databank said:

SimonCharles said:

The funk is silence idea is an old funk meme. First time I heard that was from Maceo in some mid 90's interview, something in the line of "funk comes from the notes you don't play, not the ones you play".

Yeah - that's what I mean, Prince seemed happy through the 90s to fill that space with a ticking clock, a droplet of water, car horns, etc...Compare the difference to Lady Cab Driver...the street scene at the beginning augmenting the set up of the song and then the music left to speak for itself.

SimonCharles said:

databank said:

The funk is silence idea is an old funk meme. First time I heard that was from Maceo in some mid 90's interview, something in the line of "funk comes from the notes you don't play, not the ones you play".

Yeah - that's what I mean, Prince seemed happy through the 90s to fill that space with a ticking clock, a droplet of water, car horns, etc...Compare the difference to Lady Cab Driver...the street scene at the beginning augmenting the set up of the song and then the music left to speak for itself.

I see where you're coming from but somehow I didn't mind that at the time, in the sense that Prince developped, one could say, a method of overusing samples in the golden age of samples that ended-up being more illustrative than before -maybe too ilustrative, I'll give you that- but that, in my opinion at least, was still perfectly integrated into his general sound palette at the time. Then he soon moved away from it and samples weren't so proeminent anymore. IDK, I'd never thought of it the way you present it and I see why you find it somewhat annoying, but in the end I still find that the whole sound palette made sense: a typical Prince excess in the end

databank said:

SimonCharles said:

Yeah - that's what I mean, Prince seemed happy through the 90s to fill that space with a ticking clock, a droplet of water, car horns, etc...Compare the difference to Lady Cab Driver...the street scene at the beginning augmenting the set up of the song and then the music left to speak for itself.

I see where you're coming from but somehow I didn't mind that at the time, in the sense that Prince developped, one could say, a method of overusing samples in the golden age of samples that ended-up being more illustrative than before -maybe too ilustrative, I'll give you that- but that, in my opinion at least, was still perfectly integrated into his general sound palette at the time. Then he soon moved away from it and samples weren't so proeminent anymore. IDK, I'd never thought of it the way you present it and I see why you find it somewhat annoying, but in the end I still find that the whole sound palette made sense: a typical Prince excess in the end

That's true, a typical excess!

Very interesting comments by databank and others.
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I think I would read a book written by a musicologist comparing the different versions of a song and analyzing them. It's a fascinating topic!
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The "overproducing Prince" is the one I first fell in love with (Lovesexy, etc.), but I had never really thought about the fact that Prince usually worked by adding layers, except when it came to other people's input, e.g. Clare Fisher. In those cases, we have examples where he removed some of the music or completely removed it: "New Position", "Girls & Boys", "Life Can Be So Nice", "Mountains", "Sometimes It Snows In April", etc. It makes sense, as it wasn't his vision to start with.
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Speaking of Clare Fisher: I had never realized until recently that Prince completely removed Clare's orchestration on Jill Jones' "G-Spot", but some of it is used on the extended version / Jimmy Destri remix.
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I agree that "Prince choices were rarely gratuitous". Even when he edited down "Crucial" on "Crystal Ball", I guess it made sense (to him) knowing that he aimed for 50 minutes / 10 tracks per CD. Not a great choice in my opinion, certainly not an optimal one, but, hey, at least the 50-minute/10-track structure was respected... I still love the complete guitar solo on the bootleg version and hope it will see the light of day someday.

olb99 said:

Very interesting comments by databank and others.
.
I think I would read a book written by a musicologist comparing the different versions of a song and analyzing them. It's a fascinating topic!
.
The "overproducing Prince" is the one I first fell in love with (Lovesexy, etc.), but I had never really thought about the fact that Prince usually worked by adding layers, except when it came to other people's input, e.g. Clare Fisher. In those cases, we have examples where he removed some of the music or completely removed it: "New Position", "Girls & Boys", "Life Can Be So Nice", "Mountains", "Sometimes It Snows In April", etc. It makes sense, as it wasn't his vision to start with.
.
Speaking of Clare Fisher: I had never realized until recently that Prince completely removed Clare's orchestration on Jill Jones' "G-Spot", but some of it is used on the extended version / Jimmy Destri remix.
.
I agree that "Prince choices were rarely gratuitous". Even when he edited down "Crucial" on "Crystal Ball", I guess it made sense (to him) knowing that he aimed for 50 minutes / 10 tracks per CD. Not a great choice in my opinion, certainly not an optimal one, but, hey, at least the 50-minute/10-track structure was respected... I still love the complete guitar solo on the bootleg version and hope it will see the light of day someday.

Thanks for the feedback and contribution Unfortunately I'm no musicologist: for all my knowledge, I don't know a thing about music theory

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Regarding Crucial, I find it hard to decide whether the only reason was the 50mn length or because he finally felt the song worked better at 5mn (most of his album tracks are edits of longer cuts, as you w ell know). But what I find even more fascinating is that Prince chose to amputate (some may say butcher) Crucial and Good Love but left all 15mn of Cloreen Bacon Skin intact, while he could have edited CBS down to 10 mn or so and no one would have known! I can't say I disagree because I'm so in love with CBS as it is, but one has to admit it was quite a daring, thought-provoking, artistic choice.

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Out of all his albums, CB is the one about which I wish I'd known what Prince exactly had in mind when he compiled it. The liner notes are already somewhat revealing but there''s so much more I'd like to know! I really hope the engineers involved can one day shed some like of how the process of selecting, editing and tracklisting it went. I love CB because when all is said and done I love every note of music that's on it, as well as the way it's sequenced, so my complaints regarding the tracklist began when I read it on the booklet after purchase, and were all gone 2 hours and a half later, by the time I was done listening to the whole set But between the savage edits, the remixes and other previously available songs, the 15 minutes repetitive jam and the focus on mid-90's music, there are so many puzzling decisions, and Prince had to know many a fan and a critic would be infuriated. Yet he made it that way, and I really would like to know why.

getwild180 said:

On several of the Dream Factory boots is the version of Crystal Ball without the strings and sound effects. However with Prince's version of Crystal Ball (1998), his version is the one with the strings and sound effects. So which version is really supposed to be on the Dream Factory album if it was to be released? Sorry if this is a stupid question or had already been discussed.

Dream Factory would have been without....

From princevault:

Basic tracking took place on 17 April 1986 at Galpin Blvd Home Studio in Chanhassen, Minnesota (two days after band overdubs on Witness 4 The Prosecution and the recording of Visions, both without Prince, and three days before recording Starfish And Coffee).

Although this track was not included on a late April 1986 configuration of the aborted album Dream Factory, a full length version without Clare Fischer's contribution was included, on the 3 June 1986 configuration and again on the 18 July 1986 configuration, now omitting a minute and a half of the intro that was obsolete as in this incarnation without orchestration it was only a beat of the left channel.

In late November 1986, Prince began to compile the Crystal Ball triple LP (completely separate from the 1998 release of the same name), and Crystal Ball was included as the first track on the third side of the album in its 30 November 1986configuration. This was the version with the Clare Fischer orchestration added, but edited down by a minute from the previous version.

In the days preceding the release of Emancipation in 1996, thedawn.com teased the next release, Crystal Ball as a 3CD set of previously-unreleased material, so it was assumed immediately that Crystal Ball would be included.

The version featured on the release is identical to the version that was to be on the Crystal Ball 3-LP release from 1986.

djThunderfunk said:

databank said:

Despite his frequent taste for minimalism, Prince had a tendency to what some would call overproduction, though it's mostly a question of perspective.

In some cases it might get in the way of the message or even change it entirely (see The Line), but I for one usually agree with his decision regarding what's to be released or not.

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Come was a tough choice and I wonder if the jingle bells version as you call it wasn't initially worked as some sort of extended remix for the planned single, then Prince realized what he had and decided to make it the main cut. Arguably the 3 previous versions (original, Glam Slam Ulysses/10000 Wallpaper and Beautiful Experience) were pretty awesome but delivered a message that was more mystical than sexual in nature. The album cut changed that message to something much more sexually oriented and does it brillantly, not to mention the horns extravaganza that follows thanks to MBN's talents. It's not hard to see why Prince would favoir a 12 minutes long soul epic with the most sophisticated horns arrangement ever featured in his music at that point over a 4 minutes techno-funk track that, for all its glory, was more intriguing but less outstanding. In any case, it's safe to assume that the short version that would have been released if not for the long version would have been the more electronic video version, not the Ulysses/Wallpaper one.

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As for Gold I realize how and why the more, acoustic guitar-led stripped down version is more attractive to all the Dylan/McCartney/Springsteen fans here on the org, but from the perspective of Prince's music, which usually implies more of an electrofunk and synthpop approach than ock/folk, releasing the Gold demo would have been absolute nonsense, as it fails to deliver the message properly. Gold is for all intent and purpose an epic, and loading it with heroic synth as it was eventually done was totally logical. The demo is almost unlistenable for me save for its historical interest, because it totally fails to deliver the message (or, more accurately, delivers only about half of it without the support of the shiny synth sounds). Prince putting this on the album was simply unthinkable.

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Other choices were more debatable of course: many songs on C&D may have benefited from a more stipped down bass/guitar/drums appraoch because they are rock by nature, and the power trio approach did wonders on I Like It There for example, so lots of organ and horns could have been given-uo on. However I find the released version of C&D (the song) much more agressive and dynamic than the original mix. Same by the way with Endorphinmachine. Prince wished to make the songs more powerful and did so, but maybe lost a bit of the grunge sound in favor of a post-Hendrix sound à la Lenny Kravitz. There are also some edits that are harder to understand: the extended cuts of Race that are featured on the Beautiful Experience and 10000 Wallpapers take a better advantage of the tracks' samples and sound palette than the album version, and may have deserved to make the album, but Prince favored a shorter statement. Billy Jack Bitch also was much more interesting a track with the extended horns part, but admitedly it kind of dissolved the message and took the listener's attention away from what the song was really about, so Prince favored a shorter edit again.

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In the end, like Bonatoc said elsewhere the other day, Prince choices were rarely gratuitous. Fans tend to think in terms of 'this song/version was better than that one" but the real question is to try and wonder why Prince chose one over another. Ofen, it involves asking oneself "what was the message and which version delivers it best", or "which song works best in the context of that specific album and tracklist".

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Another good example from the Come/Gold era is Prince's decision to remove Interactive from TGE. Interactive (the short version with the NPG Operator intro and interlude) was a conceptual key to the whole TGE concept and therefore a natural opener for the album since its initial conception, so removing it was quite a puzzling decision. One reason, as stated in the CB booklet, is that Prince felt it didn't work back to back with Endorphinmachine. That's debatable, but arguably Endophinmachine sounds less powerful is played right after Interactive. Prince could have placed it later on the tracklist but for some reason he seemed to want it early on the album and when all was said and done, Endoprhinmachine was unquestionably a stronger, more original track than Interactive. Another probable reason is that Prince recorded P. Control and realized he had one of the strongest album openers of his career in his hands, mostly because of the song's mindblowing intro (I know P. Control is disliked by some fans but let's not discuss this: it's an awesome track, Prince knew it and anyone who thinks otherwise is either deaf or a fool). P. Control could have been played later on the record but it would have been less impactful. On the other hand the same could be said about Interactive: it would have lost most of its conceptual impact if moved to second position. So at the end of the day, Interactive was kicked out by both Enbdoprhinmachine and P. Control. I'm still myself not certain about whether this was the right decision to make, if only because by the time the album was released I had been considering Interactive its natural opener for a year and a half, but I can understand why Prince resolved himself to do it even if it somehow killed the NPG Operator concept in the egg. I still can't figure out why Acknowledge Me and Ripopgodazippa had to go, though, except maybe that Prince moved away a bit from the original's configuration's strong R&B orientation towards a more power rock (for lack of a better term) approach.

[Edited 2/24/18 3:09am]

Excellent analysis! Thanks for taking the time to share it db!! This era (Undertaker/Come/Gold/Exodus + maybe C&D) is among the most interesting of Prince's career, and in my not-so-humble opinion, the band (NPG stripped of superfluous rappers & dancers) was his best ever.

Totally agree with DJ on this era, and databank's analysis is indeed excellent.

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Speaking of the track Come; it was a real shame the EP never materialised, it would have been great to have the different versions on an official release. The 10,000 Wallpaper version that segues into Endorphinmachine has me buzzing every time.