As with my earlier thread about Make It Through the Storm, I'm trying to sort out my collection.

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So, I'm drawing from the The Work 2.0, Blast from the Past 3.0 and Box of Chocolates.

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As far as I can tell, Blast from the Past 3.0 and Box of Chocolates have the same version--at 6:18. It looks like this comes from early 1986.

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My confusion comes from the The Work 2.0's four appearances of the song. It has a 2:00 snippet (labeled #1) which position on the collection suggests comes from 1982. While the song was recorded back then, is this snippet legitimate? It sounds terrible, but is it real?

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Then, to make things more confusing, there are two appearances of a 6:18 Strange Relationship (labeled #2 and #4). I can't make out any differences in these two, but they are separated from each other in the tracklisting, appearing with different sets of 1986 era recordings. Are they different from each other, or from the Box of Chocolates version in any way other than sound quality? [I've listened again--okay, they're different--but when are they from? And number 4 sounds really bad--is there any other quality for this one out there?

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The 10 minute version labeled #3 I have no questions about--it just seems to be a full recording that's been edited to create the 6 minute versions--unless there's an actual difference in the six minute versions, in which case I guess I'd like someone to clarify which one is really connected to the longest version.

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I'd be very grateful for any help anyone can give me here.

[Edited 6/21/15 9:09am]

The 2 min snippet is legit, its an early home studio demo, you can hear its missing the wendy and lisa parts

Revolution81 said:

The 2 min snippet is legit, its an early home studio demo, you can hear its missing the wendy and lisa parts

I thought so, but the sound quality was so bad that I thought it might be possible that it wasn't even Prince.

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Thanks for the confirmation.

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I've now listened to these versions 3 or 4 times each this morning, and my brain is starting to melt. And not entirely in a good way.

All I know is that this song is my JAM!

The version on BFTP 3.0 is the best quality version out so far.

There's a long version, a single version, which means it may have been an album cut.

No real reason to ever release it since the perfect version is available on boots. better that it stay unreleased.

KingSausage said:

I thought the BFTP 3.0 and Box of Chocolates versions were the same. Are they not?

After listening to both versions of versions on an audiophile dream set up and with quality headphones BFTP version is way cleaner and crisp. Try it with high quality earbuds or over the ear phones and you'll hear the difference. Either they have an extremely low generation tape or they did some real good cleanup on this track.

joyinrepetition said:

KingSausage said:

I thought the BFTP 3.0 and Box of Chocolates versions were the same. Are they not?

After listening to both versions of versions on an audiophile dream set up and with quality headphones BFTP version is way cleaner and crisp. Try it with high quality earbuds or over the ear phones and you'll hear the difference. Either they have an extremely low generation tape or they did some real good cleanup on this track.

I reckon bftp used Box o chocs as its source and just did a "cleanup" (to me it just sounds slightly louder). It even has the same glitch around the 50 second mark

Revolution81 said:

joyinrepetition said:

After listening to both versions of versions on an audiophile dream set up and with quality headphones BFTP version is way cleaner and crisp. Try it with high quality earbuds or over the ear phones and you'll hear the difference. Either they have an extremely low generation tape or they did some real good cleanup on this track.

I reckon bftp used Box o chocs as its source and just did a "cleanup" (to me it just sounds slightly louder). It even has the same glitch around the 50 second mark

This is correct. They are the exact same file. BFTP is just 1.4db louder, and they tried to enhance frequencies (above 13k) which arent even there.