Same reason why Parade is from 1985 and they use video footage of 1997 when discussing the 2010's: Sloppy research.

NorthC said:

If you have them in your phone, they're not in the vault, right? We don't know what's in there. That's why it's a rumor. And Prince himself is happy to feed those rumors: Dutch magazine Oor interviewed him in 1998 and he said (translated from Dutch back into English):"Ah! Who says there's a vault in Paisley Park? There's a theory that says there's no gold in Fort Knox. Wouldn't that be a great joke?" [Edited 7/20/15 9:09am] [Edited 7/20/15 9:16am]

People have seen the vault though

NorthC said:

NorthC said:

If you have them in your phone, they're not in the vault, right? We don't know what's in there. That's why it's a rumor. And Prince himself is happy to feed those rumors: Dutch magazine Oor interviewed him in 1998 and he said (translated from Dutch back into English):"Ah! Who says there's a vault in Paisley Park? There's a theory that says there's no gold in Fort Knox. Wouldn't that be a great joke?" [Edited 7/20/15 9:09am] [Edited 7/20/15 9:16am]

If it's on his phone but unreleased yes, it's in the vault, and yes we pretty much know what's in there at least until 1995, and there's evidence of just as much material having been recorded ever since (an associate told me last year in a private convo that P was still recording as much as he used to and this wasn't PR). Journalists either don't know what they're talking about as said above or chose this angle because it's more mysterious and sells (such as the recent BBC doc, where the guy found the question "is there a vault" as his "angle" when he knew perfectly there was a vault.

I don't believe the Vault itself is the rumor. It's the actual amount of material that is in question or rumor.

NorthC said:

But as long as we don't actually hear those unreleased songs, it's still a rumor. The ones we have on bootlegs don't count, because they're already out there. In other words, I don't see a problem with the use of this word.

Your thinking is illogical.

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Research isn't rumor.

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This is the definition of "rumor":

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The work accomplished by Per Nilsen, Uptown and Madhouseman among others, while not necessary free of any error, cannot be called "rumor" according to the definition above. Words have a meaning.

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Unreleased material is unreleased regardless of whether it has leaked. What "doesn't count" is what had seen an official release. Everything else is vault material because, technically, it is part of Prince's unreleased body of work. This is not debatable.

NorthC said:

SmiggyG said:

NorthC said:

Okay, have it your way. Then it's not a rumor.

Man it's not "having it my way". I'm sticking to facts, logic and the correct definition of words. I'm not trying to be right, just following a rational pattern of thoughts which is the only way anything can ever be accomplished.

KingSausage said:

SmiggyG said:

I don't believe the Vault itself is the rumor. It's the actual amount of material that is in question or rumor.

See, now THAT would be an interesting angle. Quantifying what's unreleased and how many albums (or collections) it could fill. To what extent are various songs finished? Does the original CB count as an unreleased album even though most tracks made it out eventually? Do we distinguish between demoes or various alternate takes? And so on. But lazy ass reporters just talk about rumors Prince has unreleased material. Yeah, I heard a rumor JFK got shot in the head.

We know it fills more than 40 CD's adding Work It 2.0 to later links. However there are many versions in progress of released tracks in those collections.

A question: should, after Prince's death, a proper and well organized program be scheduled for releasing his whole recording sessions, where do we draw the line?

For example nearly all songs with horns and all songs with orchestra exist without those but is there any point in releasing, say, Slow Love without horns? Would the Parade demos without Clare Fischer be worth releasing even though we fans consider they're worth having on a bootleg? Etc. In some case though I think everyone would agree that having the original cut of, say, The Line, is justified, but every song???

Similarly we have the bass line and a few isolated parts from G Spot IIRC, and the spoken parts from Vibrator, but what do we do with that? it's not like there would be a point in releasing every individual track of every song?

It's a true question to wonder whether every possible version of every track should be made available and to where to draw the line. I even wonder if some of the versions we have still do exist in the vault as such, at least on multitracks. It's possible that Prince only kept the final mix, deleted some parts, and that the tapes he gave people before doing so are the only left trace of those "in progress" versions.

Imagine u're in charge of a posthumous archives program, in a world where digital release allows a nearly unlimited amount of tracks being made available online without the extra cost of printing physical supports, where do u draw your line? How do u proceed? Headache headache...

I don't think Prince is feeding into rumours, he says there is a vault of materials that still looking for a home (CD) or are just unfinished. Nonbelievers are the making up the rumors probably bcuz he hasn't released the material or they just really, really want to hear it.

databank said:

I even wonder if some of the versions we have still do exist in the vault as such, at least on multitracks. It's possible that Prince only kept the final mix, deleted some parts, and that the tapes he gave people before doing so are the only left trace of those "in progress" versions.

Alan Leeds stated, recently, that Prince would record his guide vocal for a demo, then record over his vocal replacing it with the particular singer's vocal. Like recordings for The Family album only have St. Paul's vocals. Prince's guide vocals were recorded over, according to Alan Leeds. Seems possible that some recordings only exist now on cassettes that were handed out, etc.

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Prince's vault is surely in some state of disarray. Considering the hodgepodge nature of Prince's music releases, in recent years, and spur of the moment concert announcements, there's little to indicate Prince would be inclined to have taken steps to preserve tapes in the vault. Transferring all that stuff to digital would be tedious and time consuming. For all we know Prince destroyed some recordings when he became fixated on not cursing and censoring his past work.

Very few people claim to have seen or been in the actual vault. It exists because people have talked about it, however those that have talked about it don't seem to recall it being as big as it would need to be; to hold 20 years of songs, alternate versions, demos, outtakes, rehearsals and live performances.

We know Prince liked to watch his shows back after performing - and he was asking for shows to be provided on VHS so he could watch them in his limo/hotel - there is no reason to think those tapes were (back in the day) collected up and shipped out to Paisley Park. They were left in hotel rooms and rental cars. Susan Rogers has said as much: she took it upon herself to try and establish order, but who took over from her?

Let's be honest, while he records every show, it's quite possible he records over it the next night. Or did back in the 80's and early 90's. There have been a few upgrades to PP over the years so it's possible his storage facilities were increased.

From the mid 90s onwards everything went digital so storage became much easier. I suspect many of the tapes from the 80s have been lost to time, or simply re-recorded.

Having said all that - his body of work released and unreleased is mammoth. There are probably over 500 songs from the past 10 years that fans don't even know about.

[Edited 7/20/15 13:30pm]

KingSausage said:

SmiggyG said:

I don't believe the Vault itself is the rumor. It's the actual amount of material that is in question or rumor.

See, now THAT would be an interesting angle. Quantifying what's unreleased and how many albums (or collections) it could fill. To what extent are various songs finished? Does the original CB count as an unreleased album even though most tracks made it out eventually? Do we distinguish between demoes or various alternate takes? And so on. But lazy ass reporters just talk about rumors Prince has unreleased material. Yeah, I heard a rumor JFK got shot in the head.

Right. They are just uneducated to have that discussion. He said it himself time and time again in interview and song, pictures of it, as well from sources such as Anita Baker, Peg etc. We will never know what exactly is in there, even himself have put out songs that never exsisted amongst collectors previously "Make Your Mama Happy, Cloreen Bacon Skin, Dream Factory (released version)"...

Noodled24 said:

Very few people claim to have seen or been in the actual vault. It exists because people have talked about it, however those that have talked about it don't seem to recall it being as big as it would need to be; to hold 20 years of songs, alternate versions, demos, outtakes, rehersals and live performances.

Prince has stated there is now more than one vault. Someone (can't recall who atm) said that the last time they saw the vault at Paisley it was stuffed with shelves full of tapes and boxes stacked on the floor.

Well it's music's worst kept secret if that's the case.

Just listened to Dr. Fink on the Prince Podcast. He stated that there was a vault, but didn't quite know what was in there.

I don't think the vault itself is a rumor, the rumor is just that there is actually anything good in it

Sloppy reporting, but we don't know anything truly definitive either.

Yes, we know there's a good deal of unreleased music. We don't know anything about quantity. We don't know anything about its curation or efforts being made to preserve it. All we have to go on is conjecture based on pieces of increasingly outdated information.

You can't blame journalists for that. You can only blame Prince. For all you know, he went in yesterday & torched everything but a remix collection of Wedding Feast.

fbueller said:

Noodled24 said:

Very few people claim to have seen or been in the actual vault. It exists because people have talked about it, however those that have talked about it don't seem to recall it being as big as it would need to be; to hold 20 years of songs, alternate versions, demos, outtakes, rehersals and live performances.

Prince has stated there is now more than one vault. Someone (can't recall who atm) said that the last time they saw the vault at Paisley it was stuffed with shelves full of tapes and boxes stacked on the floor.

Prince himself said there is more than one vault? When was this?

I don't disagree that it must have been upgraded at some point, But I'm not sure I believe he has multiple vaults. It doesn't make sense.

spacedolphin said:

I don't think the vault itself is a rumor, the rumor is just that there is actually anything good in it

IMO the odds are that he has a lot of great material. Prince has been quoted as saying he records a song a day. I think it was 1996 when he told Oprah he'd record a song a day?

If you assume "a song a day" is hyperbole, and cut that number from 365 songs a year to 200 songs a year. Since 1996 you're looking at about 4000 songs. IF we assume he records about half as much as he said he does. By all accounts however he likely records as much as he says he does. Still that doesn't account for alternate versions, demos, etc.

IF he's not "full of it" and actually does average out a song a day, then he's got over 7000 songs just in the past 20 years alone. If only 10% of them are any good... thats still what? 70 (ten track) albums of decent material.

The numbers are in his favour.

Noodled24 said:

Noodled24 said:

SmiggyG said:

I don't believe the Vault itself is the rumor. It's the actual amount of material that is in question or rumor.

What don't you believe is there?

There's been hundreds of songs in wide circulation for decades, there's hundreds more documented and known of that aren't circulating. Add all the unreleased takes, mixes, versions, edits etc. Add to that rehearsals, video projects etc. Plus we know he records almost every live show (or did for a long time, we assume he still does) and we assume he stores them since older shows have been pulled out for various purposes over the years and seen parts used or released.

Unless you think he's destroyed a lot of it, it's fair to say it does hold exactly what people think it holds, because the evidence points to exactly that.