It's awesome!! Sinead is just mad cause it's better than her version........well, hers is pretty good, but....she's on my shit list right now for talking smack about Prince!

NC2U video has 1,769,781 views on YouTube as of right now. (7:30 pm Eastern Standard Time)

206Michelle said:

NC2U video has 1,769,781 views on YouTube as of right now. (7:30 pm Eastern Standard Time)

.

Yeah, baby!!

Thank you, Prince. We miss you.

That video-trick with the white dove passing in the reflection of his glasses is plain silly actually.

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For the rest, I LOVE this video !

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The song IS un-fucking-believably-better than the shit version he put out on The Hits, shame on him for that ! (...to torture us for all this time with such a super bad live version. I never liked Sinéad's version either. The Family's version was the best for now, but also is uncomparible with the real deal.)

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I never noticed Bobby Z standing up while drumming. Cool.

Wendy was soooooo cute.

And she and Brownmark sure knew how to keep up.

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I don't think it's fair that The Revolution isn't charing in this.

They helped make Prince for what he was in most of the people's memories today.

They deserve absolutely much better !!

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THIS is a Prince and The Revolution video of a Prince song.

I even wonder if they were contacted before they relased this...

TheFreakerFantastic said:

The intro always reminded me a bit of Imagine by John Lennon.

Although it's nice, I hate to say it but always felt he made the right decision giving it to Sinead, she added so much more poignancy and emotional impact to it I felt. I think he was good at knowing when to give his stuff away to someone that could make it even better (think Chaka and her far superior version of I Feel 4 U).

[Edited 4/19/18 14:42pm]

Prince didn't give it to Sinead. Her producer suggested that they should make a cover of the song, as it had been already realeased on an album by The Family. As far as we know, Prince had nothing to do with Sinead's version. There's no need to even ask the songwriter's permission for doing a cover.

Dreary.

Vannormal said:

Doozer said:

What a great surprise and a great, great studio outtake. Very happy to buy this and continue to discover more amazing work by this little man. It also instills hope with the words at the top of princeestate.com - more to come after so much silence. This song and video is a great antidote to the police video released on the same day.

bonatoc said:

mediumdry said:

bonatoc said:

You're hearing it.

You're talking about David Z.'s mix.
It is the actual 24 tape, didn't you get the memo?

"better than nothing"?

.

Somehow I doubt it was David Z who made the track so marvelously sparse giving lots of space to the orchestra. Prince had a habit of not using every recorded track for songs.

.

And yes, it's better than nothing, but I simply don't like the version much. I love Prince's vocals, but the mix is way too busy. (imo)

.

And yes, I did get the memo that it was the original 24 track tape, I just don't understand how they'd come out with such a pedestrian sounding mix. Get rid of that horrible synths it starts out with, give full attention to his voice and strings, maybe mix in the guitar as the song builds and replace Eric's solo with a guitar solo and you'd have bliss.. or at least something miles better than what's released. Since it is basically the same mix as what was bootlegged, I am not sure it was the original 24 track tape, they've been making claims that weren't true before..

There we have it, the Prince's zealots common plague:
Prince is such an alien genius that he did it all,
including brooming at the end of each day the thousand sq. ft. of PP.

At night he stood on top of one of the pyramids,
sleepless, eyes wide open,
like a little purple gargoyle,
laser-beaming any chemical spraying jet flying
over thanks to his Cat-like night vision powers.

Damn right David Z. mixed Jill Jones and The Family,
he's the sole responsible for "Kiss", what's wrong with you?
Why always this denying of talent in everyone around him?
Do you consider Prince stupid?

Prince had the habit... Prince did quick, dirty mixes, and when working night and day with the man,
you get a sense of how he mixes. Reducing them to button pushers is, again,
the worst judgment you can make, precisely because Prince was on a record spree,
and no matter how many players come join in,
everyone's getting head-shot, for ten long years (the state of pop music in the eighties).

"My only competition is myself", damn right, except it was not by choice.
Little did he know that everyone was so lazy in music.
Hence the solitude.


It pisses me off to see all these great talents Prince had the balls not to look for
on either coasts, the usual Paulino da Costa and Greg Phillinganes and the Toto musicians and shit,
getting these high-heels sneers, when in fact these are people
Prince sticked around with, meaning they're among the best he considered at the time.

Prince called "The Revolution" his Mount Rushmore because he elevated
talented people he had good feelings with to an Oscar, Grammies, Platinum records,
and just two years after that they're making the most beautiful,
in fact the only audible jazz-rock there is.

He made them his peers. You won't go far without a band.

Stop dreaming Prince could do it all by himself.
He couldn't precisely because he was doing so much already.
Part of the audio magic you get, some other people turned the knobs
and revealed beauty he would have discarded.


I was looking at Syracuse's "Irresisitible Bitch" the other day,
and it made me think about all the one-sided donkeys that put the NPG band
on some kind of summit, because they really don't get rock'n'roll first of all,
and second it's like, you know, "Purple Rain", of course, or "Baby I'm a Star",
oh and the omy-God-I-prefer-the-1st-Avenue version of "Electric Intercourse"
they were recorded by Prince's superpowers, he's the Flash,
the camera could not get him, he's going from instrument to another too fast
for our mere mortal eyes.

Like the sound of all the lives (1999 Tour, PR, Cobo Hall, Dortmund, etc.) we love,
it's Prince doing it, you know. Oh, and of course he did the cello overdubs himself!



He did not put it out because he thought,
"beautiful rock ballad, but hey, Free, Purple Rain,
The Beautiful Ones, The Ladder, enough with stadium sing-a-longs,
I've got a bunch, I'm not gonna fill my concerts with this, I'm not Neil Diamond".


This, this video, is Prince's mix, Mr. Somehow I doubt it.
It's less subtle, actually, than David Z., who incidentally is able
to do subtle stuff, like, say, "Violet Blue".

Prince had a sudden rejection crisis for Parade when he had second
thoughts about its subtleness, it flower frailty.
All of a sudden he wanted to be all macho rapper and shit.
And maybe because Parade was a project where he let an unusual lot of people in.

He's far from being the sole responsible for the sounds you like in his music,
precisely because he had to rely some of the work on his friends-colleagues.
Was the creative aspect totally under his direction? Of course,
no past collaborator denies him that. But stop projecting this kind of Semi-God.
The video says it best: it's just hard work fueled by passion. The Drive.

The grace of Clare Fischer in The Family's version,
was revealed by David Z. Rivkin, applying a trick Prince teached us all,
the WDC one: you can try any mix you want. See what comes up.
So no bass, no drums.

And David Z. was right, even if it you're going to say "no big feat: after all, it's a quatuor with a sax"
(Clare's Fischer orchestra recordings are simply fantastic, I don't know who the engineer is).

But it takes one heck of a good artist-engineer like David to come up with Eric's sax sound on this one.
It screams like Prince's guitar, it's an electric sax, it's fabulous.
No other eighties sax sounds this good, they all sounded vulgar.
Hats off to Eric and David. The sound Eric had in his headphones influenced the way he played,
that's basic studio science, enough already.



And it takes one heck of an engineer to keep up with him,
especially in the eighties.

After the eighties, we heard rumors of engineers falling asleep,
but not the heroes who were there when it counted the most,
when Prince was shining and shooting out, living, embodying
all his twenties exuberances, sexual drives, sonic and visual dreams and funnies
for the world to witness.



After Eric and Prince, pop quit.
No more guitar soloes or sax soloes in songs.


No one was up to the task.



Then we got #1 made of stolen excerpts of genius music with posers
spittin salive over them. And it's been going on for decades.

[Edited 4/21/18 5:21am]

Doozer said:

bonatoc said:

Just to clarify, “little man” is a reference to how Prince referred to himself (Pink Cashmere). He’s a complete badass, as this song and video further prove.

Mph. It's "this" Little Prince. "This" Little Man, not the same.
But hey Doozer, I read you. I'm a bit epidermic, it's April 21st.
Sorry for pointing.

I just love this video. He looks so young and happy. His version is much better; the original is usually much better anyways.

bonatoc said:

Just not interested somehow if Prince didnt make it

novabrkr said:

TheFreakerFantastic said:

The intro always reminded me a bit of Imagine by John Lennon.

Although it's nice, I hate to say it but always felt he made the right decision giving it to Sinead, she added so much more poignancy and emotional impact to it I felt. I think he was good at knowing when to give his stuff away to someone that could make it even better (think Chaka and her far superior version of I Feel 4 U).

[Edited 4/19/18 14:42pm]

Prince didn't give it to Sinead. Her producer suggested that they should make a cover of the song, as it had been already realeased on an album by The Family. As far as we know, Prince had nothing to do with Sinead's version. There's no need to even ask the songwriter's permission for doing a cover.

In this case, they were required to get permission. Once you change the arrangement or lyrics you need permission and you also need permission to synch it with a video.

paulludvig said:

bonatoc said:

There we have it, the Prince's zealots common plague:
Prince is such an alien genius that he did it all,
including brooming at the end of each day the thousand sq. ft. of PP.

I'm so tired of this. All the people in his camp were talented, 'able to do subtle stuff', Prince himself was just hard working.

It's an incomprehensible schism, as if magic can't come out of practicing.

"It came out like a sneeze". If you've practed music or an art long enough,
you come to experience moments like these. But like in sport, moments of grace spurt out
as if unconscious, they're nonetheless the byproduct of daily training.

Prince was so trained. Susan Rogers sayings are to take carefully,
but she nails it when she mentions "social handicap".
You can't work that much and function as we all do.
It's not the same amount of leisure. And leisure is your job!
I'm sure it's really, really complicated.

Before Prince came, we thought rock stars needed to take a two-year break to compose ten songs.
Like an album takes 9 months, at least.
Like, their songs, you know, they're the fruit of a long, long, process
sipping piña-coladas in your five star hotel in Monterey.
It's excrutiating to be, say, Phil Collins or whomever eighties,
for a six months studio work under the palm trees.

"Baby I'm a Star, but if you think that I'm a fool
and gonna waste my time when I'd rather get better at what I do..."

"Reach the top", because Prince came under Reagania, is often mistaken
for egotistic self-coaching. It's certainly that, but, like Cream,
it's personal yet made for everyone. "Popular song" in essence.
Reaching the top was very eastern spirituality shit to Prince, Earth Wind & Fire
dressed as some Stargate pharaos, the mythical Africa...
Add a layer of 7th day catholic repression, and you get an obsession
that's more driven by a quest for spiritual than buying sports cars.
If they come, fine, but this shots reveal what Prince & The Revolution were all about,
and why they get mystical and shit in interviews.

Traning in art without growing a discomfort, frustration of your own limitations
is a mental exercice in itself. But making music, purple or not, does things to your brain.
For everyone. We're very poorly educated. Poor ol' Western World.

Prince lost himself in the dopamine rush of being able to shred it,
kick it, scream it, whisper it at a very young age.
Having received good dispositions by nature,
the error is to consider him like some sort of supra-ntaural being,
there are good musicians everywhere.

It all boils down to personality.
And Prince had lots, and the fiercest drive of the abandoned child trauma
of not being the best, just being the best at what he put his mind to.
It is a very insular state of mind, almost autistic, but still Prince knew how to laugh.
It was humour that grounded Prince's Balloon not to fly to high.
Can't crack a laugh without good friends.

I mean look at this ol'woman's fur! It's the utlimate pimp straight from a "Starsky & Hutch" episode!
It's so great to see him becoming. The large dance class trousers, the fun of it all,
the countless tries to make it all appear natural and effortless.



By the end, the shots of him under the hat,
you can tell they are taken near to the kickstart
of the Purple Rain Tour. By the end of the summer, boys, they're fuckin' ready to kick some ass.
Wendy's ready, splits are synced, and Marie-France come up
with the best decadent punk-romantic rock'n'roll outfits ever.


This is testimony to the Baddest Band in the Universe,
andf it's better to burn out for 3 years, than to fade away.
Prince wanted to be seen and heard "with band", as in "with wife".
If Prince's music are daily experiences, they originated in his interactions
with his friends (and foes, Bob, ain't that a bitch).

[Edited 4/21/18 8:23am]

206Michelle said:

NC2U video has 1,769,781 views on YouTube as of right now. (7:30 pm Eastern Standard Time)

NC2U video has 2,251,348 views on YouTube as of right now. (April 21st, 11:43 am European Standard Time)


If this doen's make the music video shortlist of the year,
I don't know what will.

Great mix, they kept the analog warmth of the period.
I wonder if they would let Susan Rogers and David Z. mix an alternative.

Maybe it's a tad over-compressed, but sadly, this is 2018,
you can't catch a kid's attention unless it screams.

I'm sure Susan and David Z. are more up to the task
of getting that unorthodox and creative balance to instruments levels
we all love from the '85 '86 period. They know how to put up briefly the fader on a Prince's lip noise.
They know how to sound european.
An alternative mix EP would have been great.

St Paul is relatively upfront in the mix. It's a good thing.
He goes in history as Prince's best male background vocalist (some philistines say "clone").

No one but no one else could have given The Family album the diaphane romanticity
Prince wanted to convey. St Paul goes poppy, less affected, and embodies like a true comedian on side A,
and an actor on side B. Forget the video, close your eyes and put your headphones on,
The Family album is Around Romance In An Hour.

I wonder how good St Paul would have been given some jokes lines in Purple Rain The Motion Picture.
If he can do Jamie Starr ("Mutiny"), and as a white male vocal performer,
he's way classier and funkier than Simon Le Bon bourgeois poses ("High Fashion"),
has better affections than Corey Hart for Northern winters dramas ("River Run Dry"),
is more powerful on NC2U than any fake hetero-sensitive soup George Michael sold us through his lying eighties.

St Paul still holds the best vocal ending of the three (Prince, Sinéad).
He goes after that bass note, forcing Prince years later to stretch himself on TMBGITW.

St Paul timber is perfectly suited for Eric Leed's.
When their frequencies cross at the end of "High Fashion",
something deep happens, they become Plant and Page of psychedelia.
It's like the groove is gone, you just float till you get back on your feet.
I mean get off, he's excellent. I'm glad The Family album has the same fate
of albums like Forever Changes, Goodbye and Hello or Steve Mc Queen (don't let the intro fool you,
this one thematically suits The Family perfectly: all female-male emotional lyrical and performance catfights).

Albums that were almost completely under the public's radar,
and are masterpieces of their own.
And respected through the years as such, and they're incredible to discover, also incredible to realize
you went by without knowing them, with no media reporting these gems.

Prince's little ashamed of reveling in real silk pajama's,
now that Jamie Starr's a thing to become too good to be true — somebody say, Movie Star!

After years of Lisa's cat, or was it Wendy's.
No more getting to bed for a short nap with others albums blasting off and waking up the same way.
Enoug has been digested,
from 1983 on it's going to be only one FM station,
Radio Prince broadcasting 24/7 in SKipper's brains hair.

The whole world's looking at this one.
They could not have come up with a better video.
Way 2 go.

The Purple Rain era, because it's a Proust Madeleine (you gotta appeal to ol'farts like us),

mostly for the U.S. market.

But here comes genius.

The first VCR surreal haze, like some treasury unearthed, flashes of worn-tape,
long gone artefacts of dust getting their way into analog video tapes,
responsible for a whole visual arts branch in itself, random abstract analog video art.
When audio tape was a floppy disk (a what?).

A good ol' worn, recorded over 10 ten times,
A good well-honed Maxell XL II CrO2 90 fed from the proper needle
will still taste like aural Château-Margaux for a century.
Analog wear and tear artefacts can provoke poetry.
You have to try to record some shit song of yours
with a 4-track cassette recorder, and ping-pong.
No, the tracks.
Nevermind.

Whereas the plastic CD we all went crazy for, all that rainbows ain't gold,
it's losing its bits, and no one told you, but
you can kiss all of your CD-Rs and DVD-Rs data, song, pics good-bye.
And their wear and tear digital artefacts are the ugliest thing.


Here, the Betacam/VHS/whatever surprises you and reveals a forgotten eighties melancholy
of the first drop of water you spill on the living-room's Trinitron®
at twelve, and realize there is no black and white,
only red, green and blue.

Memories of dark rooms brightly lit with a T.V. screen with no signal,
4 colors pixels, LCD is black on white,
big fat transistors, warm plastic cables,
the oh-so 2018 neurotic ego-trip (look Ma, I film myself),
and fat Oberheim reviving every romantic summer of your eighties teens.

To whom not getting the seconds ticking in the intro,
and hearing a "silly synth", you have to stop the Q-Tip
when there's resistance.

[Edited 4/21/18 9:14am]

what happened to the notion a single precedes an album....

bonatoc said:

bonatoc said:

OnlyNDaUsa said:

OnlyNDaUsa said:

novabrkr said:

Prince didn't give it to Sinead. Her producer suggested that they should make a cover of the song, as it had been already realeased on an album by The Family. As far as we know, Prince had nothing to do with Sinead's version. There's no need to even ask the songwriter's permission for doing a cover.

In this case, they were required to get permission. Once you change the arrangement or lyrics you need permission and you also need permission to synch it with a video.

.

From what I understand, Prince gave a lot of songs away, meaning any artist out there who wants to record the song does not have to ask for permission.

I really love this version. Prince's original. But to me, Sinead's version will forever be the best version. Just haunting. Actually feel like completely different songs that one can appreciate for different reasons.

CAL3 said:

OnlyNDaUsa said:

In this case, they were required to get permission. Once you change the arrangement or lyrics you need permission and you also need permission to synch it with a video.

. You do not need permission to change the arrangement when doing a cover song.

depends on the extent of each. She changed 4 or 5 words... which may be enough to be actionable. Same with the ararrangment...but even if those were fine... releasing as a video would require permission beyond the compulsory license.

I am reading some about it and for a compulsory license and it is really a bad deal... for one the fee has to be made on ALL copies distributed--even promo copies.

[Edited 4/21/18 11:13am]

Ugot2shakesumthin said:

I really love this version. Prince's original. But to me, Sinead's version will forever be the best version. Just haunting. Actually feel like completely different songs that one can appreciate for different reasons.

I completely agree with the sentiment, here...except, I would have The Family's version as my own facourite. This is just wonderful to have in the fashion we have it, knowing this is just a guide version of a song for someone else to learn by.

Still TOP 10 on YOUTUBE TRENDING...

Over 2.5M views in 2 days.

Ugot2shakesumthin said:

I really love this version. Prince's original. But to me, Sinead's version will forever be the best version. Just haunting. Actually feel like completely different songs that one can appreciate for different reasons.

Agreed. Sinead truly took that song to another level emotionally.

mbdtyler said:

Ugot2shakesumthin said:

I really love this version. Prince's original. But to me, Sinead's version will forever be the best version. Just haunting. Actually feel like completely different songs that one can appreciate for different reasons.

Agreed. Sinead truly took that song to another level emotionally.

No she didn't. It's one of her weakest performances I believe. (she made a cover album once, not that great either)

Listen to her album 'The Lion And The Cobra'.

Now these songs are wonderful, pure and absolutely suit her voice and persona in a most original form.

In her version of NC2U she tried (well), but did not reached the absolute quality of her own written songs of that great 1st album. Listen to the song 'Mandinka', and then again to her 'NC2U' cover. She didn't do much to Prince's romantic approach of his own song (imho).

-

But like I always say, I could be wrong. I have no truth. I only tell what I feel, probably just like you.

And all different opinion are interesting.

-

(just never liked her lame version..)

Vannormal said:

mbdtyler said:

Agreed. Sinead truly took that song to another level emotionally.

No she didn't. It's one of her weakest performances I believe. (she made a cover album once, not that great either)

Listen to her album 'The Lion And The Cobra'.

Now these songs are wonderful, pure and absolutely suit her voice and persona in a most original form.

In her version of NC2U she tried (well), but did not reached the absolute quality of her own written songs of that great 1st album. Listen to the song 'Mandinka', and then again to her 'NC2U' cover. She didn't do much to Prince's romantic approach of his own song (imho).

-

But like I always say, I could be wrong. I have no truth. I only tell what I feel, probably just like you.

And all different opinion are interesting.

-

(just never liked her lame version..)

That's cool. you have a minority opinion, but an opinion non the less.