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someone walk me thru crystal ball? I just bought it for $50 used what's the best?  I'll leave it alone babe...just be me | |
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Listen to it and see? | |
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Crystal Ball is a mixed bag, but I really like most of the tracks...
^ From: Record Collector, april 1998 (# 224). [Edited 6/5/13 13:52pm] Prince 4Ever.  | |
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50 bucks! X-pert Lover. | |
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the 5-cd hockey puck: Prince 4Ever. | |
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2 commercial flyers: Prince 4Ever. | |
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last pic from me tonight: Prince 4Ever. | |
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thedance said:last pic from me tonight:[img:$uid]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v67/ecnirp2004/Prince/Prince-Crystal-Ball5-CD-1_zpsc324af51.jpg[/img:$uid] THANK YOU THE DANCE! I'll leave it alone babe...just be me | |
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1. Crystal Ball 2. Dream Factory 3. Acknowledge me 4. Ripopgodazippa 5. Love Sign (Shock G's Silky remix) 6. Hide the Bone 7. 2morrow 8. So Dark 9. Movie Star 10. Tell Me How U Want 2 B Done Disc: 2 1. Interactive 2. Da Bang 3. Calhoun Square 4. What's My Name 5. Crucial 6. An Honest Man 7. Sexual Suicide 8. Cloreen Bacon Skin 9. Good Love 10. Strays of the World Disc: 3 1. (These are the) Days of Wild 2. Last Heart 3. PoomPoom 4. She Gave Her Angels 5. 18 & Over 6. The Ride 7. Get Loose 8. Make You Mama Happy 9. Pussy Control 10. Goodbye
those tunes r the best!! | |
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nice to see "the truth" get some much deserved praise in that review above. criminally overlooked and undervalued by a lot of people. to this day, one of my favorite prince albums.
and true love lives on lollipops and crisps | |
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I couldn't possibly agree with you more. When it first came out, I was not sure what to think of The Truth - and the fact that my least favorite track on there comes so early on didn't help ("Don't Play Me" - I know, many people love it, and I've grown to appreciate it as well over the years).
But wow. The title song is killer. Circle of Amour is just gorgeous, and shows that even in 1997 Prince still retained the abiity to really paint a picture with his lyrics (something I feel he has sadly lost of late). Man In a Uniform is undoubtedly kinda cheesy, but in such a fun, funky way that it's impossible for me to resist. "The Other Side of the Pillow," "One Of Your Tears," "Comeback" and "Welcome to the Dawn" are, to me, among the most gorgeous songs he's ever released. I mean, the lush harmonies throughout this set just slay me, every time. I was delighted that he sang "The Other Side of the Pillow" at the ONA live shows, and it has saddened me that he has never really played any of the other brilliant tracks from this album before or since in the live setting.
And, although I know it's highly detested by many, I fucking adore "Animal Kingdom." Just love it. Even (no fuck that, ESPECIALLY) the "funky funky blue cheese" line. I mean, only Prince, y'know?
I think that in many ways the 2 discs that I've enjoyed the most from him as complete albums since The Gold Experience have been The Truth and One Nite Alone (piano) and I completely agree with the review that is in this thread in that it really is a travesty that not only were both of those albums only available to the hardest of hardcore fans, but they were also almost immediately out of print, and remain so to this day. Really a shame. No confusion, no tears. No enemies, no fear. No sorrow, no pain. No ball, no chain.
Sex is not love. Love is not sex. Putting words in other people's mouths will only get you elected. Need more sleep than coke or methamphetamine. | |
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Hey, WTF?!? That says the 5CD mail order version came with a t-shirt? I never a got a t-shirt with mine! What's with Prince promising t-shirts but not delivering? Is that "his thing"?
Don't hate your neighbors. Hate the media that tells you to hate your neighbors. |
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^ I had the T-Shirt: Prince 4Ever. | |
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symbol.
.Being a casual "fan" I only heard about Crystal Ball about a year ago and got my hands on the 5 CD set only recently. The more I listen to this album the more I love it. Just love it. All of it. And The Truth is gigantic!!
...every night another symphony... | |
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and true love lives on lollipops and crisps | |
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Great cd set. Some songs are definitely fillers, but others are pure Prince.
I love the Truth cd too except for Animal Kingdom. That songs sucks! | |
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I don't think the "interactive" part of this site works anymore, but you can still download covers.
http://www.crystalballcd.com/
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I ordered mine THE WEEK the preorders went on sale. I got my shipment several weeks after I bought the retail version at Best Buy.... Oh, and evidently I didn't get my t-shirt. I did get not 1, but 2 free copies of The War on cassette soon after that, though. I assumed it was a "sorry" for the "botched" preorder.
Don't hate your neighbors. Hate the media that tells you to hate your neighbors. |
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I love this set. Most of the remixes are a waste, but the other tunes are great. I never bothered with the 1800 and got it at Best Buy so my experience was never tainted. Unlike LotusFlower, which I love but that stupid $77 website still stings which sorta dampend the album. |
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I have the exact opposite experience. I bought Lotusflower at Target and didn't mess with the website, so, that particular fiasco doesn't affect my enjoyment of the release at all.
Don't hate your neighbors. Hate the media that tells you to hate your neighbors. |
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Love the crystal ball 3 disc set and the truth, they were his last classic release, don't agree that cloreen bacon skin was a misjudgement, it's just genius from prince. | |
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^ Yeah "Cloreen Bacon Skin" is kind of funny I like it a lot, it's more of a long jam than a real song, but you can hear on Prince's voice he's having fun in the studio..  Prince 4Ever. | |
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I got mine through 1-800-New-Funk, but it was released at Best Buy sooner and I bought it there. I ended up with 2 copies, but I gave one away. I have also long-since recycled the stupid "crystal ball" CD case that would actually scratch up your discs.
As a compilation of music, I think it's really cool. Even the quirky ones like Poom Poom are enjoyable in the context of an "outtakes" collection.
As far as the ordering SNAFUs, they did attempt to "make it right" by adding a Jam Of The World T-shirt, a cassette version of The War, and the large magazine-sized lyric book for Emancipation in the final delivery package. To me, that was a nice gesture.
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Here's a a review I wrote for CB in 1998 - sorry, I used the symbol font originally; here it came out as "D"
The Artist's Crystal Ball: Proof of Funk After Death
Ask virtually any pop music fan to offer up an opinion about D, and the response will usually sound something like, “he’s a brilliant musician, but wildly out of touch with his audience.” The chief complaints voiced by the masses are: 1) that he releases too much product; 2) what he does release falls below what he is capable of doing, i.e., going for the commercial kill and scoring and; 3) the industry, which is not equipped to effectively market multiple releases by the same artist, widely ignores some of his best work. To be fair, the first and third of those accusations are not completely unfounded. The former Prince's recent release, Crystal Ball, is four discs long (five if you ordered it via his retail hotline, 1-800-NEW FUNK, or at his website, www.love4oneanother.com); it follows just fifteen months on the heels of a highly-publicised three-disk set, Emancipation. Certainly this is more music than any popular artist is allowed to, or can, issue in a comparable space of time. Simply put, Prince could not stop creating music -writing, recording, producing and playing. Because D owns neither the name Prince nor his catalogue, he asserted that "Prince is dead" in 1993 and then re-christened himself as an unpronounceable symbol. Since his split from Warner Brothers over the issue of ownership rights, the decision of what his listeners get to hear, and how often, is now in his hands. For long-time fans, the recent slew of music from the Emancipated One (The Gold Experience - 1995; Chaos and Disorder - 1996; Emancipation - 1996) amounts to an embarrassment of riches. The release of Crystal Ball, coupled with the lately-issued Newpower Soul with his band, the New Power Generation, should satisfy his followers' thirst for new music well into the next millennium, even as it confuses and frustrates those who have not been keeping up. In an unwritten law meant to preserve the sanctity of the bottom line, platinum-selling artists are expected to control their output to one new release every two-and-a-half to three years. This convention gives the audience time to anticipate a new CD. It also allows record companies to utilise more fully its tools of marketing and, thus, maximise profits. But, as the Crystal Ball set amply demonstrates, D is no ordinary artist. In 1998, he is working his records in underground style: no managers, no singles, no videos, and no major-label distribution. Based on the sheer volume of his output lately, and the unorthodox methods he has employed for getting his records heard, D seems to be operating under the principles of an alternative music industry. He talks frequently about music being free, and hints at the eventual elimination of anything that encumbers creativity, such as sales charts and gold and platinum awards. In D's vision of the future, anyone who wanted to ride the Paisley Mothership would simply plug in and download. Overall, flying solo, even marginalizing himself as he has done, is a pretty gutsy move for any pop musician. Coming from someone of D's stature, it is even more impressive, since this man's leftovers would easily make the A-list of practically anyone else recording today. These tracks represented here are technically outtakes, meaning they were intended for various album projects, but ultimately scrapped. Regardless of that fact, the material on Crystal Ball is first-rate. Several of these songs were originally scheduled for inclusion on The Gold Experience, but were cut when D was thwarted by Warner Brothers in his attempt to release the album independently in 1994. The version of Gold released on Warner the following year was stunning, full of the most riveting pop music of D's career. One can only imagine how the slick hip-hop swing of "Acknowledge Me" and the stone-cold funk of "Hide the Bone" would have complemented that album's full stylistic assault, and taken The Gold Experience super nova. Indeed, the reason these numbers never found a home has more to do with poor timing rather than any lack of substance or musical quality. The first three disks on Crystal Ball include songs that many of D's long-time followers have heard in one form or another. Prince has always been one of the most widely bootlegged artists in the industry and, throughout the years, there has been no shortage of illegitimate outlets for his unreleased material. The thirty tracks here stretch as far back as 1983 and cover some of his best-known bootlegs as well as some songs that even the most devoted fans have never heard before. Of the most highly coveted underground classics, the roof-ripping live funk of "Days of Wild", the guitar-drenched, electrifying balladry of "Crucial", and the hypnotic mixture of promiscuity and apocalypse of the suite-like title track are most welcome. Still, the brightest spots on Crystal Ball are reflected in some never-before-heard songs. "Da Bang" is a terrific rock number, which features a distorted electric guitar, and straddles a strange line bridging traditional blues and punk rock. Recorded for Emancipation, the tender ballad "She Gave Her Angels" is gorgeous, and boasts a majestic guitar coda worthy of "Purple Rain". "Cloreen Baconskin" is a marathon funk workout, with Prince and Morris Day (on drums) flaunting a frighteningly tight musical interplay. Elsewhere, a slinky bass line and Hammond organ add Princely colour to "Calhoun Square", while the fuzz-toned flourishes and neo-psychedelic chorus send the listener to arena-rock heaven. It is difficult to say which is more impressive: D's doggedness to constantly challenge himself and his audience, or his uncanny ability to make his experiments work. With thirty tracks to choose from, there is no shortage of either on Crystal Ball. In 1997, D recorded twelve new songs on a collection entitled the Truth, included here as the fourth disk. In stark contrast to the sprawl of Emancipation's laid-back funk and up-tempo rhythm-and-blues numbers, the songs on the Truth are economic, both musically and stylistically. Reportedly, D wrote them specifically for this type of sparse arrangement. Here, only acoustic guitar and the occasional sound effect accompany his vocals. The results are as excellent as they are unexpected: "Fascination" creates a fiery, full Latin groove with just a bare minimum of instrumentation; and D's employment of a distorted guitar effect gives both "Animal Kingdom" and "Welcome 2 the Dawn" a classic-rock feel. "Circle of Amour" and "Comeback" showcase his knack for beautiful, heartbreaking melodies. Lyrically, D’s chiding of the music industry for its superficiality and for kow-towing to the lowest common denominator is by turns playful ("Don't play me/ n already do in my car"), and dead-on accurate ("The most vital thing in pop/ is the epitome of doom"). The material on the Truth is a revelation in that the songs work well as individual compositions and performances, not just in the context of an all-acoustic album, an anomaly in D's repertoire. The five-disk version of Crystal Ball, available only to those who pre-ordered it, also includes Kamasutra, a ballet written by D and performed by the NPG Orchestra. It is a pretty, pleasant diversion from the stylistic sprawl of the rest of the package. At least one track here, "Barcelona", revisits the fusion-funk of the first two Madhouse albums from 1987, but Kamasutra is largely mood music. Although it is by no means essential listening, completists, as well as D's more adventurous fans -a moot distinction these days- will want to have it. Despite the host of much-clamoured-for lost classics, the first three disks of Crystal Ball represent a privileged peek at a few select nuggets from D's vault. They do not, as some hoped, fill the ultimate "wanted" list of most of his fans. Furthermore, the set is not completely filler-free. Crystal Ball features new mixes, of variable merit, of four previously released tunes. A pumped-up, nastier-than-before "P Control" sounds refreshed; the addition to "So Dark” with a new drum track, is also significant enough to warrant inclusion here. But the re-mixed version of "Love Sign" is extraneous, and the inclusion of "Good Love" and "Tell Me How U Wanna B Done", which many fans already have, is simply inexcusable. Plus, the songs are arranged haphazardly, without any sequential logic or, if you pre-ordered, a track list (an elaborately illustrated interactive booklet with liner notes and lyrics to all thirty songs may be viewed at www.crystalcd.newfunk). On Crystal Ball, many awkward edits and ill-timed fades actually enhance the authenticity of what is intended to seem like a "bootleg" package, but they make rearranging the order of songs on a cassette frustrating to say the least. What is crystal clear about this release is that D continues to maintain control. For reasons only he could explain, the arrangement of the tracks forsakes chronological order, and the liner notes are cryptic and sketchy rather than illuminating. Not willing to sacrifice completely the air of mystery surrounding his legendary vault, D has simply re-compiled thirty of his songs as an album he wants his listeners to have. There is enough great stuff on Crystal Ball to compensate for the minor inconveniences of packaging or the dashed expectations of a few fans. The mere fact that he has opted to issue his music independently, circumventing the conventions of promotion and marketing that normally accompany a new release, is admirable. Here's hoping he stays emancipated, so listeners willing to keep up with him will have no shortage of access to future funk. Crystal Ball may not represent every Prince fan's fantasy track list. But, as the first step in what will hopefully be a long, prolific -and more personalised- musical rapport between D and his friends, it fulfils what it promises, accenting generous helpings of brilliant music with a unique flair for the curious and unexpected.
Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths...(Jeremiah 6:16) www.ancientfaithradio.com
dezinonac eb lliw noitulove ehT |
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Gotta love that title, would make an awesome album title for someone like George Clinton | |
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