Cool doc even though it contains lotsa stories that have been rehashed over the years but as Militant says this is targeted at general audiences not us fans. The more time passes the more I realize there is a massive discrepency between what's interesting to us and to the general public

.

What I think we didn't know is that if I understood correctly (being no native English speaker), Eric says that HE is responsible for the Flesh album configuration, that P did ask him to edit tracks and compile an album out of those sessions. This might also indicate why P gave-up on releasing it: it's likely Eric's vision wasn't in the end what Prince would have done AT ALL had he himself selected and edited those sessions in order to come-up with an album. Remarkably, however, Prince asked Eric to do this again in 89 for the third Madhosue album (which eventually became Times Squared).

.

I find it interesting, too, that P woiuld erase his vocals from protégé songs. I know this was rumored to have happend for NC2U but knowing Prince I'm very surprised at the notion and Alan doesn't provide a satisfacory explaination as to why P would have done that. If this is true it's possible, however, that the leaks we have of songs with P on vocals from The Family are the only surviving versions of P's vocals, from pre-Paul tapes that he gave or lost to some friends/collaborators, and that P himself doesn't have those versions in the vault. I have to admit that i'm a bit skeptical about this all, though, but we have to acknowledge that it's surprising how very few versions of protégé album songs with P on vocals we have. Given the hundreds of outtakes we have you'd think we'd have the full V6/A6, The Time and Sheila albums with P's vocals and we don't. I think we could have the laugh of our life should Carmen's tracks ever surface with Prince doing the rapping

.

Another major revelation is that there exist a version of All My Dreams with orchestration, something I always suspected to be the case given that AMD was on the original configuration of Parade and that Old Friends 4 Sale received the orchestration treatment (indicating that orchestration probably happened with every track also including Others Here With Us). This made me realize that Brent Fischer most likely has a copy of ALL the songs Prince ever sent to his father, as P would need to provide the tapes and there was no way for him to prevent them from keeping a copy. What a magnificent leak this could be ^^ i'm very curious of how AMD sounds with an orchestra, it must be gorgeous. This also reminds me that it was said that Prince did massive edits to the original orchestration they provided for the whole Parade album. those edits were probably for the best but I'd be really curious to hear the album as it was when Clare sent it back to P.

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I think Cat also gives us the titles of 2 songs we didn't know existed (?). It's also the first time as far as I know that Prince associates hint that Prince could have purposedly been behind some leaks at the time but this isn't very cohesive with what they also say about him being infuriated by them happening, so I wouldn't give much credit to those speculations. The street seller saying he got his tapes from Prince himself is plain ridiculous.

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I think this is also the first time anyone ever speaks about the genesis of Crystal Ball (1998). Hans doesn't say much about it but the little he says is injteresting enough.

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I can't imagine how everything ever recorded by P can fit in Paisley Park's vault at this point: we're talking thousands of alternate versions of studio tracks, audio and most likely video for every concert he ever did, and most likely audio recordings of every rehearsal, soundcheck and jam session he ever did with his bands (as evidenced by the few rehearsal he gave us during NPGMC as well as C-Note and more recent rehearsal recordings streamed online). If P really kept everything it would take the whole Paisley Park complex to store everything at this point (we're talking 37 years of recordings!). It's been said that there must now be other vaults and if so, it's a well guarded secret

.

I also wish more would have said about what happened between 1998 and 2001: with Crystal Ball and the NPG Music Club Year One (and the Rave title track which was officially announced as being from the vault at the time), as well as the aborted Roadhouse Garden and Crystal Ball II projects it is clear that at this point Prince wanted to release vault material on a regular basis alongside his new music. We have discussed it before and my theory is that WB put an end to it as, according to Alan Leeds, Prince wasn't allowed to release any live or studio recording from the WB years without WB's consent, but it may also just be that P decided to "leave the past to the past". He has now reaquired the rights to his past catalogue so theorically he's free to release all that stuff with or without WB, but I think nothing will see the light of day as long as he's still under a contractual obligation to go through WB for the remasters (and possibly all that unreleased stuff as well). In the end Prince is still tied to WB and I suspect it comes back to the same to him as them owning the masters. I think the next few years will show interesting developments and that we'll soon be able to decide whether Prince is still interested in starting releasing vault matrial or not at all anymore. The current no-situation with the PR remaster is in my opinion the prelude of a new WB/Prince war and I wouldn't be surprised if he would soon write "slave" on his cheek again

BartVanHemelen said:

thisisreece said:

It's also interesting, when people are asked what the best unreleased songs are, they say songs which we have heard, like 'Moonbeam Levels' and 'All My Dreams'. How exciting - and more supportive of the unreleased-fuck-tonne-of-quality-songs claim - would it be, if they answered with songs we'd never even heard the names of.

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Exactly. I'm especially baffled by Brent Fischer's "oh we scored some stuff that was clearly a joke".

Hmm... I suppose songs like It Ain't Over 'Til The Fat Lady Sings could be considered a joke song? Still pretty cool though.

[Edited 3/22/15 5:38am]

databank said:

What I think we didn't know is that if I understood correctly (being no native English speaker), Eric says that HE is responsible for the Flesh album configuration, that P did ask him to edit tracks and compile an album out of those sessions.

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It makes kinda sense. Odd that this wasn't known before.

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This might also indicate why P gave-up on releasing it

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It's more likely Parade took up all his time and The Flesh was shelved as "maybe later"

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I find it interesting, too, that P woiuld erase his vocals from protégé songs. I know this was rumored to have happend for NC2U but knowing Prince I'm very surprised at the notion and Alan doesn't provide a satisfacory explaination as to why P would have done that.

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I don't think this happened always.

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This made me realize that Brent Fischer most likely has a copy of ALL the songs Prince ever sent to his father, as P would need to provide the tapes and there was no way for him to prevent them from keeping a copy.

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I don't think they did, I vaguely recall him saying they don't even have plenty of what they did. He's doen workshops where they play some of the stuff, but it's always the same and not that much, IIRC.

.

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I think Cat also gives us the titles of 2 songs we didn't know existed (?).

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Kinda curious since she said an excerpt of one was posted to her Facebook page once. But I don't think there are entries for "Slammin'" and that ".... Rappers" song in PV. (Hah, I've always suspected there was a song called "Slammin'", since that word appeared a lot during that period.)

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It's also the first time as far as I know that Prince associates hint that Prince could have purposedly been behind some leaks at the time but this isn't very cohesive with what they also say about him being infuriated by them happening, so I wouldn't give much credit to those speculations.

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They provide no proof. We know the sources of so many outtakes and it's always the same story: Prince handing out tapes to people (one night stands etc) or leaving tapes in "public places" (backseat of his car, or even a rental car), plus (ex-)employees making some money on the side.

.

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I can't imagine how everything ever recorded by P can fit in Paisley Park's vault at this point:

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Susan leaves in 1987: "almost full". Hans leaves in 2000: "almost full". Whole documentary: "he records constantly." Yeah, that doesn't add up.

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I also wish more would have said about what happened between 1998 and 2001: with Crystal Ball and the NPG Music Club Year One (and the Rave title track which was officially announced as being from the vault at the time),

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It was from the vault because the original started circulating a while before that album was released, along with the studio version of "If I Had A Harem", when a fan discovered these on a tape he had and posted them to abmp. Initially people thought they were fake, especially IIHAH...

I give props to the BBC for even attempting this. Yep....

[Edited 3/22/15 6:18am]

BartVanHemelen said:

murph said:

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Because the subject really isn't interesting. It's almost trivial. I bet Neil Young has a similar vault, for instance, considering the box set he's released a while ago. Ditto other artists. What is there to dissect?

.

Of course, indirectly this is about all those unreleased treasures Prince has stored away: unreleased songs, unedited versions of released songs, alternate versions, "demos", music videos, entire movies and documentaries, live footage, live recordings (possibly of entire tours)...

.

But my main problem is with the execution. Oh look, interviews with uninformed fans, because we need that "voice from the common man" approach. Oh look, the maker of the documentary prominently features while he's standing in the snow outside Paisley Park trying to phone Prince's lawyer, because we need that "on the spot reporting" vibe even though there's nothing to be seen.

.

And that's not just this documentary, but soooooo much of the reporting these days. It always needs to be infatilised, reduced to bland tropes. I'll go listen to the hour long documentary now, I'm hoping there's more than some fawning "oooh isn't Prince great?" praise.

Bart, who made u judge and jury?

Your post up top underlines your incessant need to be the smartest guy in the room. It's one thing to say that YOU think the documentary doesn't do anything...that YOU believe the documentary doesn't add anything to the conversation. Or that the reporting is filled with lazy tropes that we have seen a million times...But when u slag off someone else's work just because YOU deem it to be uninteresting, and u r not even getting paid to strike down the hammer and call out such artistic pursuits as droning bullshit, it smacks of delusional self-importance.....

I respect your knowledge, homie. I really do. You are VERY passionate and not afraid to dish out the ether. But your word is not law....Trust me....There are ALOT of people outside of the Prince universe that only know about P the weird music legend superstar performer who made 1999, Purple Rain, ect, ect...They have no idea that dude was a complete obsessive in the recording studio...Even more than Neil, Stevie, Bowie, ect....

If the Beatles can have 1000 documentaries detailing their GRANDIOSE, GROUNDBREAKING, GENRE-PUSHING recording pursuits than a small handful of Prince docs pontificating on the Midget's unreleased work during his peak years is not going to hurt anyone.

I suggest that you get some separation between yourself and all things Prince. It may give you some new, much needed perspective....Hopefully you will discover that not everyone is in your intellectual, superior league....

[Edited 3/22/15 6:22am]

BartVanHemelen said:

databank said:

What I think we didn't know is that if I understood correctly (being no native English speaker), Eric says that HE is responsible for the Flesh album configuration, that P did ask him to edit tracks and compile an album out of those sessions.

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It makes kinda sense. Odd that this wasn't known before.

.

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Not sure how this documentary was edited, but maybe Leeds is referring to two seperate projects - The Flesh and Times Squared?

paulludvig said:

BartVanHemelen said:

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It makes kinda sense. Odd that this wasn't known before.

.

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Not sure how this documentary was edited, but maybe Leeds is referring to two seperate projects - The Flesh and Times Squared?

No, he's not. And why would it be strange that Eric compiled the record?

databank said:

Cool doc even though it contains lotsa stories that have been rehashed over the years but as Militant says this is targeted at general audiences not us fans. The more time passes the more I realize there is a massive discrepency between what's interesting to us and to the general public

.

Agreed, we P fans want way too much whenever P is mentioned. For casual viewers, I think this would have been very interesting. Hell, I enjoyed it despite little small issues I had with it. I think overall it was really great to have something definitive on the reocrd in one place by a well-respected institution like the BBC. And the answers were probed more than we are used to witnessing - any more and I think he'd have pissed off the interviewees. After all, as much as we want to know the answer, they don't have it. Only P does.

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I find it interesting, too, that P woiuld erase his vocals from protégé songs. I know this was rumored to have happend for NC2U but knowing Prince I'm very surprised at the notion and Alan doesn't provide a satisfacory explaination as to why P would have done that. If this is true it's possible, however, that the leaks we have of songs with P on vocals from The Family are the only surviving versions of P's vocals, from pre-Paul tapes that he gave or lost to some friends/collaborators, and that P himself doesn't have those versions in the vault. I have to admit that i'm a bit skeptical about this all, though, but we have to acknowledge that it's surprising how very few versions of protégé album songs with P on vocals we have.

.

Okay, so pretend I'm Prince back in 1983. "Here's my version, Morris. You sing it now. Then I will delete my vocal guide." Morris sings, Prince erases. Why not? After all, it's a guide vocal so he could just sing it again if necessary. It's not like he is erasing a majestic single take of Adore or Scandalous. They're were only guide vocals and could be replicated if needed.

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Looking back through the lense of time, obviously everything should have been kept. On tape. In perfect quality. Individually tracked. But the sheer cost and the storage of this amount of recordings had to have been acknowledged at some point - so erasing unnecessary tracks may have been justified from that viewpoint.

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Hell I think Prince could record a guide vocal to NC2U this afternoon, leak it tomorrow and we'd carbon date it to 1985 within minutes. His voice has held up remarkably well - to the point you'd fail to hear the difference!

.

Another major revelation is that there exist a version of All My Dreams with orchestration, something I always suspected to be the case given that AMD was on the original configuration of Parade and that Old Friends 4 Sale received the orchestration treatment (indicating that orchestration probably happened with every track also including Others Here With Us). This made me realize that Brent Fischer most likely has a copy of ALL the songs Prince ever sent to his father, as P would need to provide the tapes and there was no way for him to prevent them from keeping a copy. What a magnificent leak this could be.

.

I believe Brent Fischer has a tonne of Prince stuff. He was a young man when his father began the collaboration and the P books all allude to P spending an absolute fortune on Fischer orchestration. To the point that when he had financial pinch-points around 1990/1 and 2000/1, the old recordings were reused in other songs. Brent has gone on record saying they received royalty payments from Crystal Ball stuff being reused for the Batman OST. I would imagine P treats the Fischer stuff like a glorified 'sample bank'.

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Brent would have been enough of a fan as a youngster to see the snese in keeping lots of copies of stuff. Keep them hidden, man. When P passes away, open the door only then.

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I think Cat also gives us the titles of 2 songs we didn't know existed (?). It's also the first time as far as I know that Prince associates hint that Prince could have purposedly been behind some leaks at the time but this isn't very cohesive with what they also say about him being infuriated by them happening, so I wouldn't give much credit to those speculations.

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"Cornbread Wrappers" and "Slammin'" right? Interesting. They could be great, could be awful. Much like the rest of the 1988 stuff.

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As for the Leeds brothers, I love how they don't give a f*** about what P thinks. Alan has seen it and done it all. He acknowledges and admires the talent, but has no time for the 'myth'. Love that. He's the one I'd most like to chat with. Just shoot the breeze and slowly drag out the immense amount of knowledge that guy has about P. And then rehash it taking out the cynicism!

.

As for Eric. I love that man. He's the only Prince collaborator/musician who is better than his Prince association. If anything P needs Eric more than Eric needs P. That amazing period of P's career? That's sustained by Eric Leeds. After 1999/PR... it took Eric and Atlanta to sustain the genius over the next 4/5 years. All the other musicians are petrified of a cease & desist and yet Eric knows he could say anything. And if P wanted to use him on a record again, he'd be forgiven. NONE of the others can say that - not even Wendy & Lisa.

.

I can't imagine how everything ever recorded by P can fit in Paisley Park's vault at this point: we're talking thousands of alternate versions of studio tracks, audio and most likely video for every concert he ever did, and most likely audio recordings of every rehearsal, soundcheck and jam session he ever did with his bands (as evidenced by the few rehearsal he gave us during NPGMC as well as C-Note and more recent rehearsal recordings streamed online). If P really kept everything it would take the whole Paisley Park complex to store everything at this point (we're talking 37 years of recordings!). It's been said that there must now be other vaults and if so, it's a well guarded secret

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The Vault nowadays will most likley be a load of off-site, encrypted hard drives hosted by a commercial company who has no clue what they're holding.

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Since around 1994/5 the technology was such that everything could have been moved over to lossless WAVE - track by track. Then in the mid-2000s everything could have been stored offsite in RAID arrays for redundancy, security, longevity, etc, etc. Hell, I'd expect P has remote access to the entire catalogue of stuff from his Mac whilst sitting in a hotel room these days. It's no different to how I store all of my music!

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The Vault in the basement of PP probably holds this year's tapes, as well as the original/cloned tapes of his greatest commercial albums. Everything will be digital. The stuff in the vault is either just a cache or for posterity. Something to impress visitors.

.

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And this leads me to think that the recent releases of Soundboard quality material that was highly sought-after

yet missing for 30+ years is no coincidence. If there is an ongoing project to digitse everything, it'd mean all those soundboard recordings would be in the queue too. Now they've leaked occasionally, I feel this is because he wanted them to and they're part of his digitsing his legacy.

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...it may also just be that P decided to "leave the past to the past". He has now reaquired the rights to his past catalogue so theorically he's free to release all that stuff with or without WB, but I think nothing will see the light of day as long as he's still under a contractual obligation to go through WB for the remasters (and possibly all that unreleased stuff as well). In the end Prince is still tied to WB and I suspect it comes back to the same to him as them owning the masters. I think the next few years will show interesting developments and that we'll soon be able to decide whether Prince is still interested in starting releasing vault matrial or not at all anymore...

.

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My final thoughts.

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I believe P is holding onto the Vault material as way of a pension. Once he can no longer wow the big crowds every couple of years to generate $10m+ of outright profit then he'll start to release gems from the Vault.

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I think the remastered albums will beused as a tool to keep him relevant to his audience. He's selling out Hit N Run - he's still got relevance. He's getting Top 10 albums - he's still relevant. He's not a superstar personality like he was in the 1980s, instead he's got 'legend' status. 21 nights in London showed us his appeal. So once he feels that is starting to be hindered, expect the remastered Purple Rain and 1999s to hit. Then Sign of the Times. I think the appeal of ATWIAD, Parade & Lovesexy to a non-Prince audience is very limited.

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The Vault likely has about 50 great unheard songs in it. I mean worthy of SOTT, PR, etc. The other excellent songs, we already have them in one form or another. The rest of the stuff will be takes, ideas, unpolished drafts, etc. So 1000 songs - sure. How much would we want to hear - 15%. 5% would be never heard before stuff, 10% would be original quality versions of songs we already have.

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400 known songs according to PrinceVault right? So 250 already released, leaves us 150 say - that means that the 15% we'd care to heear of the 1000-song vault might already be in our hands in some form. With very few (maybe only 10-20 great songs) that we have never heard of.

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P propsers on mystique. Especially in this day and age of mass self-exposure. The Vault promotes that myth. I'd love to hear the real versions of all those songs we unofficially have access to. I'd love to hear the 20 great songs he never released. The rest would be tedious.

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For every FutureSoulSong that appears nowadays - a genuinely fine song - I'd be surprised if he still contributed anything of real appeal into the canon. The Vault is desired by usonly because of what's been in there for 20-30 years already.

@PorterUK. I'm not going to debate how good/bad Future Soul Song is , but I have to correct a point which strangely enough was not addressed in the documentary: that Prince has never digitized the tapes, and they are slowly falling apart.

This has been confirmed by several engineers....

@PorterUK. I'm not going to debate how good/bad Future Soul Song is , but I have to correct a point which strangely enough was not addressed in the documentary: that Prince has never digitized the tapes, and they are slowly falling apart.

This has been confirmed by several engineers....

Pentacle said:

@PorterUK. I'm not going to debate how good/bad Future Soul Song is

Thank you. Each to their own tastes...

but I have to correct a point which strangely enough was not addressed in the documentary: that Prince has never digitized the tapes, and they are slowly falling apart.

This has been confirmed by several engineers....

I didn't know the enigneers had confirmed this.

However, I'd assume that P would use people who were unaware of what it was they were listening to. Or even do it himself, or have Joshua Welton do some of it. My point being there are avenues outside of costly engineers and people who would know the value of the items.

If the tapes are allowed to go undigitised and do disintegrate then we need to call on the Library of Congress to intervene. This stuff is a record of historical legacy and should be treated as such. Get Federal on his ass!

I'm glad the documentary has me fired up enough to post on the Org again. Having read it regularly for 10 years, I've not posted for 7 - I was shocked to see. And Bart was just as miserable back then!

This was really good! I can believe that Prince was behind the leaks. I can see him being livid if he's leaked it as a gift to fans and then people are profiting off Prince 'giving' fans the music he couldn't release himself.

It's fun to hear others in the camp talk about everything I dont care how many times I've heard it. I'm really glad I'm on this ride in my lifetime.

[Edited 3/22/15 8:45am]

Thanks guys for your insightful replies to my reply

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I never cared to count how many known unreleased songs have leaked. However we must keep in mind that even Per Nilsen wasn't able to track down every song from that era, as proven by the leaks of tracks like 4 Lust or Jill's version of IICGYA, that were unheard of before. Then there's everything post 1995: we have very little information about the unreleased songs, but several sources have been quoted saying Prince kept recording as much as he did before (a current P associate told it to me personally last year by email). I know those post-1995 outtakes are of little interest to many people here but there are a few happy fews like me who've been lucky enough to enjoy the post-WB stuff as much as the WB stuff, I'm pretty sure I'd love most of those tracks the same way I love the earlier outtakes we have. Similarly while I agree that the general public couldn't care less about having most of the uncirculating material (including, if u ask me, the great stuff, I mean the casual listener ain't gonna care for The Flesh or Purple Music), I think many of us are more interested in it than you'd think. I mean I keep reading people saying "I don't care for unfinished songs or an nth version of the songs we already have" but fact of the matter is we all avidly donwload every new collection of outtakes that surfaces, including useless one minute long snippets of not always so great songs. If u think niche audience there is an audience. I personally would be interested in hearing every bloody version of every bloody song in the vault because even if I'm not gonna love all of them, I'm still very much interested in them from a historical perspective. IDK I'm not very fond of Big Tall Wall for example but i'm glad I have it and I'd be glad to buy an album featuring it. Similarly I love hearing early configs of released albums because even when I like the finished config better I love being able to hear an album the way P had it in mind at some earlier point. So yeah if it was offered for download I'm pretty sure most of the people here would buy any collection of outtakes at least for the sake of hearing what's on them. But IDK maybe it's only a small share of us, maybe I'm overenthusastic, but i know at least a few orgers who wouldn't mind having every damn thing in the vault like me. I've just checked and there are 1200+ files in my outtakes folder. Lots of alternate versions sure but still, the amount of circulating stuff is incredible and that's only about half of what was in the vault by 1995 (maybe even less than half), and there's just as much material that's been recorded since. So yeah I think there's enough material to keep us busy for a good 100 years after P dies. Unfortunately we will be dead too

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Regarding the cancelation of The Flesh yeah Bart it could be that also, I was only speculating.

.

Regarding erasing the voice guides I find it curious given how Prince likes to keep everything. Nevertheless the fact that Susan states that she was the one who started reuniting and organizing all the tapes, it's possible that Prince wasn't so concerned by archiving his stuff until she made him realize that it could come handy to have a well organized archive and that preserving his legacy was important.

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Concerning the digitalization I don't think any engineer post 1994 have been interviewed about this (correct me if I'm wrong), so having ChronicFreeze saying nothing had been done 20 years ago doesn't say much about what may have happened ever since. Koppleman, Chronic and here again Hans all said that P would often go into the vault and reuse some part of some song for another track (similarly to how he would re-use Fischer's parts in later tracks) or update a song, so at least when it comes to the studio tracks I find it hard to believe that he wouldn't have everything at home at PP only unless it's been digitalized I don't see how. The idea of an online access is interesting but such a huge database seems impossible to maintain online, let alone the risk that North Koreans hackers hack it and leak the whole vault in a day, ruining P's life in the process

databank said:

The idea of an online access is interesting but such a huge database seems impossible to maintain online, let alone the risk that North Koreans hackers hack it and leak the whole vault in a day, ruining P's life in the process

In my mind, I see the project being somewhat like the creation of batman in the Nolan/Bale reboot. When he has to buy the batman cowl masks, they get 10,000 from China to conceal the real usage!

Like I say. Encryption means it wouldn't be known that they are Prince's songs. If you don't know what to look for, you wouldn't know what you'd found.

I have over 1TB of music. I keep it on a hard drive, not even using iTunes. I maintain that no problem - after all, most of it never changes right? If the vault was digitised over time, then it's not so hard to see it being naturally maintainable. And with something akin to iTunes, he'd have everything at hand much easier.

[Snipped - langebleu - moderator]

BartVanHemelen said:

Aerogram said:

As for why these individuals are featured, it's fairly common to feature a range of fans, including some that have bought into some semi-urban legends or that treat a few things as such, lots of people are only in it for the music and pay little attention to other aspects. For instance, I only pay some attention to his personal life and what his associates have to say, there's no law that says a fan should take an almost scholarly interest in everything.

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So they're not interested in such things -- except they are, but not interested enough to actually spend a minute amount of time to figure out if something is true or not? So what you're saying is "they're a little bit pregnant, but not really".

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So the subject is completely uninteresting to most peopel yet worthy of an hour long documentary so they can be informed.

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I can only imagine the kind of documentary you would make, I'm sure you'd attempt to put him on trial for things like voicing support for an athlete and other dubious factoids you somehow feel are still worth your time.

[Edited 3/21/15 3:18am]

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Ah, I see, you are once again busy making shit up about me.

No one is making "shit up" about you Bart, quit your self-agrandizing paranoia, I said "I can only imagine", so take remedial reading and don't tell me that's not exactly what you would because 99.9% of your posts heavily "hint" in that direction.

As for you lecturing fans because they don't have a nasty case of negative fixation masquarading as pseudo-scholarly interest like you, bummer there's no manual on being a fan listing duties and shit. Fans can be interested in anything they want, sometimes it's just the music, other times they're in love with the person, nowhere does it says they know everything under the sun, that's just plain normal.

Can the entire documentary be viewed online without having to pay or join?

rap said:

So far, all I've been able to locate is a small clip (preview) that goes for 8 mins. The whole thing runs for 55 mins?

I think the Producer, Mobeen has said the full 55 mins version will be avaiable as a podcast at some point (maybe subscribe to BBC World Service podcasts on the podcast app until something appears?).

Okay, how long is the one (documentary not radio) that played?

rap said:

So far, all I've been able to locate is a small clip (preview) that goes for 8 mins. The whole thing runs for 55 mins?

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Is clicking on the links in the first post of this thread really that much of a hassle?

KeithyT said:

I think the Producer, Mobeen has said the full 55 mins version will be avaiable as a podcast at some point (maybe subscribe to BBC World Service podcasts on the podcast app until something appears?).

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What do you think databank and I were talking about? CLICK THE DAMN LINKS IN THE FIRST POST. Sheesh.

Aerogram said:

BartVanHemelen said:

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Ah, I see, you are once again busy making shit up about me.

No one is making "shit up" about you Bart, quit your self-agrandizing paranoia, I said "I can only imagine", so take remedial reading and don't tell me that's not exactly what you would because 99.9% of your posts heavily "hint" in that direction.

As for you lecturing fans because they don't have a nasty case of negative fixation masquarading as pseudo-scholarly interest like you, bummer there's no manual on being a fan listing duties and shit. Fans can be interested in anything they want, sometimes it's just the music, other times they're in love with the person, nowhere does it says they know everything under the sun, that's just plain normal.

.

Again you are making shit up about me. Here's this 55 minute documentary and all you do is post shit you made up. Why can't you stay on topic?

A Tumblr user has transcribed some of those videos!

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Susan Rogers: I started the vault. I’m Susan Rogers. I was Prince’s recording engineer. When I joined Prince in ‘83, I had a little bit of down time. He was preparing to do the movie Purple Rain. I was his new employee. He wasn’t sure quite what to do with me after I had prepared the equipment and one of the things I realized would be smart for me to do would be to get all his tapes together in one place. Sometimes he would say, “Can you go find this? Can you go find that?”, so I needed them all in one place. I had shelves and as many of his multi-track tapes and stereo tapes on the shelves as I could find, but I was aware that there was a lot of pieces missing. So I asked people who worked for him, “Where would I find the masters for this or for that?” and they said, “They’re probably at Warner Brothers. Probably in Burbank in California. Just call them. They might be at this studio or that studio. Call Sunset Sound”. So I started doing that. I got on the phone and I started saying to Sunset Sound or to other recording studios where he worked early in his career, “Do you have any Prince tapes there? Can you send them to me?” and they would box them up and they would send them.

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Then it became a little bit of an obsession. So then my goal was I wanted us to have everything he has ever recorded right here. So I started amassing them and I started making a database for all these things. And then that is when we began planning Paisley Park and we realized if we are going to have a vault, let’s have a vault, because if we get — I don’t know, if we get a tornado or we get a flood, this is his legacy and we need to protect these things. So this idea for a vault was built into Paisley Park. It is a bank vault. It has, like, a bank vault’s door. It is really, really thick and it has the wheel on it just like you would see in a bank vault. When I left in ‘87 it was nearly full so I can’t imagine what they have done. It was just row after row after row after row of everything we did.

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We would typically be in the studio and be working by noon and a day for me in the studio was typically around 24 hours long. So, we would work all day, all through the night, and then after we finished the song we would sleep for a few hours and come back and do another song. So, Prince was different in that in the time when I was working with him, the time when we started the session or started the song, we didn’t finish until it was mixed and done. No one else works like that.

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The way everyone else works is they get the band together — or even a solo artist — you work on one instrument at a time, you build the track up over a period of days. And if you worked really fast in the typical world you might do a song a week — this was back in the golden age of rock/pop/soul when there were actually budgets for this kind of thing. But a song takes a long time. An album might take 700 or 800 hours. We could do and we did do an album in a week.

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There is a song called Moonbeam Levels. To this day, it remains one of my favourite Prince songs. Moonbeam levels. So beautiful. Occasionally, when we were sequencing records, we would put that song into the sequence and I would think, “At last. I am so happy. This beautiful song is going on this record”, but he would pull it. He would always pull it. He didn’t want to share it.

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I would say that Prince’s top 30 percent is great. Of that 30 percent, I will bet the public has heard 20 percent of it.

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Alan Leeds: If he woke up in the morning with an idea for a new song, he would go in and by evening the song was almost finished. It was miraculous to watch. He was like a funnel. It was as if somebody was pouring these songs into him and they would just continue to come out the other end like a water spigot that wouldn’t turn off. But instead of water it was songs.

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He recorded every concert he ever did. Many of which were professionally recorded on multi-track. So the wealth of material goes way beyond just the studio recordings. You could do a box set of 10 CDs of live concerts from the various eras of his career.

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Michael Bland: We would record with Prince whenever he felt like recording. If I was laying in bed with my wife watching Dick Van Dyke or watching Andy Griffith at three o’clock in the morning, if my pager went off I had to get up and go to Paisley Park and record.

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I can’t even tell you how many songs were recorded because it happened so frequently. I mean, we were running a tie line from the sound stage at Paisley all the way back to Studio A. So, sometimes we would come in to rehearse and Prince would instead decide, “Wait, I have got an idea for a song”. Or somebody would start jamming — he would be, “Okay, wait a minute. Let’s work on this”. He could record any time he felt like it, even on the road. I mean, the majority of the songs that came out on Old Friends 4 Sale were recorded in an afternoon at a recording studio in Paris. It was supposed to be a day off.

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There’s all sorts of music in the vault. There is music from…there is two other movies in the vault that nobody ever saw.

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Cat Glover: When you say the word “vault”, it is really a vault of treasure. I mean, it is like the Beatles stuff and Michael Jackson stuff. This stuff is incredible on every level with all different type of artists.

BartVanHemelen said:

KeithyT said:

I think the Producer, Mobeen has said the full 55 mins version will be avaiable as a podcast at some point (maybe subscribe to BBC World Service podcasts on the podcast app until something appears?).

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What do you think databank and I were talking about? CLICK THE DAMN LINKS IN THE FIRST POST. Sheesh.

oh my goodness Bart, I was trying to politely/diplomatically help out the user rap in the post just above mine.

Easy Tiger.

KeithyT said:

BartVanHemelen said:

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What do you think databank and I were talking about? CLICK THE DAMN LINKS IN THE FIRST POST. Sheesh.

oh my goodness Bart, I was trying to politely/diplomatically help out the user rap in the post just above mine.

Easy Tiger.

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How would you "help" by posting something you made up? All you needed to do was refer to the very first post of this thread, which has contained the info about the various lengths for several days and has linked to the relevant pages on the BBC site. FACTS vs SPECULATION.

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Also, the "full 55 minutes" version doesn't exist. Yes, I know the BBC page claims that length, but when you click the play button it shows a 53 minute length "broadcast". Which actually is only 50 or so minutes long, since there's a break in the middle for a news bulletin.

We love you Bart. Don't ever change.

Smooches x

Susan Rodgers looks exactly like Patti Smith, if Smith didn't take all those drugs. lol

She is right about Moonbeam Levels. Thankfully it is easy to hear. ha.

Do Yourself A Favour and Cosmic Day are my picks.

700 songs in 1985? wow. mouth watering.

We should come to the possibility that they will never be released. Cries.

2freaky4church1 said:

700 songs in 1985? wow. mouth watering.

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I wish we had an overview of what we "know" to be in that number, e.g. released stuff + unreleased stuff we know about. Too bad you can't run queries on Princevault's data.

BartVanHemelen said:

2freaky4church1 said:

700 songs in 1985? wow. mouth watering.

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I wish we had an overview of what we "know" to be in that number, e.g. released stuff + unreleased stuff we know about. Too bad you can't run queries on Princevault's data.

If we count all the song we have up until and including 1985 (released song, songs we have on boots, songs we only know the title of) what is the total? Has anyone bothered to count?