Box with "Exstacy" marked out and replaced with "Desire" (that's what it looks like, anyway)..

Must have been the original title for "Desire" which makes sense

I only have a crappy laptop right now and cant' see the images too well.

Any *new* or unknown song titles pop out??

It looks like the vault wasn't used in years. What is Party Tape? It must've been one hell of a party because it took three of them.

Who wouldn't want to spend some time digging through "Mr. Vault Guy"?

And, not to get off topic, but the pictures as a whole are fascinating to look through - they are humanizing of Prince (he was a packrat and a bit of a slob just like normal people... well, except his clutter also contained lots of cash just laying around!). The pictures are also kind of depressing though - a garage full of cars coated in years worth of dust, general clutter and disarray...

He was human, after all...

[Edited 4/20/18 11:19am]

Rzeplica said:

Box with "Exstacy" marked out and replaced with "Desire" (that's what it looks like, anyway)..

Must have been the original title for "Desire" which makes sense

I wonder if he:

a) Recorded over 'Lisa' with 'Yes'

b) Renamed another track called 'Lisa' to 'Yes'.

c) Just had an empty box used for the 1980 sessions in 84.

I.....thought that The Vault was like a mythical place not an actual room. Girl I'm just...shook!

bonatoc said:

SquirrelMeat said:

Rzeplica said:

Box with "Exstacy" marked out and replaced with "Desire" (that's what it looks like, anyway)..

Must have been the original title for "Desire" which makes sense

I wonder if he:

a) Recorded over 'Lisa' with 'Yes'

b) Renamed another track called 'Lisa' to 'Yes'.

c) Just had an empty box used for the 1980 sessions in 84.

Lisa was the 'working title' for "Yes" because both songs share the same descending chord progression. It was just a temporary title for him to probably 'remember' what the song sounded like. He did this with a few other song back then. Wasn't it with "Sex Shooter" and "She's Always In My Hair" because they both shared the flanged hi-hat sound from the Linn?

bonatoc said:

Wouldn't you love to be the person who gets to digitize all these tapes if they haven't been already?

laurenke said:

ISaidLifeIsJustAGame said:

Someone started a spreadsheet of the Vault tapes on google.

Do you have a link, please?

I cant get the url to work. Pfffft

[Edited 4/20/18 12:42pm]

Just found my favorite boxes so far: #30-3 - "Munsters / Flintstones" and #31-1 "Song with lots of other songs"

Also - the Sherriff's dept should fire their photographer - they did a lousy job with focus!

I noticed that the numbering system for the tape boxes goes from 2 digits - like 15-1; 26-3; etc. - to 3 digits - like 256-7. The highest number I saw was 453-3. I assume the system starts with box 1-1, which would be the first box on the first shelf.

There are, then, at least 453 shelves in the Vault. Some of the shelves have stuff other than tapes on them, but the ones with tape boxes have between 10 and 40 boxes on them (depending on the width of the boxes).

I saw three different sizes of boxes. I could certainly be wrong (I am not familiar with recording archives) but it looks like there are shelves with Large boxes (about 10 boxes per shelf); Medium boxes (about 30 boxes per shelf); and Thin boxes (at least 40 boxes per shelf). I don't know the actual width of the boxes but some of y'all probably do.

It's hard to get a breakdown of the percentage make-up of the shelf's contents. If there are 453 shelves, how many contain Large boxes? Medium boxes? Or Thin boxes? Just eyeballing what we can see, I'm going to guess the following conservative breakdown:

Large Boxes = 50%
Medium Boxes = 25%
Small Boxes = 25%

Furthermore, I'm going to assume that 85% of the shelves contain tapes boxes, and the rest contain other stuff (supplies, etc.) So here is the amount of music that could be contained under those assumptions:

Large Boxes = 453 shelves x 85% = 385 shelves x 50% = 192 shelves x 10 tape boxes per shelf = 1,920 tape boxes

Medium Boxes = 453 shelves x 85% = 385 shelves x 25% = 96 shelves x 30 tape boxes per shelf = 2,888 tape boxes

Small Boxes = 453 shelves x 85% = 385 shelves x 25% = 96 shelves x 40 boxes per shelf = 3,851 tape boxes

Grand total of all tape boxes = 8,659 tape boxes

What's in those boxes? I don't know but HOLY MOLEY that's a lot of output!

RodeoSchro said:

cb70 said:

SquirrelMeat said:

I wonder if he:

a) Recorded over 'Lisa' with 'Yes'

b) Renamed another track called 'Lisa' to 'Yes'.

c) Just had an empty box used for the 1980 sessions in 84.

Lisa was the 'working title' for "Yes" because both songs share the same descending chord progression. It was just a temporary title for him to probably 'remember' what the song sounded like. He did this with a few other song back then. Wasn't it with "Sex Shooter" and "She's Always In My Hair" because they both shared the flanged hi-hat sound from the Linn?

Was it? Never heard that before. Is there a source? Can't hear a link at all.

https://docs.google.com/s...edit#gid=0

Here is the link for the Google spreadsheet for the Vault.

It allows comments and corrections

brokenhearted1972 said:

The numbers on the spines of these artifacts, I understand them to be some kind of inventory number maybe? Do they represent dates?

No, not dates - the numbers are, essentially, location codes. Each tape was assigned a number. The old computer had a searchable database on it (called "Mr. Vault Guy"). So if, for example, you were looking for the tape of the song "Blue Light," you'd punch that into "Mr. Vault Guy" and you would be directed to box 453-2. You'd follow the numbers to that box (they are arranged sequentially) and find what you were looking for.

SquirrelMeat said:

Rzeplica said:

Box with "Exstacy" marked out and replaced with "Desire" (that's what it looks like, anyway)..

Must have been the original title for "Desire" which makes sense

I wonder if he:

a) Recorded over 'Lisa' with 'Yes'

b) Renamed another track called 'Lisa' to 'Yes'.

c) Just had an empty box used for the 1980 sessions in 84.

You gotta good point! I hope your wrong though.... I hope he didnt erase Lisa for Yes.

[Edited 4/20/18 20:32pm]

ISaidLifeIsJustAGame said:

https://docs.google.com/s...edit#gid=0

Here is the link for the Google spreadsheet for the Vault.

It allows comments and corrections

THANK ...U

[Edited 4/21/18 1:26am]

SquirrelMeat said:

cb70 said:

Lisa was the 'working title' for "Yes" because both songs share the same descending chord progression. It was just a temporary title for him to probably 'remember' what the song sounded like. He did this with a few other song back then. Wasn't it with "Sex Shooter" and "She's Always In My Hair" because they both shared the flanged hi-hat sound from the Linn?

Was it? Never heard that before. Is there a source? Can't hear a link at all.

Prince and the Purple Rain Era Studio Sessions, Duane Tudahl.

I remember reading about the song Lisa (not the Dirty Mind era one).

SquirrelMeat said:

RodeoSchro said:

I noticed that the numbering system for the tape boxes goes from 2 digits - like 15-1; 26-3; etc. - to 3 digits - like 256-7. The highest number I saw was 453-3. I assume the system starts with box 1-1, which would be the first box on the first shelf.

There are, then, at least 453 shelves in the Vault. Some of the shelves have stuff other than tapes on them, but the ones with tape boxes have between 10 and 40 boxes on them (depending on the width of the boxes).

I saw three different sizes of boxes. I could certainly be wrong (I am not familiar with recording archives) but it looks like there are shelves with Large boxes (about 10 boxes per shelf); Medium boxes (about 30 boxes per shelf); and Thin boxes (at least 40 boxes per shelf). I don't know the actual width of the boxes but some of y'all probably do.

Since these are mostly tapes, it's safe to assume the large ones are multi-tracks recording.


The more tracks, the wider the tape.
So the thinnest ones may be stereo reduction (2 tracks).

Maybe 24,
16 and 2-tracks tape boxes.

luv4u said:

...with Italian marble and shit.
With some HAL 9000 as the A.I. database search engine (at least).

Finally was able to find the vault pictures so I'll be updating the first post soon with a new imgur to all the files (although I've seen photos of what looked to be hundreds of VHS tapes on a wooden shelves so I'm going to have to do to see if they're somewhere else)

Interesting thing is looking at the dates written on the box compared to Princevault. Alot of them are off by 3-4 months. Example: I Guess I'm Crazy - PV = October 1987 - Box = 7-29-87

And here's what the Mr. Vault Guy paper said.

paulludvig said:

I thought there would be more. Is this all?

I haven't seen much of anything in the vault pics dated from after the early 90's. Output since then (basically, everything post-WB) is likely stored digitally... or had just been left around somewhere else. What organization there is to the vault was done by others - he was a bit of a packrat and didn't seem to particularly care about preservation or organization of his stuff (note the VHS tapes seemingly left laying around virtually everywhere throughout Paisley, seen in many of the other pics...)

Just noticed in several of the pics of his office off of the atrium on the main floor of Paisley, you can see several tape boxes stacked on the floor. Can't make out any labels, but the boxes are just piled next to some guitar cases and other stuff.