All of us are looking forward to the day when Prince cracks open that legendary vault of his and lavishes us with song upon song from his catalog.

How do you think his back material will be released? NPGMC? On remastered albums? On specific projects like "Crystal Ball 2" or "Roadhouse Garden?" How would you like it to be released?

To what extent do you believe it will be released? Are there some things that will never escape?

Personally, I hope for a combination of NPGMC, remasters and separate projects for vault material. Prince has given us "Splash," a live copy of "Empty Room" and a rehearsal of "Rebirth of the Flesh" through the club. I hope he continues to do this periodically. I also hope that once Prince remasters his albums, he includes some outtake goodies on each. I'd also love to see further projects dedicated completely to the unreleased material, in the vein of "Crystal Ball."

One thing I'm pretty sure of, and that's their WON'T
be extra tracks put onto his albums if they're ever
remastered. The only way we're gonna get any vault
material is on a stand-alone release like 'Crystal
Ball 2', 'Roadhouse Garden' or some kind of box set.

It is sad that fams are willing 2 pay good money but all we can buy are crappy bootlegs. Cmon' Prince, at least make them available to members who are willing to pay for them. We need more music, or at least I do!

Prince will sit on them until we are all Jehova so we won't complain all them edited versions to delete the W&L contributions and all the curse words.

I buy bootlegs cuz even though they are illegal, at least they treat the material with respect.

It would be great to have it released like the Beatles
Anthology series. Multi-disc sets of certain periods.

1979-1983 5 disc set
1984-1986 5 disc set
1987-1990 5 disc set
1991-2000 5 disc set

But without too many alternate takes or demo versions
of known songs. Just a collection of unknown songs or
radically different versions of released tracks.

I guess the curiosity factor coupled with the appeal of
the major hits he gave away to others now performed
by himself on these sets would attract possibly more
people to buy such an anthology set than say an album
like TRC or ONA Live.

I'd like to see this done just like the Miles Davis box-sets - the original album tracks combined with all the outtakes/demos from those sessions.

The first box-set could probably cover the first four albums, For You - Controversy in a 6CD set.

The complete 1999 sessions could be a 3CD set

The next 3 albums, PR - Parade, could be a 5/6 CD set

etc. etc.

Complete session box-sets with 100-page booklets - all in hardcover books inside hard slipcases. Just find one of the Miles Davis Legacy studio box-sets to know what I mean.

I doubt we'll see anything like this for a long time - not many people would pay what these would all cost right now, and Prince probably wouldn't want to release all these tracks, but can you imagine???

This is one of the best things about being a newbie Miles Davis fan - the care that is taken on his back-catalogue by Columbia/Legacy.

booyah said:

I agree completely. The Miles sets are fantastic, and that would be my choice on how to handle the unreleased Prince stuff. It makes sense to keep all the material from each time period together.







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JonSnow said:

Agreed.

Crystal Ball was a slop, and not of the cosmic variety

I don’t think every track will be released. From what I’ve read it seems that Prince is very particular about quality. (ie, His collaboration with Miles Davis. Miles didn’t want to bring it out when he was alive so Prince didn’t want to after he was dead.)

I would like to see Prince make a series of 2CD albums from his unreleased tracks, like the new 2 Pac albums. How he wishes to produce these albums I’ll leave up to him. He knows best. (On second thoughts, I wasn’t keen on the fact that he cut tracks on the first Crystal ball album. (ie. Children of the purple underground, and Good love part II. There the ones I remember.)

Short answer : CDs.

I think if Prince wanted to do it, he would have done it with the NPGMC.

Splash was a cruel way of getting fans to part with $100, in the hope that they would get unheard vault material (I think he deliberately chose an uncirculating song to get fans to think the NPGMC would be an avenue of releasing vault material as well as new material).

We all know that Prince is a fickle bastard, so of course he could change his mind, but I think we may have to wait until he's passed on unfortunately.

it seems strange, P has always been all about "freeing the music" and getting it all out there.. well, as many have said, NPGMC was his opportunity... but - in reality - only ONE key vintage unreleased track saw the light of day. Splash. Missed opportunities.

Maybe P knows that the "vault" is one of the key elements of his mystique. If Moonbeam Levels, Extra Lovable and We Can Funk '86 were released tomorrow, would they still be so legendary? Or would they go the way of the Black Album... nobody much mentions it anymore. Maybe the Vault is a way of keeping something back, something that he's done for so long that he doesn't know how to let it go... cause then he will have lost something.

Am I making any sense...






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I just hope I'll still WANT to hear em if he ever does release them.

Probably not for another 15-20 years.