BartVanHemelen said:

214 said:

Annaestesia should be in this album, right after Sign O' The Times.

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You love that song so much you made more than one spelling error.

.

did i? well, english it's not my first language

Signs o' the Time! That's my jam!

Fantastic era, fantastic music, look, performances, film.

Sorry I didn't help

BartVanHemelen said:

NorthC said:

Okay, back on topic! I don't know how easy it is to find Per Nilsen's books these days, but Matt Thorne wrote an excellent book titled Prince

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It's not excellent and it's pointless to bring it up here since Thorne's book rushes through the 1980s because he wants to prop up Prince's post-WBR output and of course documenting each and every gig of the 21 Nights in Londond.

Has this thread been sponsored by MasterCard?

....tearing people to shreds on one thread for incorrectly spelling "Newpower Soul" and "genious" (and then saying "right there is everything you need to know about that person's opinion."), tearing people to shreds on this thread for spelling Anna Stesia incorrectly, and then spelling London with a "d" at the end. Priceless.

I'm just about to head off to find a glass house and make a point of not throwing stones at it.

[Edited 8/17/15 5:46am]

hw3004 said:

BartVanHemelen said:

.

It's not excellent and it's pointless to bring it up here since Thorne's book rushes through the 1980s because he wants to prop up Prince's post-WBR output and of course documenting each and every gig of the 21 Nights in Londond.

Has this thread been sponsored by MasterCard?

....tearing people to shreds on one thread for incorrectly spelling "Newpower Soul" and "genious" (and then saying "right there is everything you need to know about that person's opinion."), tearing people to shreds on this thread for spelling Anna Stesia incorrectly, and then spelling London with a "d" at the end. Priceless.

I'm just about to head off to find a glass house and make a point of not throwing stones at it.

[Edited 8/17/15 5:46am]

I must admit that I agree with Bart on this one. I found Thorne's book to be pretty terrible.

I understand that everybody has different likes and dislikes, but I think you lose some credibility when you say things like "Shockadelica is a throwaway song".

Militant said:

NorthC said:

Militant said:

I must admit that I agree with Bart on this one. I found Thorne's book to be pretty terrible.

I understand that everybody has different likes and dislikes, but I think you lose some credibility when you say things like "Shockadelica is a throwaway song".

Are we talking about the same book? Prince by Matt Thorne? I reread the chapter about Camille and I see no negative words about any of those songs. Maybe the word throwaway got lost in the Dutch translation, which I have. Besides, calling a song a throwaway doesn't have to mean you think it's bad. I'd call Da Bourgeoisie a throwaway, but I still like it.

I haven't read it since it came out, it may not have been Shockadelica. I can't remember.

But there was at least a couple of B-Side songs that everybody here would agree are absolutely essential parts of Prince's catalog that he blithely dismissed as not being worth anything, which I found very odd indeed.

I like Bart.

bluegangsta said:

I like Bart.

He'd probably refuse to give directions to a 89 year old tourist because tourists should know better than leave their map at the hotel.

It's pathetic to talk down to people based on, of all things, your knowledge of a musician.

Revolution said:

I believe the movie is the greatest concert movie ever!

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No, that honor goes to Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense, especially since that movie actually features the audio and video of a concert, and not a re-recorded audio track and a mimed concert.

Aerogram said:

bluegangsta said:

I like Bart.

He'd probably refuse to give directions to a 89 year old tourist because tourists should know better than leave their map at the hotel.

It's pathetic to talk down to people based on, of all things, your knowledge of a musician.

.

Dude is "researching" and hasn't even bothered to visit PrinceVault despite doign this FOR TWO MONTHS. He's a tourist who doesn't even has a map; hell, he hasn't even traveled to his destination. And this person is going to write an encyclopedia entry? Oh yeah, that's going to be great.

BartVanHemelen said:

No that honor does go to Sign Of the Times Movie , shut up already damn

Well anyway, what's worth noting about the album, imho, is that it's actually kind of lacking in any specific focus. Most prince albums up to that point had a fairly set sound each (with some variation of course) but this one was all over the place. It plays like a best of but with new songs instead of old ones, while also looking to the future a little bit (IT could be seen to be moving towards the Batman sound for example).

Don't make the mistake of saying that it's Prince's There's a Riot Goin' on based purely on the title track.

Christgau's review is fairly on the money from my point of view

http://www.robertchristga...hp?id=2806

there's also an entire world of stories in regards outtakes with unreleased projects such as Dream Factory, Camille, Crystal Ball... you should look into all of them to understand it better.

Finally, it's worth noting that it was the last album recorded before Paisley Park Studios were built and Prince sealed himself away from the world, Howard Hughes style. Read into his career after this point as you please...

[Edited 8/19/15 14:13pm]

Militant said:

I must admit that I agree with Bart on this one. I found Thorne's book to be pretty terrible.

I understand that everybody has different likes and dislikes, but I think you lose some credibility when you say things like "Shockadelica is a throwaway song".

Good lord, don't say that three times in a row or Bettlejuice will appear!

BartVanHemelen said:

Aerogram said:

He'd probably refuse to give directions to a 89 year old tourist because tourists should know better than leave their map at the hotel.

It's pathetic to talk down to people based on, of all things, your knowledge of a musician.

.

Dude is "researching" and hasn't even bothered to visit PrinceVault despite doign this FOR TWO MONTHS. He's a tourist who doesn't even has a map; hell, he hasn't even traveled to his destination. And this person is going to write an encyclopedia entry? Oh yeah, that's going to be great.

Actually, I had visited PrinceVault before posting here, although I was cautious of using it as it doesn't employ any formal referencing system (where are the page numbers?) so I considered it a bit of a red flag. I've now realised that it's pretty accurate in spite of this.

Two further observations:

1) Stop Making Sense is also, IMHO, the best concert movie of all time. Although, the audio CD of the concert is, IMHO, terrible. I own the Special Edition CD, so I'm not sure whether this new master is problematic or it's all of them, but I've heard of multiple people that have ripped the audio from their DVD/VHS.

2) I'm amused someone so grumpy lists Bassment Jaxx (pure, unbridled joy) as one of their favourite artists.

[Edited 8/19/15 14:03pm]

[Edited 8/20/15 4:51am]

jaawwnn said:

Well anyway, what's worth noting about the album, imho, is that it's actually kind of lacking in any specific focus. Most prince albums up to that point had a fairly set sound each (with some variation of course) but this one was all over the place. It plays like a best of but with new songs instead of old ones, while also looking to the future a little bit (IT could be seen to be moving towards the Batman sound for example).

Don't make the mistake, which others have made, of saying that it's Prince's There's a Riot Goin' on, based purely on the title track.

Christgau's review is fairly on the money from my point of view

http://www.robertchristga...hp?id=2806

there's also an entire world of stories in regards outtakes with unreleased projects such as Dream Factory, Camille, Crystal Ball... you should look into all of them to understand it better.

Finally, it's worth noting that it was the last album recorded before Paisley Park Studios were built and Prince sealed himself away from the world, Howard Hughes style. Read into his career after this point as you please...

[Edited 8/19/15 9:04am]

One of the most interesting things so far has been discovering where the outtakes come in and fall out. An interesting claim from one biography is that bootlegs of Crystal Ball are circulating. Although, this conflicts with claims by other sources that "Rebirth of the Flesh" has never been released, except for a version which (according to one source) does not reflect the original that appeared on the NPG website c. early 2000s. I'm therefore guessing that such a bootleg is fairly recent.

[Edited 8/19/15 14:23pm]

[Edited 8/19/15 14:39pm]

BartVanHemelen said:

Aerogram said:

He'd probably refuse to give directions to a 89 year old tourist because tourists should know better than leave their map at the hotel.

It's pathetic to talk down to people based on, of all things, your knowledge of a musician.

.

Dude is "researching" and hasn't even bothered to visit PrinceVault despite doign this FOR TWO MONTHS. He's a tourist who doesn't even has a map; hell, he hasn't even traveled to his destination. And this person is going to write an encyclopedia entry? Oh yeah, that's going to be great.

You derive too many secondary benefits from your cranky professor approach. Just be an understanding leader and provide helpful links like people our age are supposed to do, it's not that hard,and you help foster knowledge instead of creating unnecessary conflict and friction.

Plus it's not just for that one person, some of us may have forgotten a great book or source.

It's an album only the hardcore Prince community can listen too. No one else.

mantaray31 said:

From http://prince.org/msg/7/3...?&pg=1 (Interview with recording engineer Susan Rogers):

http://daddyrockstar.tumblr.com/post/44079621006/susan-rogers-on-princes-sign-o-the-times-part-2

http://daddyrockstar.tumblr.com/post/44236225279/susan-rogers-on-princes-sign-o-the-times-part-3

It seems there is no part 1...

Great links. Part one can be found here at the bottom of this page

http://daddyrockstar.tumblr.com/tagged/Susan-Rogers

You can't go wrong with Per Nilsen's DMSR, older issues of Uptown Magazine (hard to find but they exist with many fans on PDF) and PrinceVault which is the best overall source of Prince information.

Good luck with your research.

Jenn2 said:

One of the most interesting things so far has been discovering where the outtakes come in and fall out. An interesting claim from one biography is that bootlegs of Crystal Ball are circulating. Althoug, this conflicts with claims by other sources that "Rebirth of the Flesh" has never been released, except for a version which (according to one source) does not reflect the original that appeared on the NPG website c. early 2000s. I'm therefore guessing that such a bootleg is fairly recent.

[Edited 8/19/15 14:23pm]

Yeah, a full version taken from an old tape (I think) literally came into wider circulation a few months back. There'd be a few on here who might know about it circulating among private collectors for longer though, years possibly.

If you have a look around you'll see various iterations of Crystal Ball being released as bootlegs over the years, usually just compiled from various outtakes circulating at the time. The Irukandji Music release is the most recent, it all seems to come from the same tape and appears to be a working version of the full Crystal Ball album. Possibly (probably?) the same tracklist Prince presented to Warner Bros. It's the tracklist on princevault anyway.

[Edited 8/19/15 14:44pm]

Wolfie87 said:

It's an album only the hardcore Prince community can listen too. No one else.

It's in a strange state: it's recognised as one of the greatest albums of all time/the decade, received retrospective and contemporary acclaim, was moderately commercially succesful and headed-up by a popular lead single (the title track) but doesn't seem to have wide public appeal. It's lack of popularity is a great shame, it's Prince's most eclectic album genre-wise, IMHO.

[Edited 8/19/15 14:33pm]

Jenn2 said:

Wolfie87 said:

It's an album only the hardcore Prince community can listen too. No one else.

It's in a strange state: it's recognised as one of the greatest albums of all time/the decade, received retrospective and contemporary acclaim, was moderately commercially succesful and headed-up by a popular lead single (the title track) but doesn't seem to have wide public appeal. It's lack of popularity is a great shame, it's Prince's most eclectic album genre-wise, IMHO.

[Edited 8/19/15 14:33pm]

It truly is one of music history's greatest mysteries. No one outside our community has ever heard a song. For some reason people claims that Purple Rain is his greatest ballad and one of the best ballad period. But clearly it stands no match against Adore, it just doesn't. And no other ballad of the 80's does. That song sounds as fresh today as I would imagine it did back then. It's a fucking one man show (almost). That reason alone makes it my number one album. Not that I enjoy every song on the album, but the craftmanship within such a short period of time is just G.E.N.I.U.S.

And media isn't really helping it either. "Oh the Purple one from Minnesota" "Purple rain this, Purple Rain that" . Hey guys, you do know that Peach and Black was a color also right? And holy shit did it perform.

Wolfie87 said:

And media isn't really helping it either. "Oh the Purple one from Minnesota" "Purple rain this, Purple Rain that" . Hey guys, you do know that Peach and Black was a color also right? And holy shit did it perform.

I guess everyone always remembers PURPLE when it sells over 20 Million... Sadly Peach and Black was the most genius era of Prince, but doesn't get the world wide recognition it should...

Jenn2 said:

feeluupp said:

Wolfie87 said:

And media isn't really helping it either. "Oh the Purple one from Minnesota" "Purple rain this, Purple Rain that" . Hey guys, you do know that Peach and Black was a color also right? And holy shit did it perform.

I guess everyone always remembers PURPLE when it sells over 20 Million... Sadly Peach and Black was the most genius era of Prince, but doesn't get the world wide recognition it should...

Actually, I'm not feeling that way about it. Alot of divas and superstars was so up in their album releases that they had to milk every penny from it. In steps Prince a says "Hey that's great and all. But look what I just recorded within a few months" MJ, Janet, Madonna, George Michael looks at eachother and goes "Well, I can't do that. Hey Quincy! Can you do that within a few months?" "Hell no!!" "Jimmy Jam or Terry?" "Hell No!!" Prince replies "No,no,no,no. You have to make it yourself" "Btw I live in a huge mansion aswell, I'm just that good" . What I'm trying to say is that he made alot of money but kept his musicianship on the highest level you can reach.