IstenSzek said:

i've never been able to understand the almost unanymous love that 'dance with the devil'
gets on this site. i think it's melodramatic, cheesy and way inferior to let's say 'scandalous'.


it's one of perhaps a dozen or so prince songs, outtakes included, that i really don't like.
not hate, just don't like.


now, lemon crush is just weird and cool plus, i love the guitar

[Edited 9/17/16 13:00pm]

Do U listen to Lemon Crush often?

Well Scandalous is a really good song. I would still take Dance with the Devil over Lemon Crush if I had only 2 choices.

paisleypark4 said:

CherryMoon57 said:

Roadhouse Garden is a grower.

I think its a demo of a more finished version. Compared to the live Bday show its missing Wendy and Lisa's vocals in there. I'm sure there is a more finished version of that. Anybody wanna ride the train?

.

This version appears to be from approximately Winter/Spring 1986.

.

W&L personally told me that this song received a Clare Fischer treatment, along with 'Our Destiny'.

.

I also believe the October 1984 version is a semi-completed track in its own right, but unsuitable to the style changes subsequent album projects would bring. 'All Day, All Night', 'Our Destiny', and 'Roadhouse Garden' were worked on and revisited many times between late 1984 and Summer 1986, and there are likely many 'semi-complete' demo versions, all going in very different directions, sharing little more than approximate running length, lead vocal, and some of the barest retained instrumentation.

.

The Summer 1986 version of ADAN on the JJ album has quite a different feel about it compared to the ca. 1985 P&TR demo that we have.

[Edited 9/17/16 13:28pm]

imprimis said:

OldFriends4Sale said:

CherryMoon57 said:

Roadhouse Garden is a grower.

I like it, I like listening to this one, then listening 2 the 'finished' live version.
This demo of it, is almost like it is focusing on a certain aspect before bringing in all the instruments

It's cool to listen 2 the Glamorous Life like this too

I find that this version of Roadhouse Garden has a lot more depth to it than the live one. Both versions of this song are new to me btw, only discovered it today. Am I the only one in thinking that it has a sort of Bruce Springsteen feel to it?

CherryMoon57 said:

OldFriends4Sale said:

I like it, I like listening to this one, then listening 2 the 'finished' live version.
This demo of it, is almost like it is focusing on a certain aspect before bringing in all the instruments

It's cool to listen 2 the Glamorous Life like this too

I find that this version of Roadhouse Garden has a lot more depth to it than the live one. Both versions of this song are new to me btw, only discovered it today. Am I the only one in thinking that it has a sort of Bruce Springsteen feel to it?

.

In this thread, I earlier compared it to 'I'm on Fire'. That's a bit of a stretch, but there is some similarity, most likely the unintentional consequence of reusing the stripped live 1984 vocal against the pacing and backdrop of different/new instrumentation.

.

[Edited 9/17/16 13:40pm]

The keyboard sequence that opens Rough reminds me of the keys in Love from 3121 but in a different pitch. The energy and tempo of the birthday show version of Roadhouse Garden do make it tough to get into this version as much. Have to go back to it a few times to shake off the affiliation...

imprimis said:

CherryMoon57 said:

I find that this version of Roadhouse Garden has a lot more depth to it than the live one. Both versions of this song are new to me btw, only discovered it today. Am I the only one in thinking that it has a sort of Bruce Springsteen feel to it?

.

In this thread, I earlier compared it to 'I'm on Fire'. That's a bit of a stretch, but there is some similarity, most likely the unintentional consequence of reusing the stripped live 1984 vocal against the pacing and backdrop of different/new instrumentation.

.

[Edited 9/17/16 13:40pm]

(Sorry, I haven't read everything yet, it's a long thread lol) I wasn't thinking of any song in particular, just thought that the overall style of the song is similar to the Bruce Springsteen's music in general.
I understand what you mean though.

[Edited 9/17/16 15:50pm]

imprimis said:

paisleypark4 said:

I think its a demo of a more finished version. Compared to the live Bday show its missing Wendy and Lisa's vocals in there. I'm sure there is a more finished version of that. Anybody wanna ride the train?

.

This version appears to be from approximately Winter/Spring 1986.

.

W&L personally told me that this song received a Clare Fischer treatment, along with 'Our Destiny'.

.

I also believe the October 1984 version is a semi-completed track in its own right, but unsuitable to the style changes subsequent album projects would bring. 'All Day, All Night', 'Our Destiny', and 'Roadhouse Garden' were worked on and revisited many times between late 1984 and Summer 1986, and there are likely many 'semi-complete' demo versions, all going in very different directions, sharing little more than approximate running length, lead vocal, and some of the barest retained instrumentation.

.

The Summer 1986 version of ADAN on the JJ album has quite a different feel about it compared to the ca. 1985 P&TR demo that we have.

[Edited 9/17/16 13:28pm]

Do you mind my asking who you are exactly, just wondering if your speaking to Wendy and Lisa was for some published interview or something, would be interested to read it if so.

Roadhouse Garden is perfect. Weirdly eulogic.

OldFriends4Sale said:

IstenSzek said:

i've never been able to understand the almost unanymous love that 'dance with the devil'
gets on this site. i think it's melodramatic, cheesy and way inferior to let's say 'scandalous'.


it's one of perhaps a dozen or so prince songs, outtakes included, that i really don't like.
not hate, just don't like.


now, lemon crush is just weird and cool plus, i love the guitar

[Edited 9/17/16 13:00pm]

Do U listen to Lemon Crush often?

Well Scandalous is a really good song. I would still take Dance with the Devil over Lemon Crush if I had only 2 choices.

well, not THAT often, no but i don't skip it when it comes on, i always enjoy it a lot.

on the album itself i like it more than "trust" or "arms of orion", by far. i

bluegangsta said:

Genesia said:

OldFriends4Sale said:

IstenSzek said:

i've never been able to understand the almost unanymous love that 'dance with the devil'
gets on this site. i think it's melodramatic, cheesy and way inferior to let's say 'scandalous'.


it's one of perhaps a dozen or so prince songs, outtakes included, that i really don't like.
not hate, just don't like.


now, lemon crush is just weird and cool plus, i love the guitar

[Edited 9/17/16 13:00pm]

Do U listen to Lemon Crush often?

Well Scandalous is a really good song. I would still take Dance with the Devil over Lemon Crush if I had only 2 choices.

Totally agree.

funksterr said:

fishwillbite said:

Even though Eggplant has been described as 'goofy', it's actually my favourite of these four leaked tracks. The second half goes into a pretty intense psychedelic groove which is kind of the opposite of goofy. Very cool.

[Edited 9/17/16 3:57am]

Yeah, I think it's pretty damn awesome. If you only focus on lyrics I can see calling it "goofy," but musically it's fairly out there/progressive.

See, for me the sound that WAS Prince, the sound of Prince's present (at that time) and potentially his future, was the sound that he, Wendy and Lisa were making..... and his rebellion against that, against "white" pop music, was ultimately his undoing and led to the mediocrity of the the 90's and beyond.

In my mind Prince had two sounds that were 'his". The punk-funk of Dirty Mind - 1999 and the colorful black pop of Purple Rain - Parade.... with Sign being a more restrained/refined amalgamation of all his sounds and Lovesexy being an overindulgence of the whimsy. Either way, his "hit" days were coming to an end. His commercial viability was going to wane anyway (especially in the US), regardless of what type of album he put out, while European countries would have probably eaten an evolution of that sound up (as evidenced by the Lovesexy tour/album, which is Prince, imo, trying to recreated what W&L brought to the table on his own, with mixed results.)

So did he wait too long? Absolutely. He waited too long to let his ego get the better of him.

imprimis said:

I believe 'River Run Dry', as it appears on 'The Family' album track, is entirely Prince on the drumset, fleshed out from and based on a 'warm up' solo Bobby Z performed during rehearsals in the Warehouse ca. late 1983/early 1984.

.

(For that matter, it may also simply be a post-'Purple Rain'-success gift to a friend of a writing credit/royalties by P to BZ that has become mythologized over time, on an album that was already a pigeonhole for a lot of odds-and-ends material and associates lacking a proper home; he was also already seriously entertaining replacing BZ by Summer 1985. Was giving him the writing credit something that may have been intended to give credibility for the label execs and ease the transition into solo recording artist?--certainly he would at least initially score a deal on the basis of his P association and successful producer brother. As an aside, it is my understanding that, after the break-up, P honored all of the Revolution members' contracts, which were good through 1989)

.

Despite the technical sophistication of later drummers, he was a competent pop-rock drummer, and seemed to ease into the innovations of triggered-Linn - live drumming comfortably. For purposes of live performance, a more capable drummer was not strictly necessary for the type of material P released all the way until the end of the 1980s (excluding Madhouse/etc)

---

My concerns are that, as brilliant and enjoyable as the product from this period happens to be, that P's pursuit of these genres and this production styling was, at its most basic level, a diversion that began with not wanting to be 'Mr Purple Rain' beginning in late 1984, wanting to be more musically sophisticated, a response to press criticisms of his sound's limitations or that he 'whitewashed' his image with PR, and, over time, became a somewhat self-indulgent dodge to avoid dealing with a rapidly shifting commercial music landscape, especially in 1986.

.

Prince's biggest commercial success was inextricably tied to his impressario abilities to bend and fold the production sensibilities at the very end of the early-1980s. At first, I believe he feared overexposure and was self-confident about some of those 'Village Voice' criticisms, and, as time went on, I believe he may have felt that the rug was being pulled out from under him as the sonic template of the time changed and others moved in.

.

From a strictly commercial and not an artistic point of view, I don't see how the Revolution, or a sound consistent with what he produced during the last one or two years thereof, could have survived beyond ca. 1988, and how weak it would appear to listeners of the time in the face of highly overproduced late-80s glitter/NJS/etc.

.

My argument is that, he had certain commercial expectations to uphold due to the magnanimous level of his stardom at time, and that by indulging in disctractions, he waited too long to act to develop a viable sound of his own after 1985, and these conditions helped to 'set the stage' a few years later for his uninspiring 'trend-chasing' (especially by 1989 and for many years afterwards).

.

His 1985-1988 modus operandi is usually portrayed as classic examples of P "not doing what you would expect for his next move", but I believe that it can't factually or rationally be viewed solely as grandstanding for higher artistic and moral purposes. In some sense, and to some degree, even if he had the purest artistic intentions at heart, he waited too long to act, or was unable to.

.

OldFriends4Sale said:

But from the Rebels Sessions 2 the Dream Factory(Camille/Crystal Ball) this kind of expiramenting took place. And I think it had to in a sense in order for Prince to break barriers as he wanted.

I think it is all a good refection.

Sheila E was set by Prince to be a frontman. And when she replaced Bobby Z. she was still that starlett. But Sheila E never had the writing/creativity that the Revolution had with Prince. Bobby Z's River Run Dry goes past most of what Sheila E has done on record after she left the camp.

Sheila E's drumming didn't 'make' Prince's music much better. Because from 1980-1985 it was those beats that held the rest of the music on course like Lady Cab Driver, that was so attractive about the music. There are only so many song in Prince's catalogue that I'm attracted to a bunch of roles and flares. I do love Tamborine, I do love Life Can Be So Nice, I do love Everywhere

Even on Sheila's 3 albums the drumming is still quite spars, but has the purple music touch. It's the other touchs that built the sound.

I think if Prince continued with more wimsical stuff which he did a for a bit in the 80s, instead of trying to go the route of being 'mainstream' he could have traversed the 90s soundscape much better.

[Edited 9/17/16 12:58pm]

[Edited 9/17/16 15:30pm]

dodger said:

KlyphIsBackAgain said:

Acknowledge Me uses Bonnie's riffs from Cross The Line. Hell, acknowledge me even uses his vocals from All My Dreams. Didn't realize Jill had confirmed it.

Good call on Acknowledge Me 👍🏻 You could be right, I agree it's got some recent like sounds and has a bit of Gold Standard feel to it

And just as a fun sidenote (unrelated to the leaks), he used the hook from "Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic" in "The Max" in 1992, before releasing "Rave" in 1999.

KlyphIsBackAgain said:

See, for me the sound that WAS Prince, the sound of Prince's present (at that time) and potentially his future, was the sound that he, Wendy and Lisa were making..... and his rebellion against that, against "white" pop music, was ultimately his undoing and led to the mediocrity of the the 90's and beyond.

In my mind Prince had two sounds that were 'his". The punk-funk of Dirty Mind - 1999 and the colorful black pop of Purple Rain - Parade.... with Sign being a more restrained/refined amalgamation of all his sounds and Lovesexy being an overindulgence of the whimsy. Either way, his "hit" days were coming to an end. His commercial viability was going to wane anyway (especially in the US), regardless of what type of album he put out, while European countries would have probably eaten an evolution of that sound up (as evidenced by the Lovesexy tour/album, which is Prince, imo, trying to recreated what W&L brought to the table on his own, with mixed results.)

So did he wait too long? Absolutely. He waited too long to let his ego get the better of him.

imprimis said:

I believe 'River Run Dry', as it appears on 'The Family' album track, is entirely Prince on the drumset, fleshed out from and based on a 'warm up' solo Bobby Z performed during rehearsals in the Warehouse ca. late 1983/early 1984.

.

(For that matter, it may also simply be a post-'Purple Rain'-success gift to a friend of a writing credit/royalties by P to BZ that has become mythologized over time, on an album that was already a pigeonhole for a lot of odds-and-ends material and associates lacking a proper home; he was also already seriously entertaining replacing BZ by Summer 1985. Was giving him the writing credit something that may have been intended to give credibility for the label execs and ease the transition into solo recording artist?--certainly he would at least initially score a deal on the basis of his P association and successful producer brother. As an aside, it is my understanding that, after the break-up, P honored all of the Revolution members' contracts, which were good through 1989)

.

Despite the technical sophistication of later drummers, he was a competent pop-rock drummer, and seemed to ease into the innovations of triggered-Linn - live drumming comfortably. For purposes of live performance, a more capable drummer was not strictly necessary for the type of material P released all the way until the end of the 1980s (excluding Madhouse/etc)

---

My concerns are that, as brilliant and enjoyable as the product from this period happens to be, that P's pursuit of these genres and this production styling was, at its most basic level, a diversion that began with not wanting to be 'Mr Purple Rain' beginning in late 1984, wanting to be more musically sophisticated, a response to press criticisms of his sound's limitations or that he 'whitewashed' his image with PR, and, over time, became a somewhat self-indulgent dodge to avoid dealing with a rapidly shifting commercial music landscape, especially in 1986.

.

Prince's biggest commercial success was inextricably tied to his impressario abilities to bend and fold the production sensibilities at the very end of the early-1980s. At first, I believe he feared overexposure and was self-confident about some of those 'Village Voice' criticisms, and, as time went on, I believe he may have felt that the rug was being pulled out from under him as the sonic template of the time changed and others moved in.

.

From a strictly commercial and not an artistic point of view, I don't see how the Revolution, or a sound consistent with what he produced during the last one or two years thereof, could have survived beyond ca. 1988, and how weak it would appear to listeners of the time in the face of highly overproduced late-80s glitter/NJS/etc.

.

My argument is that, he had certain commercial expectations to uphold due to the magnanimous level of his stardom at time, and that by indulging in disctractions, he waited too long to act to develop a viable sound of his own after 1985, and these conditions helped to 'set the stage' a few years later for his uninspiring 'trend-chasing' (especially by 1989 and for many years afterwards).

.

His 1985-1988 modus operandi is usually portrayed as classic examples of P "not doing what you would expect for his next move", but I believe that it can't factually or rationally be viewed solely as grandstanding for higher artistic and moral purposes. In some sense, and to some degree, even if he had the purest artistic intentions at heart, he waited too long to act, or was unable to.

.

[Edited 9/17/16 12:58pm]

[Edited 9/17/16 15:30pm]

Hm... yes you are a W/L fan. We get that.

TrivialPursuit said:

dodger said:

KlyphIsBackAgain said: Good call on Acknowledge Me 👍🏻 You could be right, I agree it's got some recent like sounds and has a bit of Gold Standard feel to it

And just as a fun sidenote (unrelated to the leaks), he used the hook from "Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic" in "The Max" in 1992, before releasing "Rave" in 1999.

So cool!

omg yes

TrivialPursuit said:

dodger said:

KlyphIsBackAgain said: Good call on Acknowledge Me 👍🏻 You could be right, I agree it's got some recent like sounds and has a bit of Gold Standard feel to it

And just as a fun sidenote (unrelated to the leaks), he used the hook from "Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic" in "The Max" in 1992, before releasing "Rave" in 1999.

Good catches!

Personally, I would love a full length version of Kiss Me Quick and the full higher quality version of She's Just A Baby that's out there in faded form.

Just sayin'...

Ingela said:

There is so much out there now. Reminds me why we all fell in love and are still such great fans of his music. All the out-takes and all the unreleased music is so facinatinating to hear. And it only cements the reason why no one can "produce" or finish or whatever. The music must be released as-is because they paint a point in his life. They paint a man and an artist at a certain point. The instruments he was using like the brushes and media an arist uses at whatever stage in their life. I love the studio-ish version of roadhouse garden and the glamorous life. Magic. And again it so cements why you cannot touch them other than clean them up. He had a certain taste in sound at the time that is so timeless. I was listening to some old Depeche Mode and noticed how well their sound has also aged compare to his contemporaries and other artists doing similar electronic music. It was the "taste" of the artists and what they considered to sound "good" to them that made them age so well. And that's with any artist of any media. And Prince's "taste" in sound at his artistic height was unmatched. You can't mess with it. You ruin it. So I'm actually glad a lot of this stuff is coming out and we get to hear it raw. Instead of having someone, anyone else selecting what and how it comes out. If anyone else touches any of his work it taints it. So now I'm all in for no one messing with it and only releasing the music exactly as it was left. Not as how anyone imagines it to be how it was intended. These now just go into preservation mode. Nothing more. [Edited 9/17/16 20:24pm]

Yeah, I'm with you. If there are different points in a song's development, I want all of them, too. With no further work on anything (musically), make it presentable, but don't "finish" it. Just like those Dylan releases from last year. I want every note that's still there. Those recordings are historical documents, a record of an artist's work--even those that might have been left unfinished for very good reasons. Even mis-steps were part of the journey.

Excessive words are not only pretentious, they muddle the message (assuming there is one).

luv4u said:

omg yes

Are you replying to anything in particular, or just fapping?

[Edited 9/17/16 20:50pm]

EddieC said:

Thanks, my favs The Glamorous Life, Poor Little Bastard, Road House Garden and Come Elektra Tuesday

[Edited 9/17/16 22:33pm]

EnDoRpHn said:

luv4u said:

omg yes

Are you replying to anything in particular, or just fapping?

[Edited 9/17/16 20:50pm]