eyewishuheaven said:

The next Bowie box should be out in September too. Love it.

Has there been any leaked info about what it will contain yet? I've not been able to find anything.

SquirrelMeat said:

Because of the level of historic bootlegging, inevitably there will always be a large contingent unhappy with the release choices. The estate and their sub-contractor may not understand the gravitas of some material. I hope they do their homework and, I would recommend they share their plan with the fan base, as this will see off knee jerk reactions with stand alone releases. As with any major franchise (which this is now), the most successful ones give the fans what they want, not what the think they want.

I don't think every release has to be about us hardcore fans though. If you go down that route and try and pick out songs that have not even been bootlegged before, it stands to reason that they would be releasing some real obscure stuff. I imagine a lot of it would be pretty inaccessible to a wider audience. They do have to think about the commerciality of releases too. Perhaps mixing up releases, some for the hardcore, some for the masses. Maybe two releases a year, one for each demographic.

This first release from the estate is a tough one for them. They have to appease both hardcore fans and try and capture a wider commercial market in order to make money. So the music has to be both commercially accessible and obscure enough to please us lot. It would make sense releasing a reissued/remastered album along with outtakes. But who knows what lies in that vault? NC2U would have been better off held back and then released as a lead single to an "album" of that period. NC2U is probably his biggest song that he didn't release and has huge cross over appeal. But maybe there is a real gem that none of us have any idea about that would capture EVERYONE'S attention.

The estate needs to tread carefully, especially with this first release.

I think we also have to accept that any song released from here on out will be an interpretation of whoever mixes it. Unless Prince wrote down the settings of the mixing desk for all the multi tracks, no one can ever know exactly which knobs were turned up or down to get the mix Prince finally settled on.

NC2U is a great example. The engineer said that even with all the knobs turned up it sounded great. But we know that the final version on the Family album was pretty minimal so maybe all knobs turned up was never how Prince wanted it in the end. I personally feel that this recent release of NC2U could have done with a few knobs turned down, but I think I'm in a minority here.

I can see a lot of arguing about new releases in the years ahead here on the org.

[Edited 4/26/18 1:48am]

Respectfully disagree that the Estate / Troy need to tread carefully with us.

Us fans are here to stay. We've been here all this time and won't go away - that's the nature of being a fan. They need to drive excitement for the (hate to say it...) 'brand' Prince, and that will come by commecially viable manistream-leaning output.

Needs media getting excited, daytime DJs choosing to give the record a spot spin, marketing outside of the fanbase etc.

The estate need to make money - real money. That comes from having Spotify / Apple / Amazon bidding for ancilary content what will accompnay a WB release, or 1999 Tour film, etc. They will only bid if they know the major release is going to dirve mainstream awareness.

It's a very simple job in this day and age to throw together a gatefold / downloadable collection of demos of Feel U Up, o Electric Intercourse... etc. We'll always be here to lap that up. But we have a limit to the revenue we (fans) can generate.

Rebeljuice said:

I think we also have to accept that any song released from here on out will be an interpretation of whoever mixes it. Unless Prince wrote down the settings of the mixing desk for all the multi tracks, no one can ever know exactly which knobs were turned up or down to get the mix Prince finally settled on.

NC2U is a great example. The engineer said that even with all the knobs turned up it sounded great. But we know that the final version on the Family album was pretty minimal so maybe all knobs turned up was never how Prince wanted it in the end. I personally feel that this recent release of NC2U could have done with a few knobs turned down, but I think I'm in a minority here.

I can see a lot of arguing about new releases in the years ahead here on the org.

[Edited 4/26/18 1:48am]

Here's hoping that alongside the multi-tracks there are also final mixdowns for the engineers to reference.

Just curious. Hypothetically, if the release (or any official release) were made up ONLY of songs that most collectors might already have -- but in good shape -- would that be a disappointment? If there was a killer compilation with, say, "I Wonder" and "In a Room With No Light" and "Purple Music" and "Wally" and all that, would that be for most fans a good thing, or a bummer?

(And I know that the upcoming release won't be that -- just idle curiosity here.)

dustoff said:

Just curious. Hypothetically, if the release (or any official release) were made up ONLY of songs that most collectors might already have -- but in good shape -- would that be a disappointment? If there was a killer compilation with, say, "I Wonder" and "In a Room With No Light" and "Purple Music" and "Wally" and all that, would that be for most fans a good thing, or a bummer?

(And I know that the upcoming release won't be that -- just idle curiosity here.)

I would be cool with it. Just as long as the songs were ones I liked.

I have to admit that there are many outtakes that I simply do not like.

Rebeljuice said:

dustoff said:

Just curious. Hypothetically, if the release (or any official release) were made up ONLY of songs that most collectors might already have -- but in good shape -- would that be a disappointment? If there was a killer compilation with, say, "I Wonder" and "In a Room With No Light" and "Purple Music" and "Wally" and all that, would that be for most fans a good thing, or a bummer?

(And I know that the upcoming release won't be that -- just idle curiosity here.)

I would be cool with it. Just as long as the songs were ones I liked.

I have to admit that there are many outtakes that I simply do not like.

Sure. I'm not really clamoring for an official release of "Work That Fat". (Though as we all know, every Prince fan has different tastes..)

Guess what I have in mind would be an official Blast From the Past, a multi-disc collection of "rarities" put out by the estate. Even if we had all or most of it, we still want it to be out there in the market, no?

Though I'm sure they could make more money leaking this stuff out slowly, attaching it to one special edition after another. (Not that I wouldn't buy those either.)

jtfolden said:

I'm with Databank on this one, until and unless a tracklist actually compiled by Prince comes to light it makes a lot more sense to assume that he didn't have an album as strong as 1999 and Purple Rain but with no tracks from Purple Rain recorded, mastered mixed and readied in 1983. We could all compile one ourselves from the outtakes sure, but they're still outtakes.

[Edited 4/26/18 4:41am]

Vannormal said:

SquirrelMeat said:

Because of the level of historic bootlegging, inevitably there will always be a large contingent unhappy with the release choices. The estate and their sub-contractor may not understand the gravitas of some material. I hope they do their homework and, I would recommend they share their plan with the fan base, as this will see off knee jerk reactions with stand alone releases. As with any major franchise (which this is now), the most successful ones give the fans what they want, not what the think they want.

Well.

We could always join forces.

Put together sort of a 'letter',

or a 'petition',

to let them know, that (hard core & other) fans (mostly) have a greater, bigger 'innervision' opinion on all things purple.

Join forces and do what? We can't even all agree on a single disc for Emancipation. Letting us loose on picking which vault tracks should be released would just end up in an all out war.

TheEnglishGent said:

Vannormal said:

Well.

We could always join forces.

Put together sort of a 'letter',

or a 'petition',

to let them know, that (hard core & other) fans (mostly) have a greater, bigger 'innervision' opinion on all things purple.

Join forces and do what? We can't even all agree on a single disc for Emancipation. Letting us loose on picking which vault tracks should be released would just end up in an all out war.

Rebeljuice said:

I think we also have to accept that any song released from here on out will be an interpretation of whoever mixes it.

Yes, absolutely. This is something which people will have to accept. Sadly, we've had the very last of things being released which have Prince's 100% approval. We are on a different journey now and have to be aware of that. I look at the Deliverance EP as a good example. I was more than happy with that. There were certainly elements there that didn't sound like things Prince would have done but I still enjoy the whole thing.

So long as we get the feel that it was produced by Prince and X, then I'm ok. If things end up feeling like they are just produced by X, with little more than vocals by P, then I'm not so happy.

SquirrelMeat said:

eyewishuheaven said:

The next Bowie box should be out in September too. Love it.

Just look at the difference between the Bowie estate and the Prince estate.

Bowie's site has three pages of CD's to buy. Prince has none. I'm not talking about vault stuff, and the legalites that go with it, I'm talking about the core message, the music. The back calalogue.


With the Prince estate, we get magnets, leggings and keyrings, but not the body of work. We get a 7" single bundled in with a tacky jacket and bank loan priced tamborines.

That's because Bowie had his shit in order when he died.

Rebeljuice said:

SquirrelMeat said:

Because of the level of historic bootlegging, inevitably there will always be a large contingent unhappy with the release choices. The estate and their sub-contractor may not understand the gravitas of some material. I hope they do their homework and, I would recommend they share their plan with the fan base, as this will see off knee jerk reactions with stand alone releases. As with any major franchise (which this is now), the most successful ones give the fans what they want, not what the think they want.

I don't think every release has to be about us hardcore fans though. If you go down that route and try and pick out songs that have not even been bootlegged before, it stands to reason that they would be releasing some real obscure stuff. I imagine a lot of it would be pretty inaccessible to a wider audience. They do have to think about the commerciality of releases too. Perhaps mixing up releases, some for the hardcore, some for the masses. Maybe two releases a year, one for each demographic.

This first release from the estate is a tough one for them. They have to appease both hardcore fans and try and capture a wider commercial market in order to make money. So the music has to be both commercially accessible and obscure enough to please us lot. It would make sense releasing a reissued/remastered album along with outtakes. But who knows what lies in that vault? NC2U would have been better off held back and then released as a lead single to an "album" of that period. NC2U is probably his biggest song that he didn't release and has huge cross over appeal. But maybe there is a real gem that none of us have any idea about that would capture EVERYONE'S attention.

The estate needs to tread carefully, especially with this first release.

The smartest idea would be to steadily release albums with mass commercial appeal and then occasionally drop a boxset full of obscure gems for the hardcores.

udo said:

bonatoc said:

The less files there are on a hard drive, the longer it lasts.

.

Wrong.

It's a balance between acessing data on the disc on not doing so that determines the lifetime of a drive.

Also there's a bathtub curve to be taken into account as well astechnical lifecycles.

(Though the drive in my MythTV setup is recording TV 24/7 for years and did not fail yet....)

Is it better to access the data often, or better to not?

dustoff said:

Just curious. Hypothetically, if the release (or any official release) were made up ONLY of songs that most collectors might already have -- but in good shape -- would that be a disappointment? If there was a killer compilation with, say, "I Wonder" and "In a Room With No Light" and "Purple Music" and "Wally" and all that, would that be for most fans a good thing, or a bummer?

(And I know that the upcoming release won't be that -- just idle curiosity here.)

Getting upset that official releases contain tracks we've already heard on bootlegs is asinine. We knew that we were essentially consuming "spoilers" but chose to keep on doing so. Many will get mad if a new 12 track CD contains 8 tracks we already have, but, who's fault is that? It's like a kid who peaks at his Christmas presents and then gets disappointed on Christmas morning because there are no surprises.

TheEnglishGent said:

Vannormal said:

Well.

We could always join forces.

Put together sort of a 'letter',

or a 'petition',

to let them know, that (hard core & other) fans (mostly) have a greater, bigger 'innervision' opinion on all things purple.

Join forces and do what? We can't even all agree on a single disc for Emancipation. Letting us loose on picking which vault tracks should be released would just end up in an all out war.

Yeah, THAT!! We are absolutely NOT all in agreement.

NME01 said:

Will everyone just calm down.

jtfolden said:

databank said:

The key sentence in that quote is "I could put it all together", i.e. "I haven't", i.e. unless Prince compiled any such era-albums later in his career (and who knows if he didn't, but we don't know), there was never any such thing as "a follow-up album to 1999". All there is is enough material. So it's up to the estate to pick-up any 1982 outtakes and compile it up on the spot.

Or seems to me the key sentence is "I have the follow-up album to 1999". Just because he might have to collect the individual tracks to play doesn't mean he didn't already have a complete track list in mind.

Probably then this psychic woman who claims she could speak with Prince in the afterlife can ask him on behalf of the estate, and there you have it

embmmusic said:

Rebeljuice said:

I think we also have to accept that any song released from here on out will be an interpretation of whoever mixes it. Unless Prince wrote down the settings of the mixing desk for all the multi tracks, no one can ever know exactly which knobs were turned up or down to get the mix Prince finally settled on.

NC2U is a great example. The engineer said that even with all the knobs turned up it sounded great. But we know that the final version on the Family album was pretty minimal so maybe all knobs turned up was never how Prince wanted it in the end. I personally feel that this recent release of NC2U could have done with a few knobs turned down, but I think I'm in a minority here.

I can see a lot of arguing about new releases in the years ahead here on the org.

[Edited 4/26/18 1:48am]

Here's hoping that alongside the multi-tracks there are also final mixdowns for the engineers to reference.

I wonder how that actually worked. We know from Duane's book that Prince would usually have a mix done and put to tape before shelving a song (for further work or forever). From that perpective, and I'd never considered it before, those mixes may actually be a more legitimate testimony of P's visions than the multi-tracks, and releasing those on P Deluxe (something we've all croticized WB for doing) may have been more legitimate than songs from the multitracks. On the other hand one would assume that, in the perspective of further reworks, Prince may have wanted the exact setting written down by the engineer for future reference, so the song wouldn't have to be remixed from scratch each time the muti-track would be tinkered with. Maybe then, the posthumous mix wouldn't just be up to whomever mixes them?

Now that would be a hall of a question to ask P's former engineers!!! But maybe some other professional musicians or engineers here can tell us what the common practice is in studios, after a rough (or final) mix is made.

If we accept the idea that the orchestra was added on P's vocal versions (not, later, on Paul's), which seems to be plausible according to Princevault/Duane, one fact that remains is that, in the original Pau-on-vocals version (the one Paul streamed in 2002), the orchestra is much louder and, anyway, the whole mix is entirely different. Were both mixes made in Prince's time, or does the 2002 version rflect his vision much more than the 2018 one?

embmmusic said:

eyewishuheaven said:

The next Bowie box should be out in September too. Love it.

Has there been any leaked info about what it will contain yet? I've not been able to find anything.

Nothing solid really; I've noticed they tend to be officially announced in late June. But I'm hearing that, if they intend to continue to include everything he officially released, then the Re:Call portion of this box could be pretty bonkers due to the 'remix explosion' of the 80s/90s.

We shall see!

What ever it is I will Buy it!

[Edited 4/26/18 8:41am]

databank said:

The key sentence in that quote is "I could put it all together", i.e. "I haven't", i.e. unless Prince compiled any such era-albums later in his career (and who knows if he didn't, but we don't know), there was never any such thing as "a follow-up album to 1999". All there is is enough material. So it's up to the estate to pick-up any 1982 outtakes and compile it up on the spot.

.

Yes sand no.

As I read this:

The songs, the tapes, are there.

The songs were just not sequenced, not mastered.

.

Or...

.

Would it be that the demoes are there?

In such case there would be more work to bge done to get a sequenced, mastered album...

djThunderfunk said:

udo said:

.

Wrong.

It's a balance between acessing data on the disc on not doing so that determines the lifetime of a drive.

Also there's a bathtub curve to be taken into account as well astechnical lifecycles.

(Though the drive in my MythTV setup is recording TV 24/7 for years and did not fail yet....)

Is it better to access the data often, or better to not?

.

Reading data from a harddisk should not harm the data. (the head floats over the platter)

It should just add a little wear to the mechanics that move the heads, the platters.

In case of the flash drive:

It's electronics. Writing to the flash adds wear. Reading should not really add wear.

udo said:

djThunderfunk said:

Is it better to access the data often, or better to not?

.

Reading data from a harddisk should not harm the data. (the head floats over the platter)

It should just add a little wear to the mechanics that move the heads, the platters.

In case of the flash drive:

It's electronics. Writing to the flash adds wear. Reading should not really add wear.

Thanks for that info. I need more hard drives to back up my back ups.... Redundancy seems wise.