Batman (July 89)

This one blew my mind for a year, until I finally decided to give a try at another Prince album.

Purple Rain (August 90)

This one blew my mind as no album had ever blown my mind before: I knew I had discovered an astonishing artist and I was hooked, so I bought the last album, namely...

Grafitti Bridge (August or September 90)

Didn't like it as much as the first two, but more than enough so I knew I had to get all the other albums ASAP.

After I'm not so sure but I think the order is more or less:

1999

Around The World In A Day

Parade

Sign "O" The Times

Lovesexy

Lovesexy Live (video)

Sign "O" The Times (video)

Live! (video)

Can't remember where For You, Prince, Dirty Mind and Controversy fit in that list but most likely before the video albums (I think I had Controversy quite early, but I can't swear).

I also bought Ice Cream Castles and Pandemonium (the latter not being a Prince album proper) quite early, possibly before I got all the (then available) Prince albums.

I had all of the above in my possession by June 1991.

Diamonds And Pearls was the first Prince album I anticipated for and bought the very day it was released.

[Edited 11/5/11 22:42pm]

^ God I just realized that this was exactly TWENTY years ago

Wow! It's been quite a trip ever since

djThunderfunk said:

1983 - 1999

1983 - Dirty Mind / Controversy (2-in-1 cassette... remember those?!?)

1983 - Prince

1984 - Purple Rain

1985 - Around The World In A Day

1986 - For You

1986 - Parade

the rest in chronological order

Ya! Same way. I do remember that 2 in 1 cassette as I had one too. My first song for me was the 45 of 1999. Been a fan ever since.

bought sign o the times just before lovesexy was released, then bought lovesexy. a week later i bought every other album all at once...then lovesexy tickets

2005-Purple Rain

2010-20ten followed by 1999 and SOTT

2011-Around the world in a day and Parade

So you could say 20Ten made me into a fan" />

robertgeorgeakabob said:

bought sign o the times just before lovesexy was released, then bought lovesexy. a week later i bought every other album all at once...then lovesexy tickets

Man, that must have been insane getting hit with that all at once... and then the concert, half of which was a medley of all that stuff, to top it off! Must have been an amazing experience!

The same order they came out in.

Purple Rain

1999

For You

Prince

Dirty Mind

Controversy

Around The World In A Day

as they came out........

eyewishuheaven said:

robertgeorgeakabob said:

bought sign o the times just before lovesexy was released, then bought lovesexy. a week later i bought every other album all at once...then lovesexy tickets

Man, that must have been insane getting hit with that all at once... and then the concert, half of which was a medley of all that stuff, to top it off! Must have been an amazing experience!

once i got a taste of that purple drug i became an instant addict! i remember during the medley thinking "thank fuck i got dirty mind". what a concert! life-changing and life-affirming, i feel massively priveliged to have been there.

1. Purple Rain

2. Controversy

3. The Hits/The B-Sides

4. Graffitti Bridge

5. Batman

6. Prince

7. Come

8. Diamonds And Pearls

9. Emancipation

10. Dirty Mind

11. Parade

I didn't need to buy (but eventually did) For You, Prince, The Time, What Time Is It and Vanity 6 because my high school sweetheart had those and played them constantly.

Dirty Mind

Controversy

1999

And I was hooked.

Purple Rain and it's worldwide acceptance shocked me a bit and even taken aback a little. This was supposed to be our hometown hero, our little underground secret. When the geeks, sportos, motorheads, dweebs, dorks, sluts and buttheads all thought he was a righteous dude, I didn't know how to deal with it. Thankfully Around The World In A Day cleansed the fair-weather fan-base.

The Hits 1 & 2

1999

Purple Rain

Musicology

3121

Prince

For You

Around the World In a Day

New Power Soul

Chaos & Disorder

squirrelgrease said:

I didn't need to buy (but eventually did) For You, Prince, The Time, What Time Is It and Vanity 6 because my high school sweetheart had those and played them constantly.

Dirty Mind

Controversy

1999

And I was hooked.

Purple Rain and it's worldwide acceptance shocked me a bit and even taken aback a little. This was supposed to be our hometown hero, our little underground secret. When the geeks, sportos, motorheads, dweebs, dorks, sluts and buttheads all thought he was a righteous dude, I didn't know how to deal with it. Thankfully Around The World In A Day cleansed the fair-weather fan-base.

I wish I'd been in the know back then. Like, I can't imagine what it was like when Dirty Mind was the latest Prince album. I have similar suspicions about Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars - something so off the beaten track, a late-night delight that the mugs just couldn't understand (or did they? I was one at the time).

I confess I came aboard with the Purple Rain fever (a small-town Canadian, I'd heard nothing prior!), but even then, I knew that I was in it for the long haul. And like you, I was really happy with where he went with Around the World in a Day... he could have given us Let's Go Crazy Part II, but instead we got things like Condition of the Heart, and that cemented for me that I'd gone off the deep end not just for a rock star, but for a true artist.

SOTT via amazon.ca, i couldn't find it in stores. This was 2007 or 2008?

1999 in 2010

parade and atwiad on the same day, sometime in 2010

purple rain 2011

Next on the list would be prince, controversy, and dirty mind in that order. In retrospect all three of these should have been bought ahead of purple rain. That's right, my prince collection is five cds.

Oh, and this summer my friend gave me the batman vinyl because he bought it at a garage sale thinking it was the danny elfman score.

eyewishuheaven said:

I was listening to a compilation I made of all of Prince's singles today, and thinking about how much he's changed over the years. This got me thinking about which songs/albums I heard first, and when. Part of the fun of discovering an artist is in checking out everything you missed the first time around, and being exposed to different things out of chronological order can be an interesting experience!

So, here are my first few Prince albums, in the order I got 'em. Albums written in purple were bought at/around the time of release:

1. Purple Rain
2. 1999 (I actually stole this one, like, the day after seeing Purple Rain)
3. Controversy
4. Around the World in a Day
5. For You
6. Parade
7. Dirty Mind
8. Prince
9. Sign o' the Times (and so on, as each album was released)

I'd be interested in hearing your order, if you remember!

For me (on vinyl):

1999

Purple Rain

Controversy

Parade

Around The World...

Prince

For You

Dirty Mind

SOTT

Lovesexy

The Black Album

Batman

Grafitti Bridge

From here on, I started buying CD's:

Diamonds & Pearls

Love Symbol

Gold Exp.

Graycap23 said:

The same order they came out in.

Yeah that-except I started with PR then bought all previous albums 1999-back to the for you album. then forward on bought all albums when they came out. (Normally the day they are released.)

The Hits 1 was my first Prince cd , would've been about January 1999.

After that it went The Hits 2, Graffiti Bridge, Gold, Lovesexy, Sign ó the Times. I lose track after that, bought rest really quickly.

The first Prince music i heard was Lovesexy though, my parents had it on LP and used to play it all the time when i was a small kid

something like...

1) girl 6

2) parade

3) purple rain

4) sign o the times

5) the hits/the b-sides

etc., etc.

Very similar

Probably:

PR

1999

Dirty Mind/Controversy (DOUBLE CASSETTE FOUND IN A BARGAIN BIN!)

ATWIAD

PRINCE

FOR YOU

PARADE (and so on)

eyewishuheaven said:

I was listening to a compilation I made of all of Prince's singles today, and thinking about how much he's changed over the years. This got me thinking about which songs/albums I heard first, and when. Part of the fun of discovering an artist is in checking out everything you missed the first time around, and being exposed to different things out of chronological order can be an interesting experience!

So, here are my first few Prince albums, in the order I got 'em. Albums written in purple were bought at/around the time of release:

1. Purple Rain
2. 1999 (I actually stole this one, like, the day after seeing Purple Rain)
3. Controversy
4. Around the World in a Day
5. For You
6. Parade
7. Dirty Mind
8. Prince
9. Sign o' the Times (and so on, as each album was released)

I'd be interested in hearing your order, if you remember!

purplepolitician said:

something like...

1) girl 6

2) parade

3) purple rain

4) sign o the times

5) the hits/the b-sides

etc., etc.

Wow, I thought it was odd that Chaos and Disorder was my first album but Girl 6? I think you got me beat.

I have to ask, what about that particular album caught your interest?

was only 4 years ago, so not too hard to remember... I think I'm within the exact order if not give/take a few albums

1. Purple Rain (my dad's, which I conveniently adopted)
2. Musicology and The Very Best of...
3. 3121 and The Gold Experience
4. Around the world in a day and Come
5. Dirty Mind and Controversy
6. 1999, Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic, Sign o' the times,
7. Planet Earth (which had come out around that time)
8. D&P and NewPower Soul
9. Parade and The Black Album
10. The Truth
11. LoveSexy and The Rainbow Children
12. Emancipation
13. For You
14. Graffiti Bridge (not technically... all the Prince tracks except for NPG: Part 2)
15. Crystal Ball
16. Lotusflow3r/MPLSound
17. Batman
18. 20Ten
19. Prince
20. One Night Alone... Live!
21. Rave In2 the Joy Fantastic

I think my grand total is 32 out 40/41 studio albums... thanks to great luck in some cases and great generosity in others, I obtained the 12 bullet points within my first year, haha... then after that, pretty sporadic... my most recent set of acquistions (19-21), I haven't spent a lot of time with yet... Prince and Rave In2, I had heard through at least once/twice each... nothing on ONA as of yet, but soon

1. Lovesexy in LP in 1988, a few weeks after it had been released

2. Purple Rain

3. Around the World in Day

4. Dirty Mind (still my favourite)

5. Sign of the Times

5. 1999

6. Prince

7. The first bootleg of the Black Album

8. The first bootleg of Crystal Ball

9. For U

10. Batman soundtrack in LP

11. Diamonds and Pearls was offered to me for my 18th birthday

and so on....

Most of these albums are on tapes, and even if I don't have anymore the right material to listen to them, I just can't get rid of them, this is too precious for me... even if now I have 34 different Prince's album on my iPod !

I think I started with Batman in 1989-1990. During those two years I bought all his back catalogue, together with Graffiti Bridge. In 1991, Diamonds And Pearls, and the rest when they came out.

But Chaos And Disorder and New Power Soul were too much for me, so I stopped then and I didn't buy a new Prince album until Lotus Flow3r (2009). Then, back catalogue again (from Rave to Planet Earth), and 20ten when it came out.

[Edited 11/8/11 11:24am]

rialb said:

purplepolitician said:

something like...

1) girl 6

2) parade

3) purple rain

4) sign o the times

5) the hits/the b-sides

etc., etc.

Wow, I thought it was odd that Chaos and Disorder was my first album but Girl 6? I think you got me beat.

I have to ask, what about that particular album caught your interest?

i'm a spike lee fan and got into the movie first. all the tunes in the flick struck my fancy, so i got the soundtrack and other albums with songs from the movie. got into princey like that. still love that movie

1. Emancipation (my mother bought my it as my birthday present)
2. Diamonds n Pearls
3. 3121
4. The Parade
5. Purple Rain
6. The Gold Experience

controversy

1999

come

purple rain

and thats all i have

1. The Hits/B-sides/Musicology (brought 2gether)

2. Purple Rain/SOTT/1999 (brought 2gther)

3. Gold Experince

4. The Beautiful Experience EP

5. Dirty Mind/Batman/Controversey

6 C&D

7. Parade/Around The World In A Day

8. Space/Girl 6

9. Rave In2 The Joy Fantastic

10. T'S 12 inc Archive the 2nd version (with case and printed discs)..found excellent site for bootleggs etc..

11. 3121 (jewel case)

12. D&P/Love Symbol/Love Sexy (hated all 3...still do)

...and many more...cba

chelsearodgerslovesya said:

1. Emancipation (my mother bought my it as my birthday present)
2. Diamonds n Pearls
3. 3121
4. The Parade
5. Purple Rain
6. The Gold Experience

Your mom is awesome!

I remember cause I got into him a year ago Purple Rain was for sure my first then..

The gold experience

1999

Around The world in a day

Sign o the times

I THINK , can't remember the rest

InternationalLover82 said:

I remember cause I got into him a year ago Purple Rain was for sure my first then..

The gold experience

1999

Around The world in a day

Sign o the times

I THINK , can't remember the rest

Darn, girl, it was only a year ago and you can't remember? I think that Prince must have turned your brain into purple mush.

Incidentally I thank you for making me feel like I am not a newbie. Sometimes it seems like the latest folks around here "discovered" Prince was in 1984.