vault and a silent alarm went off which I found VERY interesting as it is another roadblock in my quest to steal all the contents of the vault .

The Vault was housed in a room where Prince keeps artwork given to him by fans.

What worries or interests me is that I am convinced that someone at PP has access to the vault due to the huge amounts of bootlegs available.

Interesting observations - yes i was very surprised they broadcast The Black Album, Dead on it "all sisters like it when you lick em on the knees", but it was cool that they chose songs and things you weren't expecting. The talk about the end of Darling Nikki was good too, with the reversal of what Prince says.
It was weird to put S suicide as a 90's release as it was really an 80's song, but on the whole it was good. Dr. Fink did introduce himself a lot its true but he sounded interesting. It would be cool to have this on TV too. It was a real shame though that they neglected to mention Graffiti Bridge + the film and the NPG Exodus collaboration.
Interesting stuff about TBA and Lovesexy
The BBC is a very good institution as it isnt commericalised, and so produces intelligent things not ruled always by "selling" motives.

The first part seemed the better of the two overall to me. Seemed almost like their research ended exactly at the same point at the DMSR book (!) and they had little of real interest to say about the time after that. Agree with almost all the other comments. Strange selection of '90's' hits, obvious mistakes on the baby, Mayte etc etc... But overall a VERY good two parter.

Did find the 'normal' speed voice intro to Rainbow Children interesting to hear. Hadn't thought of trying that, but I did back in about 1990 play the Darling Nikki sample backwards through my old Amiga sound sampler to see what it said!

So who's excited at the thought of a BBC tv doc? The ITV Michael Jackson 'all-access' documentry trailers have started to run. Imagine if Prince decided to contribute like this to a BBC production! It would be great to see a genuine doc on him. I watched the Mel B interview again the other day and it would be good to have something a little less contrived.

Essence said:

Actually I think that was a slip up for George. He knows better because in the BBC tv documentary he makes the same comment, but says Lisa on keyboards.

langebleu said:

i haven't seen any film crews walkin about...

I missed both of these fuckin shows cos I had to work. With a bit of luck, someone will put it up on Kazaa

NuPwrSoul said:

Even so, I seem to remember he was referring to the Gayle Chapman period. It was she who he used to go and kiss for controversy early on.

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

Apologies - they are filming in St. Paul:

See bottom of page: http://www.startribune.co...97267.html

onenitealone said:

Nobody ever heard of that time Prince went to London to bury something there, that wouldn't be opened untill after his death?

it was interesting.

Abrazo said:

There was some sort of time capsule buried in the floor of the shop in Camden. The shop closed so I'm sure whatever was in the capsule would have been removed.

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[This message was edited Mon Jan 27 1:51:55 PST 2003 by CalhounSq]

Freaker said:

Firstly, there is no need for someone to have access to a vault for bootleg material to emerge. It has been indicated both here and elsewhere that music has found it's way on to bootleg in the past through other routes. Secondly, your interest or concern ought to be in the past tense, given that the flow of studio music that once found its way onto bootleg has been stemmed in recent years.Wrong. It is first and foremost established to operate as a public rather than commercial service. However, the BBC is commercialised - just look at its annual accounts and the amount of revenue it generates from "selling". Despite being heavily reliant on the licence to fund its output, it has a global commercial division - BBC Worldwide. In the last audited year, it generated over £100 million income from selling around the world.
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[This message was edited Mon Jan 27 2:01:12 PST 2003 by langebleu]

Yes, but what does the BBC do with that money??? It ploughs it back into high quality television programmes - because the cost of production is so high now that they need to generate extra funds to compliment the license fee.
Please get your facts correct before implying that there are people making personal profit from this (although the director and his cronies get paid a fair salary!) Peace.