They have some cool outtake tracks in there but the quality of the music truly sucks...

I would not touch 'The Jewel Box' with a bargepole.

The sound quality on all tracks sucks and, worst of all, many of them are incomplete (like 'Purple Music'#2).

As for 'Jewel Box II', its only redeeming quality is a half decent version of The Time's unreleased studio version of 'The Bird'.

.

both of these were my introduction to the world of unreleased Prince music. They were good at the time...loved II just for the fact that it had Heaven & the long version of Computer Blue.

You're better off with The Work sets now. Jewel Box 1 and 2 were great back in the day. I also really like the Dreams, Fantasia, Cosmos and Deposition collections which in many ways are better than The Work cds. I wish someone would compile brand new outtake compilations which relate to the era they were released and all remastered. I loved the Charade set that came out which was full of Parade outtakes. It looked great too, almost like the alternative Parade album(which it was) This should be done for every era though. Its far more interesting to see Prince's development as an artist too. The sprawling nature of box sets puts me off.

giotto said:

I only found out that songs like "The Dance Electric" and
"Purple Music" were so incredibly long after "The Work"
had emerged and it became apparant that a whole bunch of
songs on "Jewel Box" were incomplete and very very bad
sound quality.

But I guess "Jewel" box served it's purpose back in 1992
when I first got a hold of it.

I'll always like it simply because it was the first ever
Prince bootleg I bought. I didn't understand back then,
who'd released it and why and how, but I sure enjoyed the
music. I heard all of those songs for the first time that
day. Damn.

When they first came out they were great, and got very hard to get hold of for a while, at least the first one.

But this is, what, over a decade ago? There have been much better compilations since.

But they were some of the first multi-CD bootleg out-take collections around.

I'll agree that for it's time in Prince History it had it's place. It, too, was my first bootleg recording.

Someone actually stole disc 2 back in 1998 so I don't have the complete set any longer, but there are so many alternatives now than there were 6 years ago.

As some have mentioned, the Jewel Box series will have meaning for those people who purchased them to be introduced to the tracks on there for the first time.

For those that had heard most if not all of the stuff through prior releases, they will perhaps have little or no added value.

Similarly, they will mean little for those that puchased later compilations of outtakes.

The versions of Rebirth or the flesh and The ball on set one were terrible. Why put a track on an album which is so corrupted and droned that no one can here it.