Dear Prince.org.

I would like to hear your perspectives regarding which songs - outtakes/b-sides/live performances - should ideally be included on your version of each ALBUM's additional disc(s) in a remastered series.

Naturally, with such a vast catalogue, there will inevitably be a degree of cross-over of opinion, however, the dates of the majority of recording sessions/live sessions are known, to the hardcore afficionado who have succumb to "the sickness" over the years.

Therefore, without further ado, I would like to focus on FOUR albums/eras to begin with. Although it makes logical sense to begin with For You, I would like to draw your attention to a particular era within Prince's creative output, which resulted in what can be considered his peak career trajectory of musical genius (1980-1988).

Within 1980-1988 years, I would like to begin with this thread of thought focussing on DIRTY MIND, CONTROVERSY, 1999 and PURPLE RAIN. It is, in my opinion, a slightly easier task than 1985-1988.

The specific question - which additional tracks/versions/outtakes/b-sides/live performances would you consider necessary for the completist? The additional tracks do not need to be assembled in terms of sequencing, date order, or every single known outtake. Ultimately, I want you to try and consider this project with a degree of commerce in mind i.e. business, rather than completist, sense.

Nonetheless, I am specifically interested in your opinion on what should be considered an ESSENTIAL additional set of songs aimed at "the completist" marketplace i.e. a niche audience. For those with the time, inclination or personality, I would also particularly appreciate what you would consider the best SOURCE (i.e. bootleg) where that version of the song/outtake/performance exists in its best quality.

Thank you in advance.

love,

Spirit

P.S. Please note - if you wish to contribute, you do not need to include every album listed above; just choose one album/era, or however many, that takes your fancy and interest. And, by all means, have some fun, too. Also, if there are other albums/eras where you feel you have a contribution to make, please do not limit yourself to the 4 albums/eras listed above.

P.P.S. Sorry, Universal et al. And, thank you, Prince.

As far as I know, there is only one circulating outtake from Dirty Mind, the song "Lisa." However, there are other songs known to exist and mentioned in Per Nilsen's books, although I don't have the titles handy. Obviously it would be great to have those songs finally released, whether they are any good or not, just as part of the historical record of the making of the album. As for live performances, the ones that are circulating in good quality may not be the best choices: Prince may have tapes that we don't know about. For Controversy, the #1 thing I'd like to have is a complete version of The Second Coming movie. But, again, that's something that we've never seen or heard.

I guess my bottom line is that it is hard to answer this question without knowing what exactly is in Prince's vault that has not yet leaked. But it's an interesting idea for a thread.

electricberet,

Nice name; and thank you for your positive contribution. If a few specific Orgers contribute, you'll be surprised at the knowledge that will spring forth; interestingly, they often know more detail than Prince himself, such is the way of "the sickness"...

love,

Spirit

I've seldom ever been a huge fan of Prince's outtakes and bootlegs.

I mean, when I was younger, and these things were all the rage, I would listen to them fascinated at the fact that there was just so much stuff out there that he'd done.

The issue is that listening to these things now makes me realize how unfinished most feel.

Some of this stuff just sounds like sketches to me, or stuff that copy-cat bands would

sing and produce.

I mean, essentially, the whole of Dirty Mind was a demo, but the material was mostly really strong. But the vast majority of other stuff I've heard, I haven't been that impressed with.

So, I'm going to take a wildly unpopular stance and say that I wouldn't mind outtakes bundled with official remasters, but I'd much prefer the 'outtakes' to be polished up and finished, even if that means changing them quite a bit. This, however, carries significant risk as the current day Prince doesn't seem to respect the spirit of his older material when tinkering with it.

.

[Edited 7/29/12 22:33pm]

imago said:

The issue is that listening to these things now makes me realize how unfinished most feel.

Some of this stuff just sounds like sketches to me,

For some, that is part of the appeal.

Cool idea, here goes:

Dirty Mind > Lisa.

Controversy > Hard To Get '81, Mutiny, She's Just a Baby, The Second Coming, Moral Majority.

1999 > Moonbeam Levels, No Call U, Baby You're a Trip, Turn It Up, Something In the Water (alternate version).

Purple Rain > Wednesday (for some strange reason this never seems to have leaked, curious to hear it), All Day, All Night.

[Edited 7/29/12 13:37pm]

TheFreakerFantastic,

Thanks for being appreciative of the idea. You began admirably, but is that really all you've got?

love,

Spirit

SpiritOtter said:

imago, I am shocked; a sensible response and a good point well made. Thank you for a moment of depth. love, Spirit

I'm a resovoir of intellectual astonishment.

imago,

Quite...but could you possibly dip into that reservoir more, please? All too often, at least to my mind, you appear to engage/destroy that bright mind of yours with nothing more than a clever, but mindless, diatribe.

love,

Spirit

For example...

1999

01. Turn It Up (5.14)

02. Extra Loveable (7.40)

03. Do Yourself A Favor (8.40)

04. Moonbeam Levels (3.56)

05. Something In The Water (Does Not Compute) (4.00)

06. Little Red Corvette (8.19)

07. Lust U Always (5.30)

08. Chocolate (5.46)

09. Feel U Up (6.38)

10. Irresistible Bitch (4.32)

11. Purple Music (10.37)

12. No Call U (3.02)

13. Delirious (6.01)

14. D.M.S.R. (6.23)

15. Baby, You're A Trip (4.04)

love,

Spirit

SpiritOtter said:

imago,

Quite...but could you possibly dip into that reservoir more, please? All too often, at least to my mind, you appear to engage/destroy that bright mind of yours with nothing more than a clever, but mindless, diatribe.

love,

Spirit

Seemingly so at times, but he is just an agent of chaos.

Such as:

kewlschool,

Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't that an infamous scene from Jurassic Park (minus the funny dinosaur)?

Nice reference to the Chaos Theory character played by Jeff G. I love that movie.

love,

Spirit

SpiritOtter said:

imago,

Quite...but could you possibly dip into that reservoir more, please? All too often, at least to my mind, you appear to engage/destroy that bright mind of yours with nothing more than a clever, but mindless, diatribe.

love,

Spirit

aw come on spirit you were doing so well a sec ago .. now ur slamming imago for no good reason .. now take ur own advice and be positive if you have an issue with the biting humour that makes this site pretty fun and great .. otherwise just let people be .. thats what makes things interesting around here ...

i personally agree that letting prince touch his old outtakes is a bad idea .. he will rap over them or change the lyrics to be about his money and women and all the old creepy guy lolita sex he is having ..

some records should have songs edited out .. we don't really need half of dirty mind or controversy .. and we certainly don't need most of diamonds and pearls ...

maybe a remaster box set resembling claptons "crossroads" would be a more suitable tribute to prince ... that of course would require someone with an "ear" to assemble the tracklist .. and that is difficult when prince fans run from music snob such as myself to people who clump prince with the likes of madonna tiffany and debbie gibson .. none the less .. a person who is willing to drop crap like "gett off" and "my name is prince" and feature gems like "money don't matter" and "blue light" ... intersperse 4 or 5 songs from each record (more if its a great record like purple rain, less if its a bad record like controversey) with the best of the outtakes or b-sides .. 6 cds .. warner brothers years only ..

SpiritOtter said:

imago,

Quite...but could you possibly dip into that reservoir more, please? All too often, at least to my mind, you appear to engage/destroy that bright mind of yours with nothing more than a clever, but mindless, diatribe.

love,

Spirit

imago,

Fair play; that did make me chuckle.

love,

Spirit

SpiritOtter said:

TheFreakerFantastic,

Thanks for being appreciative of the idea. You began admirably, but is that really all you've got?

love,

Spirit

Many more ideas than that, that is a shortlist of his best of around those times. If he ever did do remasters then it is likely he would only add a couple of 'new' tunes as seems to be standard practise.

If you want the full list of what he recorded as outtakes from each 'era' go to dtt-lyrics.com, you can search by year, it is likely to be quicker than this!!!

[Edited 7/30/12 11:04am]

Thanks, Freaker.

I don't want the full list, by any means; that would, as you say, lose commercial value. However, I would want a list fitting for the afficionado collector. I see, then, that you have a keen eye for editing outtakes/b-sides/live performances from an album/era to their quintessential form. I like that type of editor; Prince could have used your eye on Emancipation.

love,

Spirit

TrevorAyer said:

SpiritOtter said:

imago,

Quite...but could you possibly dip into that reservoir more, please? All too often, at least to my mind, you appear to engage/destroy that bright mind of yours with nothing more than a clever, but mindless, diatribe.

love,

Spirit

aw come on spirit you were doing so well a sec ago .. now ur slamming imago for no good reason .. now take ur own advice and be positive if you have an issue with the biting humour that makes this site pretty fun and great .. otherwise just let people be .. thats what makes things interesting around here ...

i personally agree that letting prince touch his old outtakes is a bad idea .. he will rap over them or change the lyrics to be about his money and women and all the old creepy guy lolita sex he is having ..

some records should have songs edited out .. we don't really need half of dirty mind or controversy .. and we certainly don't need most of diamonds and pearls ...

maybe a remaster box set resembling claptons "crossroads" would be a more suitable tribute to prince ... that of course would require someone with an "ear" to assemble the tracklist .. and that is difficult when prince fans run from music snob such as myself to people who clump prince with the likes of madonna tiffany and debbie gibson .. none the less .. a person who is willing to drop crap like "gett off" and "my name is prince" and feature gems like "money don't matter" and "blue light" ... intersperse 4 or 5 songs from each record (more if its a great record like purple rain, less if its a bad record like controversey) with the best of the outtakes or b-sides .. 6 cds .. warner brothers years only ..

Trevor, Trevor...

NO. Prince's artistic vision should not be tampered with; therefore, the remastered albums should NOT be touched in their original, released form. I do, however, believe there could be room for releasing additional discs in terms of how Prince may originally have conceived certain albums e.g. the original Purple Rain tracklisting with the full length Computer Blue, but this is dispute-worthy. On the note of the original artistic vision, I would suggest Dream Factory, Camille, Crystal Ball and, to a lesser extent, Roadhouse Garden and The Dawn might be worthy additions to Prince's discography. However, we are somewhat drifting from the original topic.

For the record, Trevor...CONTROVERSY is a sublime record and whilst I can understand, without agreeing with, your dismissive attitude toward the likes of Gett Off and My Name Is Prince, I concur with your admiration of lesser known, but equally (if not more) beautiful examples of Prince's music (Strollin', Money Don't Matter, Insatiable, Sweet Baby, And God Created Woman), to name but a few.

Time, perhaps, will be kinder to the efforts of Prince during the 90s and 00s, especially when considered in context to his personal life, maturity as an elder statesman in music, role as a pioneering/game-changing maverick etc. In that light, Prince's music might be considered rather favourably, but I agree with your overall assessment that the Warner years yielded more cohesive results, but you perhaps have to realise it was more than Prince working the magic during those years (the bands, the management, the company, the distribution channels, the public, let alone the artistic vision/direction of a younger, hungrier artist, with fire in his belly).

There is, ultimately, only one conclusion: Prince is NOT a gay black man. He is, however, a genius, with a Gift from GOD.

love,

Spirit

On the subject of remasters: http://www.superdeluxeedi...alks-blur/

SuperDeluxeEdition: For the new reissues and the Blur 21 box, you were involved in the remastering of the Blur albums you worked on originally. How was the process of listening back to that material?

Stephen Street: It was a wonderful experience to be able to go back into Abbey Road and dig out the 1/2 inch mix tapes. I haven’t physically seen those boxes since we did them. Originally, I think EMI were planning to use the production EQ masters – basically digital copies of those albums as they were done back in the 90s – but I was very keen to go right back to the original masters and start from there, and they agreed. It was great to hear those tapes again to be honest. What happened was we compared the 1/2 inch masters with the CDs that are out now [ie before the reissues and box set] and there was so much more stereo width and bottom end from the masters. I think back in the ’80s and ’90s for some reason engineers were rolling off the bottom end of things, it might be because they were cutting to vinyl where you sometimes have to limit the bottom end if the album is quite long, but anyway, it was good to hear the original 1/2 mixes and they did sound really fine, and in fact I think there was less EQ put on them this time around. It brought back a lot of memories, because obviously there was a lot of music to listen to, and one doesn’t normally spend all of one’s time listening to records you’ve made in the past!

SDE: Were the tapes in reasonable condition?

SS: We had to bake them. So it was a good job we were doing this at this point, because I think the tapes were getting a bit sticky. What happens is the solution that goes into the chemical make up of tape itself starts to break down and goes sticky and as it goes through the machine it starts to ‘stick and flip’ – you get this warbling effect, so they had to be baked and fortunately we were able to play everything through okay.

Considering that Blur started out more than a decade after Prince, I sincerely hope someone is taking care of all those tapes in the vault(s)...

Bart,

You've made a superlative point.

Thank you.

love,

Spirit

BartVanHemelen said:

On the subject of remasters: http://www.superdeluxeedi...alks-blur/

SuperDeluxeEdition: For the new reissues and the Blur 21 box, you were involved in the remastering of the Blur albums you worked on originally. How was the process of listening back to that material?

Stephen Street: It was a wonderful experience to be able to go back into Abbey Road and dig out the 1/2 inch mix tapes. I haven’t physically seen those boxes since we did them. Originally, I think EMI were planning to use the production EQ masters – basically digital copies of those albums as they were done back in the 90s – but I was very keen to go right back to the original masters and start from there, and they agreed. It was great to hear those tapes again to be honest. What happened was we compared the 1/2 inch masters with the CDs that are out now [ie before the reissues and box set] and there was so much more stereo width and bottom end from the masters. I think back in the ’80s and ’90s for some reason engineers were rolling off the bottom end of things, it might be because they were cutting to vinyl where you sometimes have to limit the bottom end if the album is quite long, but anyway, it was good to hear the original 1/2 mixes and they did sound really fine, and in fact I think there was less EQ put on them this time around. It brought back a lot of memories, because obviously there was a lot of music to listen to, and one doesn’t normally spend all of one’s time listening to records you’ve made in the past!

SDE: Were the tapes in reasonable condition?

SS: We had to bake them. So it was a good job we were doing this at this point, because I think the tapes were getting a bit sticky. What happens is the solution that goes into the chemical make up of tape itself starts to break down and goes sticky and as it goes through the machine it starts to ‘stick and flip’ – you get this warbling effect, so they had to be baked and fortunately we were able to play everything through okay.

Considering that Blur started out more than a decade after Prince, I sincerely hope someone is taking care of all those tapes in the vault(s)...

The master tapes of Prince's final mixes must still be usable or Bernie Grundman could not have remastered Dirty Mind, Controversy, and 1999 for the recent vinyl reissues. As to whether the multitrack tapes could be used for remixes, that's anybody's guess. From what I have read on the Steve Hoffman forum, though, baking old tapes is very common.

SpiritOtter said:

I would like to hear your perspectives regarding which songs - outtakes/b-sides/live performances - should ideally be included on your version of each ALBUM's additional disc(s) in a remastered series.

Hi SpiritOtter, I don't believe it will happen, but I still have hopes so I would like to share my view.

I believe each and every one of his WB albums should be remastered, which means also remixed and then also actually re-released, with a smart and effective marketing plan.

But I agree with you that there should at the very least or better also be a 80-88 set.

That 80-88 set should include a copy of each remastered album, one disc of remastered outtakes and b-sides per album and one dvd of a live concert plus videos of the era.

For example a fully remastered and remixed 1999 with a second disc of the b-sides and outtakes you posted and a third disc of live and video material. And then do the same with the other eras. Imagine SOTT or Parade...

The remixing and remastering should be done flawlessly and any editing of or adding to the words and music should be prohibited.

There also should be a lot of old and new artwork with a lot of new and interesting, indepth behind the scenes commentary from the insiders, including mr. Prince himself.

The distribution should be global, but centered around a website selling all Prince (related) music.

The material should there also be available for downloading, including individual discs, tracks, videos and concerts.

The price of the set lastly should be reasonable and fitting with the times. I would say a price range of € 150,- € 200,- or $ 200-250 per boxset.

Yeah...

[Edited 8/2/12 12:31pm]

SpiritOtter said:

For example...

1999

01. Turn It Up (5.14)

02. Extra Loveable (7.40)

03. Do Yourself A Favor (8.40)

04. Moonbeam Levels (3.56)

05. Something In The Water (Does Not Compute) (4.00)

06. Little Red Corvette (8.19)

07. Lust U Always (5.30)

08. Chocolate (5.46)

09. Feel U Up (6.38)

10. Irresistible Bitch (4.32)

11. Purple Music (10.37)

12. No Call U (3.02)

13. Delirious (6.01)

14. D.M.S.R. (6.23)

15. Baby, You're A Trip (4.04)

love,

Spirit

For 1999, I'd choose those definitely.

You motivate me now to listen to the B-sides, which I bought but put in the cupboard.

SpiritOtter said:

NO. Prince's artistic vision should not be tampered with; therefore, the remastered albums should NOT be touched in their original, released form.

Well, I kinda agree and disagree with that. Because that would also imply that B-Sides etcetera would need to be put on a separate disc instead of tacked on at the end, which is kinda ridiculous in the case of his earliest albums, which are 40 minutes or less.

Plus: his artistic vision was already comprimised by the possibilities at the time: consider that PR used to be much, much longer and that the album was cut down significantly to fit on a single disc. I for one would love a Blu-ray that would allow people to listen to the album as released, or to another configuration that would have been impossible at the time due to technical constraints, one with longer versions of several tracks (the 10+ minute "Computer Blue" for instance).

Same for SOTT: give us a Blu-ray where we can listen to Dream factory (perhaps several versions of that album), also Camille, and Crystal Ball.

Time, perhaps, will be kinder to the efforts of Prince during the 90s and 00s, especially when considered in context to his personal life, maturity as an elder statesman in music, role as a pioneering/game-changing maverick etc.

Nope. There's some decent stuff in what he released in the first half of the 1990s, but post-Gold it's rapidly downhill. I've heard this "oh give it some time people will come around" for ages now, and it simply ain't happening.

imago said:

I lost it at this, it's the caption that's the cherry on top

electricberet said:

BartVanHemelen said:

On the subject of remasters: http://www.superdeluxeedi...alks-blur/

Considering that Blur started out more than a decade after Prince, I sincerely hope someone is taking care of all those tapes in the vault(s)...

The master tapes of Prince's final mixes must still be usable or Bernie Grundman could not have remastered Dirty Mind, Controversy, and 1999 for the recent vinyl reissues. As to whether the multitrack tapes could be used for remixes, that's anybody's guess. From what I have read on the Steve Hoffman forum, though, baking old tapes is very common.

good, then they can remaster the remasters!

Tremolina said:

^^

I have been waiting for more than 10 years for a simple website to buy ALL my Prince's music, legally, including remasters.

There was a lot of potential and good hope in 2001, but unfortunately it didn't materialise further.

[Edited 8/3/12 9:35am]