jaawwnn said:

Goddess4Real said:

The version of Sex Shooter (1983) with Vanity on lead vocals is 7:07 mins why the edits?

the original 7" is just over three minutes.

We still have no idea what versions of these songs will be used, I can't think of any version of Jungle Love that's that short so it'll be interesting to see what we end up with. Based on what they did with Nothing Compares these could be all new mixes from the original tapes that have nothing to do with their original intent.

If that's the case, then "Originals" wiould be a misnomer.

scififilmnerd said:

jaawwnn said:

the original 7" is just over three minutes.

We still have no idea what versions of these songs will be used, I can't think of any version of Jungle Love that's that short so it'll be interesting to see what we end up with. Based on what they did with Nothing Compares these could be all new mixes from the original tapes that have nothing to do with their original intent.

If that's the case, then "Originals" wiould be a misnomer.

If there is any evidence of modifications to any of the track, NC2U included, I believe fans should download it illegally or buy the CD second hand, not listen to it on streaming services and call for boycot. Generating income for products that have been twisted is only going to encourage them to go on doing that. I was heartbroken when the whole world, musical press and the org included, was raving about NC2U, because it meant they'd consider their posthumous mix a success and would be tempted to do it again.

Kares said:

stillwaiting said:

Nearly the ENTIRE music industry has no clue cds hold 79:57 min worth of music on a single disc. (Sarcasm for the Money hungry idiots).... The Estate, Troy Carter, Londell McMuffin, Warners HAVE NO CLUE....Piano & Micro had 34 Minutes of Music. Thousands of hours of music in the vault, and we get 34 minutes...

They may as well have put 1 min of music on 34 cds, just to charge us more. Yes, 64 min is better than 34, but it's still a point of contention. The cd industry is dying, and maybe they could learn a thing or two about catering to Die Hard Fans. Putting the Prince version of Dance Electric with the guitar solo, and maybe the original Old Friends 4 Sale(since it would fit the theme of the album, even though Joe Cocker rejected it). Even Prince himself had no idea cds could hold 80 minutes. Crystal ball was like 40 min a disc, and the 5 disc version easily could have fit on 3 discs, keeping costs down for an "independent" release. Even Emancipation had to have the silly 60 min each disc thing. Another full 60 min could have fit...

Sure we all know Prince did crazy things and did not cater to fans in multiple situations. But the posthumous releases should all be 70 min or more...but they don't care, and likely never will.

.

Sounds like it's you who doesn't have a clue.
First of all: music is an art form and we don't judge art by quantity. Do you? Do you judge books by their length?
.
Trust me, I too would love to be able to buy 10-CD box sets of Prince's unreleased masters, with each CD filled to the rim. But the average length of albums is around 40 minutes. Even today, when it really doesn't make much difference in online distribution costs to put out a 10-song or a 20-song album as a download, a lot of artists still put out 30-40 minute albums.

.

I hate to break it to you but producing music actually costs money, even when it's music already recorded. There are copyrights to be paid – the longer your CD is, the more the label will have to pay! There are also production costs involved and those largely depend on the amount of material. Furthermore: there are technical issues with CDs of a very long playing time that should be taken into consideration. The vast majority of CD-players in the world are very basic, cheap and nasty things. Portables, car stereos and such. And those players often have trouble coping with playing 70+ min. discs, as that requires a decent mechanism that is able to spin the disc without letting it jiggle like a spinning plate on a stick. The further the laser pickup has to go out towards the rim of the CD to read it, the more blurred its "vision" will be in cheap players, so they start to lose tracking and playback will start skipping as the error-correction algorithm will be unable to cope with so many read errors.
So the bottom line is that a lot of labels tend to avoid producing CDs that go beyond 70 minutes.
.

But sure, no-one in the industry has a clue about the maximum playing time of CDs, and Prince didn't have a clue either, only you do.

.

I have owned around 40 cd players, portable, car systems, multiple desk tops/laptops, and maybe even a toaster with a cd player. Not a single one has not played a full cd. Many of them fairly cheap. So your GPX portable or Tandy Computer aside, the technical issue is moot. So if they put out 30 cds with 35 minutes on each one, the distribution costs would OBVIOUSLY BE MUCH MUCH LESS THAN 14 cds with 75 minutes of music on each one?????

I suppose putting five minutes of music on each disc would be better for you?

So all the artists that put out box sets with discs filled up are going bankrupt?

Nope. Artists that care about their fans are doing fine...

Maybe the rumors about the estate going bankrupt are due to the TREMENDOUS PROFIT THEY MADE FROM THE 34 MINUTE PIANO & A MICROPHONE...

and then the VERY SECOND they announce a 64 minute ORIGINALS....they suddenly lost it all?

Or course, the 64 minute cd brought down the estate.

[Edited 4/30/19 11:03am]

Marco81 said:

Right...what exactly was done to Nothing Compares 2 U? Is there any proof? Who said something was added or altered? And if this is only an assumption based on the fact that the leaked bootleg is slightly different...think that maybe the leaked bootleg might not have been Prince's final version, but a work in progress. Thanks for clarifying. [Edited 4/30/19 10:22am]

Of course, I am always the first one to ask for evidence and sources so here's what I know:

.

- Two people who have connections with WB/the Estate have told me the same story, and they don't know each other. The first told it to me on a tacit confidential basis, the second one didn't care and that's when I began speaking about it openly. I of course have no absolute proof that these people have the connections they claim to have or that they're telling the truth, but I have every reason, from our private conversations to their public posts to what other people in the community have told me about them, to believe they're genuine. The first person told me that it was a mix from both P's and the Family's versions, while the second, who apparently has a closer source, later told me that P's version was from cassette and The Family's version from multitracks.

.

- Interestingly, Kares who is a sound engineer (again, I have no definitive proof of that but no reason to doubt it from our numerous conversations) claims he can definitely recognize a cassette "sound" on the 2018 version. I say "interestingly" because I had not told him that my second source had told me that before he came up with this theory here on the org.

.

- The Nilsen/Tudahl research have revealed that the recording sessions happened in that order Prince/Eric -> Paul/Susannah -> Clare Fischer. The Family background background vocals were recorded at the same time as Paul's lead vocals, and by the time Clare Fischer's strings were added, Prince's lead vocals were long gone. While not impossible, it seems very unlikely that super busy Prince would have bothered having an engineer retroactively adding the Family vocals and strings to his own version in 1985, talking about a song that had zero historical significance back then (before Sinead) and that he apparently never even considered releasing in this version after it became an international hit (when Miles Davis asked for a version of it, Prince told Eric to rerecord one from scratch instead of offering the original multi-tracks to Davis, and when Prince finally released it, it was a live cut).

.

- The mix is very, extremely different from both the original Family demo (streamed by Paul on his website in 2002 and widely bootlegged ever since) and every Prince song featuring strings from 85-86. In those early Clare Fischer collabs, Prince would mix the strings waaaaay much louder. On NC2U 2018, you can barely hear them by comparison. Overall and strings aside, the mix is quite different from Paul's 2002 version while the only musical difference between both tracks is the lead vocals. And of course the bootleg we have lacks both orchestra and Family vocals.

.

- And IIRC it was Alan Leeds who claimed a decade ago or so that P's original vocals had been erased from the multitracks, leading to the belief that no copy had survived until a cassette-sourced bootleg appeared 2 years ago or so. This story seems to corroborate everything we have above.

.

You may say this is all circumstantial evidence and testimonies by witnesses who may not be who they claim they are, and at the end of the day I'd have to agree with you. But I believe we have a solid case here, particularly if you add it to the apparent lack of care that WB and the Estate have displayed with other releases (I'm not gonna get into that here but so far there isn't a single posthumous release with WB that's been handled properly).

.

So this is my case. You may not be convinced and I'll respect that in lack of definitive proof, but I believe the case to be quite solid.

.

[Edited 4/30/19 11:10am]

stillwaiting said:

Kares said:

.

Sounds like it's you who doesn't have a clue.
First of all: music is an art form and we don't judge art by quantity. Do you? Do you judge books by their length?
.
Trust me, I too would love to be able to buy 10-CD box sets of Prince's unreleased masters, with each CD filled to the rim. But the average length of albums is around 40 minutes. Even today, when it really doesn't make much difference in online distribution costs to put out a 10-song or a 20-song album as a download, a lot of artists still put out 30-40 minute albums.

.

I hate to break it to you but producing music actually costs money, even when it's music already recorded. There are copyrights to be paid – the longer your CD is, the more the label will have to pay! There are also production costs involved and those largely depend on the amount of material. Furthermore: there are technical issues with CDs of a very long playing time that should be taken into consideration. The vast majority of CD-players in the world are very basic, cheap and nasty things. Portables, car stereos and such. And those players often have trouble coping with playing 70+ min. discs, as that requires a decent mechanism that is able to spin the disc without letting it jiggle like a spinning plate on a stick. The further the laser pickup has to go out towards the rim of the CD to read it, the more blurred its "vision" will be in cheap players, so they start to lose tracking and playback will start skipping as the error-correction algorithm will be unable to cope with so many read errors.
So the bottom line is that a lot of labels tend to avoid producing CDs that go beyond 70 minutes.
.

But sure, no-one in the industry has a clue about the maximum playing time of CDs, and Prince didn't have a clue either, only you do.

.

I have owned around 40 cd players, portable, car systems, multiple desk tops/laptops, and maybe even a toaster with a cd player. Not a single one has not played a full cd. Many of them fairly cheap. So your GPX portable or Tandy Computer aside, the technical issue is moot. So if they put out 30 cds with 35 minutes on each one, the distribution costs would OBVIOUSLY BE MUCH MUCH LESS THAN 14 cds with 75 minutes of music on each one?????

I suppose putting five minutes of music on each disc would be better for you?

So all the artists that put out box sets with discs filled up are going bankrupt?

Nope. Artists that care about their fans are doing fine...

Maybe the rumors about the estate going bankrupt are due to the TREMENDOUS PROFIT THEY MADE FROM THE 34 MINUTE PIANO & A MICROPHONE...

and then the VERY SECOND they announce a 64 minute ORIGINALS....they suddenly lost it all?

Or course, the 64 minute cd brought down the estate.

[Edited 4/30/19 11:03am]

I'm not gonna get into technicals because IDK shit about it, but Kares is definutely right on one thing.

1/ Works of arts are not created to fill space. Movies do not aim to fill the space of a DVD or Blu-Ray and records do not aim to fill the space on a disc. Some novels are 120 pages and others 1200. Piano & A Microphone 83 was what it was and it was half an hour. It would have been absurd and gross to fill the CD with additional, unrelated music. The only cool thing they could have done wpould have been to add that other piano session that had been bootleged alongside and titling it "Intimate Moments" like the classic boot. This would have been meaningful. Anything else would have been gross.

There was a tendency to try and fill space in the 90's when CD's suddenly allowed artists to have 80 minutes instead of 45, and the results were often albums that were too long with too many fillers, which is why with the rise of the digital age artists often chose to release a neat 30 to 45 minutes album over a longer but weaker one. Prince himself had realized that from the beginning, with several of his post CD era albums being LP length.

2/ In this digital age when CD is becoming a minor format, LP making some sort of a come-back for hipsters but being just as minor, and digital being the main format by far, basing an album's length on the CD format is ridiculous. Today you could release a 6 hours album on online stores and streaming services and your only problem would be who's gonna listen to 6 hours in a row or is all the material good enough to justify it. Legacy knew that when they chose to release a 3 hours+ long digital Anthology that would have been hard to sell on a triple CD-set.

[Edited 4/30/19 11:30am]

databank said:

Marco81 said:

Right...what exactly was done to Nothing Compares 2 U? Is there any proof? Who said something was added or altered? And if this is only an assumption based on the fact that the leaked bootleg is slightly different...think that maybe the leaked bootleg might not have been Prince's final version, but a work in progress. Thanks for clarifying. [Edited 4/30/19 10:22am]

Of course, I am always the first one to ask for evidence and sources so here's what I know:

.

- Two people who have connections with WB/the Estate have told me the same story, and they don't know each other. The first told it to me on a tacit confidential basis, the second one didn't care and that's when I began speaking about it openly. I of course have no absolute proof that these people have the connections they claim to have or that they're telling the truth, but I have every reason, from our private conversations to their public posts to what other people in the community have told me about them, to believe they're genuine. The first person told me that it was a mix from both P's and the Family's versions, while the second, who apparently has a closer source, later told me that P's version was from cassette and The Family's version from multitracks.

.

- Interestingly, Kares who is a sound engineer (again, I have no definitive proof of that but no reason to doubt it from our numerous conversations) claims he can definitely recognize a cassette "sound" on the 2018 version. I say "interestingly" because I had not told him that my second source had told me that before he came up with this theory here on the org.

.

- The Nilsen/Tudahl research have revealed that the recording sessions happened in that order Prince/Eric -> Paul/Susannah -> Clare Fischer. The Family background background vocals were recorded at the same time as Paul's lead vocals, and by the time Clare Fischer's strings were added, Prince's lead vocals were long gone. While not impossible, it seems very unlikely that super busy Prince would have bothered having an engineer retroactively adding the Family vocals and strings to his own version in 1985, talking about a song that had zero historical significance back then (before Sinead) and that he apparently never even considered releasing in this version after it became an international hit (when Miles Davis asked for a version of it, Prince told Eric to rerecord one from scratch instead of offering the original multi-tracks to Davis, and when Prince finally released it, it was a live cut).

.

- The mix is very, extremely different from both the original Family demo (streamed by Paul on his website in 2002 and widely bootlegged ever since) and every Prince song featuring strings from 85-86. In those early Clare Fischer collabs, Prince would mix the strings waaaaay much louder. On NC2U 2018, you can barely hear them by comparison. Overall and strings aside, the mix is quite different from Paul's 2002 version while the only musical difference between both tracks is the lead vocals. And of course the bootleg we have lacks both orchestra and Family vocals.

.

- And IIRC it was Alan Leeds who claimed a decade ago or so that P's original vocals had been erased from the multitracks, leading to the belief that no copy had survived until a cassette-sourced bootleg appeared 2 years ago or so. This story seems to corroborate everything we have above.

.

You may say this is all circumstantial evidence and testimonies by witnesses who may not be who they claim they are, and at the end of the day I'd have to agree with you. But I believe we have a solid case here, particularly if you add it to the apparent lack of care that WB and the Estate have displayed with other releases (I'm not gonna get into that here but so far there isn't a single posthumous release with WB that's been handled properly).

.

So this is my case. You may not be convinced and I'll respect that in lack of definitive proof, but I believe the case to be quite solid.

.

[Edited 4/30/19 11:10am]

.
It's reassuring to hear I'm not totally deaf yet (and yes, I'm a sound engineer).
I remember hearing the story of Prince taping over his own vocal track on the 2" from many years ago, and I can absolutely believe it's true. I would've objected to such a barbaric move of course, after all, he probably had two 2" machines hooked up and synced, so he could've used a second reel of tape if he ran out of tracks, but apparently he didn't care that much about the song. (What I don't understand is that there must be a 1/4" mixdown tape too, did they not find that prior to producing the 2018 release?)

[Edited 4/30/19 11:51am]

databank said:

I'm not gonna get into technicals because IDK shit about it, but Kares is definutely right on one thing.

1/ Works of arts are not created to fill space. Movies do not aim to fill the space of a DVD or Blu-Ray and records do not aim to fill the space on a disc. Some novels are 120 pages and others 1200. Piano & A Microphone 83 was what it was and it was half an hour. It would have been absurd and gross to fill the CD with additional, unrelated music. The only cool thing they could have done wpould have been to add that other piano session that had been bootleged alongside and titling it "Intimate Moments" like the classic boot. This would have been meaningful. Anything else would have been gross.

There was a tendency to try and fill space in the 90's when CD's suddenly allowed artists to have 80 minutes instead of 45, and the results were often albums that were too long with too many fillers, which is why with the rise of the digital age artists often chose to release a neat 30 to 45 minutes album over a longer but weaker one. Prince himself had realized that from the beginning, with several of his post CD era albums being LP length.

2/ In this digital age when CD is becoming a minor format, LP making some sort of a come-back for hipsters but being just as minor, and digital being the main format by far, basing an album's length on the CD format is ridiculous. Today you could release a 6 hours album on online stores and streaming services and your only problem would be who's gonna listen to 6 hours in a row or is all the material good enough to justify it. Legacy knew that when they chose to release a 3 hours+ long digital Anthology that would have been hard to sell on a triple CD-set.

[Edited 4/30/19 11:30am]

Of course, a new release by a living artist has a certain time frame, but many fill them up and instead of part of the "actual album," they call them bonus tracks.

You can look at tons of major artists releasing box sets that go 75 min per disc, and they are not

walking the streets begging for money. I don't have engineers ears, but I can tell decent sound quality, and cd does not have the limitations of vinyl...

Obviously, the cd buying public has dropped off, but just read Amazon reviews about people complaining about how short some of the recent cds are.

stillwaiting said:

databank said:

I'm not gonna get into technicals because IDK shit about it, but Kares is definutely right on one thing.

1/ Works of arts are not created to fill space. Movies do not aim to fill the space of a DVD or Blu-Ray and records do not aim to fill the space on a disc. Some novels are 120 pages and others 1200. Piano & A Microphone 83 was what it was and it was half an hour. It would have been absurd and gross to fill the CD with additional, unrelated music. The only cool thing they could have done wpould have been to add that other piano session that had been bootleged alongside and titling it "Intimate Moments" like the classic boot. This would have been meaningful. Anything else would have been gross.

There was a tendency to try and fill space in the 90's when CD's suddenly allowed artists to have 80 minutes instead of 45, and the results were often albums that were too long with too many fillers, which is why with the rise of the digital age artists often chose to release a neat 30 to 45 minutes album over a longer but weaker one. Prince himself had realized that from the beginning, with several of his post CD era albums being LP length.

2/ In this digital age when CD is becoming a minor format, LP making some sort of a come-back for hipsters but being just as minor, and digital being the main format by far, basing an album's length on the CD format is ridiculous. Today you could release a 6 hours album on online stores and streaming services and your only problem would be who's gonna listen to 6 hours in a row or is all the material good enough to justify it. Legacy knew that when they chose to release a 3 hours+ long digital Anthology that would have been hard to sell on a triple CD-set.

[Edited 4/30/19 11:30am]

Of course, a new release by a living artist has a certain time frame, but many fill them up and instead of part of the "actual album," they call them bonus tracks.

You can look at tons of major artists releasing box sets that go 75 min per disc, and they are not

walking the streets begging for money. I don't have engineers ears, but I can tell decent sound quality, and cd does not have the limitations of vinyl...

Obviously, the cd buying public has dropped off, but just read Amazon reviews about people complaining about how short some of the recent cds are.

OK so here this is just me and my personal sensibility but back when I listened to CD's I was always kind of bothered by "bonus" tracks, whether contemporary on an original album or on a rerelease. Of course by then there was no other way to do it but my reasoning was that either it was part of an album or it wasn't, and if it wasn't I wanted the listening experience to end with the last track of the proper album. At best I wished they'd have put a minute of silence between the end of the album and the bonus track(s) so I could choose to listen to silence and contemplate the album's listening experience, listen to something else or let the bonus tracks flow. That's one of the many reasons why I was very happy to jump into digital because then I could remove any "bonus" track from the proper album to another non-album tracks folder.

Kares said:

databank said:

Of course, I am always the first one to ask for evidence and sources so here's what I know:

.

- Two people who have connections with WB/the Estate have told me the same story, and they don't know each other. The first told it to me on a tacit confidential basis, the second one didn't care and that's when I began speaking about it openly. I of course have no absolute proof that these people have the connections they claim to have or that they're telling the truth, but I have every reason, from our private conversations to their public posts to what other people in the community have told me about them, to believe they're genuine. The first person told me that it was a mix from both P's and the Family's versions, while the second, who apparently has a closer source, later told me that P's version was from cassette and The Family's version from multitracks.

.

- Interestingly, Kares who is a sound engineer (again, I have no definitive proof of that but no reason to doubt it from our numerous conversations) claims he can definitely recognize a cassette "sound" on the 2018 version. I say "interestingly" because I had not told him that my second source had told me that before he came up with this theory here on the org.

.

- The Nilsen/Tudahl research have revealed that the recording sessions happened in that order Prince/Eric -> Paul/Susannah -> Clare Fischer. The Family background background vocals were recorded at the same time as Paul's lead vocals, and by the time Clare Fischer's strings were added, Prince's lead vocals were long gone. While not impossible, it seems very unlikely that super busy Prince would have bothered having an engineer retroactively adding the Family vocals and strings to his own version in 1985, talking about a song that had zero historical significance back then (before Sinead) and that he apparently never even considered releasing in this version after it became an international hit (when Miles Davis asked for a version of it, Prince told Eric to rerecord one from scratch instead of offering the original multi-tracks to Davis, and when Prince finally released it, it was a live cut).

.

- The mix is very, extremely different from both the original Family demo (streamed by Paul on his website in 2002 and widely bootlegged ever since) and every Prince song featuring strings from 85-86. In those early Clare Fischer collabs, Prince would mix the strings waaaaay much louder. On NC2U 2018, you can barely hear them by comparison. Overall and strings aside, the mix is quite different from Paul's 2002 version while the only musical difference between both tracks is the lead vocals. And of course the bootleg we have lacks both orchestra and Family vocals.

.

- And IIRC it was Alan Leeds who claimed a decade ago or so that P's original vocals had been erased from the multitracks, leading to the belief that no copy had survived until a cassette-sourced bootleg appeared 2 years ago or so. This story seems to corroborate everything we have above.

.

You may say this is all circumstantial evidence and testimonies by witnesses who may not be who they claim they are, and at the end of the day I'd have to agree with you. But I believe we have a solid case here, particularly if you add it to the apparent lack of care that WB and the Estate have displayed with other releases (I'm not gonna get into that here but so far there isn't a single posthumous release with WB that's been handled properly).

.

So this is my case. You may not be convinced and I'll respect that in lack of definitive proof, but I believe the case to be quite solid.

.

[Edited 4/30/19 11:10am]

.
It's reassuring to hear I'm not totally deaf yet (and yes, I'm a sound engineer).
I remember hearing the story of Prince taping over his own vocal track on the 2" from many years ago, and I can absolutely believe it's true. I would've objected to such a barbaric move of course, after all, he probably had two 2" machines hooked up and synced, so he could've used a second reel of tape if he ran out of tracks, but apparently he didn't care that much about the song. (What I don't understand is that there must be a 1/4" mixdown tape too, did they not find that prior to producing the 2018 release?)

[Edited 4/30/19 11:51am]

It was definitely the last nail on NC2U's coffin when you came-up with the cassette theory after I'd been told what I'd benn told

databank said:

Romeoblu said:

databank said:

It was definitely the last nail on NC2U's coffin when you came-up with the cassette theory after I'd been told what I'd benn told

Whatever they did it still sounds great and better than the leaked version. They used contemporary sources. If they had had a new string section and background vocals recorded I might have had a problem with that.

I suggest you read the 1999 Deluxe thread and what I wrote there about Extraloveable.

It's not about sounding great. It's not about pleasing listeners. It's not about giving you a nice song to listen to. It's about Prince's work as part of human heritage, one of the most important musical artists of our time and his work being properly preserved and studied.

Every action on a work of art is an intervention that alters the work in question, which should only be the artist's prerogative. And this is actually worse in a way than Justin Timberlake remixing a Prince song because at least then we'd know, it'd be clear and straight. Here you have people fucking up with Prince's works for the sheer sake of making money and not telling us, trying to fool us into believing that this was his vision, his work, when it wasn't (and it doesn't even try hard, the way this mix does not try to imitate the original, superior Family mix shows how little they care and how little they know).

As someone who is an artist, love arts, respect great artists and above all believe Prince's works are important to preserve, I consider this a moral abomination and I'll denounce it at every opportunity.

databank said:

Romeoblu said:

databank said: Whatever they did it still sounds great and better than the leaked version. They used contemporary sources. If they had had a new string section and background vocals recorded I might have had a problem with that.

I suggest you read the 1999 Deluxe thread and what I wrote there about Extraloveable.

It's not about sounding great. It's not about pleasing listeners. It's not about giving you a nice song to listen to. It's about Prince's work as part of human heritage, one of the most important musical artists of our time and his work being properly preserved and studied.

Every action on a work of art is an intervention that alters the work in question, which should only be the artist's prerogative. And this is actually worse in a way than Justin Timberlake remixing a Prince song because at least then we'd know, it'd be clear and straight. Here you have people fucking up with Prince's works for the sheer sake of making money and not telling us, trying to fool us into believing that this was his vision, his work, when it wasn't (and it doesn't even try hard, the way this mix does not try to imitate the original, superior Family mix shows how little they care and how little they know).

As someone who is an artist, love arts, respect great artists and above all believe Prince's works are important to preserve, I consider this a moral abomination and I'll denounce it at every opportunity.

.
I mostly agree, I'd just like to add that sometimes I think it's OK to not only release what the artist intended to, but the full, unedited recordings too – especially in the case of Prince whose full tapes would reveal so much more about his work process, about his genius. I'd love to hear everything even though he might have edited out half of the material. I'd love to hear When Doves Cry with the bass part, the full tape of 1999 etc, etc..
.
I was thrilled to hear the full, unedited 'Bitches Brew' sessions too, when they came out, even though it was obviously absolutely NOT how Miles envisioned that album.

Kares said:

databank said:

OK so here this is just me and my personal sensibility but back when I listened to CD's I was always kind of bothered by "bonus" tracks, whether contemporary on an original album or on a rerelease. Of course by then there was no other way to do it but my reasoning was that either it was part of an album or it wasn't, and if it wasn't I wanted the listening experience to end with the last track of the proper album. At best I wished they'd have put a minute of silence between the end of the album and the bonus track(s) so I could choose to listen to silence and contemplate the album's listening experience, listen to something else or let the bonus tracks flow. That's one of the many reasons why I was very happy to jump into digital because then I could remove any "bonus" track from the proper album to another non-album tracks folder.

I guess my main point is that if they are going to slap together an album, I'd say more is more, now I understand your reasoning for a living artist....but even then, some artists have great songs that don't fit an album. If they are going to release it anyway, I'd rather have more minutes of music for my buck.

Since the powers that be will likely milk all they can out of the vault, I'd rather buy the same amount of music on a 50 disc box set than pay even more for 150 individual cds...but that's me...I'm not rich, and I like value for my money...

Now on the NC2U thing you were talking about....I really hope it was not altered in any shape or form, but if it was a subtle thing buried in the mix, I won't be too upset. I think NC2U is brilliant, and the soul of the vocal is the thing with me. I love it. And yes, it was a miracle Sinead brought it to the world's attention. I hardly listened to it back in the day. I maybe heard the Family album 30 times before Sinead, and then much more after. I pretty much jammed Screams of Passion and Mutiny too much...and maybe Susannah's Pajamas, ignoring most of the rest of the album.

databank said:

OK so here this is just me and my personal sensibility but back when I listened to CD's I was always kind of bothered by "bonus" tracks, whether contemporary on an original album or on a rerelease. Of course by then there was no other way to do it but my reasoning was that either it was part of an album or it wasn't, and if it wasn't I wanted the listening experience to end with the last track of the proper album. At best I wished they'd have put a minute of silence between the end of the album and the bonus track(s) so I could choose to listen to silence and contemplate the album's listening experience, listen to something else or let the bonus tracks flow. That's one of the many reasons why I was very happy to jump into digital because then I could remove any "bonus" track from the proper album to another non-album tracks folder.

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Speaking of silence (which is the most vital ingredient of music, btw) : in the mid-'90s Sony started putting a "pause track" at the end of their CDs so you could program that silence track in between songs if you wanted to. It was a good idea but of course many CD players were a bit awkward to program. But yes, I prefer listening to albums without bonus tracks too and often I prefer to lot listen to anything else for awhile. I'm the same with concerts: after an amazing concert experience I just can't go straight to a pub or any other noisy place where they play some totally different music. I need silence, I need to re-live the experience in my head and let it sink in.

Kares said:

databank said:

OK so here this is just me and my personal sensibility but back when I listened to CD's I was always kind of bothered by "bonus" tracks, whether contemporary on an original album or on a rerelease. Of course by then there was no other way to do it but my reasoning was that either it was part of an album or it wasn't, and if it wasn't I wanted the listening experience to end with the last track of the proper album. At best I wished they'd have put a minute of silence between the end of the album and the bonus track(s) so I could choose to listen to silence and contemplate the album's listening experience, listen to something else or let the bonus tracks flow. That's one of the many reasons why I was very happy to jump into digital because then I could remove any "bonus" track from the proper album to another non-album tracks folder.

.

Speaking of silence (which is the most vital ingredient of music, btw) : in the mid-'90s Sony started putting a "pause track" at the end of their CDs so you could program that silence track in between songs if you wanted to. It was a good idea but of course many CD players were a bit awkward to program. But yes, I prefer listening to albums without bonus tracks too and often I prefer to lot listen to anything else for awhile. I'm the same with concerts: after an amazing concert experience I just can't go straight to a pub or any other noisy place where they play some totally different music. I need silence, I need to re-live the experience in my head and let it sink in.

I'm a bit confused by the "pause track". Was it supposed to be something you could program between any given track before you'd play the CD? How? Why? How long would it have been? I don't really undertand the concept the way you've explained it but I'm very intrigued now

databank said:

Romeoblu said:

databank said: Whatever they did it still sounds great and better than the leaked version. They used contemporary sources. If they had had a new string section and background vocals recorded I might have had a problem with that.

I suggest you read the 1999 Deluxe thread and what I wrote there about Extraloveable.

It's not about sounding great. It's not about pleasing listeners. It's not about giving you a nice song to listen to. It's about Prince's work as part of human heritage, one of the most important musical artists of our time and his work being properly preserved and studied.

Every action on a work of art is an intervention that alters the work in question, which should only be the artist's prerogative. And this is actually worse in a way than Justin Timberlake remixing a Prince song because at least then we'd know, it'd be clear and straight. Here you have people fucking up with Prince's works for the sheer sake of making money and not telling us, trying to fool us into believing that this was his vision, his work, when it wasn't (and it doesn't even try hard, the way this mix does not try to imitate the original, superior Family mix shows how little they care and how little they know).

As someone who is an artist, love arts, respect great artists and above all believe Prince's works are important to preserve, I consider this a moral abomination and I'll denounce it at every opportunity.

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I do not agree. After Prince's death, every action taken on his work is a betrayal. We cannot know what was the idea behind every single song, we can try to deduce it from the documentation that Prince left, but he too lived his music as a continuous project in progress. It is not true that the preservation of the songs as they were recorded is * certainly * the most respectful method of dealing with those songs. It is simply the most archivally valid one. But - honestly - I don't think Prince wanted his music to be transmitted to archivists. I believe that Prince wanted his music to be used to the fullest. This * fullest * is not an objective value, it depends on who - in this moment - is in the condition of being able to betray the music of Prince, I mean, transforming it from an archive to an enjoyable product. I think everyone has to deal with this thing, the only one who could have given us Prince's music as Prince wanted was Prince.

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f.

databank said:

Kares said:

.

Speaking of silence (which is the most vital ingredient of music, btw) : in the mid-'90s Sony started putting a "pause track" at the end of their CDs so you could program that silence track in between songs if you wanted to. It was a good idea but of course many CD players were a bit awkward to program. But yes, I prefer listening to albums without bonus tracks too and often I prefer to lot listen to anything else for awhile. I'm the same with concerts: after an amazing concert experience I just can't go straight to a pub or any other noisy place where they play some totally different music. I need silence, I need to re-live the experience in my head and let it sink in.

I'm a bit confused by the "pause track". Was it supposed to be something you could program between any given track before you'd play the CD? How? Why? How long would it have been? I don't really undertand the concept the way you've explained it but I'm very intrigued now

.
Naming it 'pause track' was misleading. It was actually just a normal 6 or 8 second long track of silence. They could've named it 'There's A Riot Going On' too, I guess...
You know you could program the CD players (at least the more decent ones) to any order you wanted to play the tracks. So if you wanted to use this 'pause track' you'd program it as the 4th or 6th or whatever track to play, and if you wanted more silence after a certain piece of music you'd program it 2x or 3x in sequence.

In my honest opinion, this is a strong release.

Discussing on the tracklist is ok, but I think every one of us have an ideal tracklist that doesn't match what will be released.

I would love to see P's original versions of "So Strong", "Open Book" and "With This Tear" released, to say.... but I would have paid full price for a 1-track single CD of P's "Love...Thy Will Be Done" without a breath so any complaints by me.

I really hope this is the first of many similar archival releases by the Estate, after the false start that was "Piano & The Microphone 1983".

Even if I like the idea, I don't think we will ever see the release of unreleased albums like "Dream Factory" or "Crystal Ball", because casual buyers have simply no interest to buy something already released for more than half.

And I, as many of you, already have them. They will continue to be our P's "fams treasures".

As always, simoly my two cents.

NB - Am I the only one here to figure that the Japan CD bonus track "NC2U Cinemathic Mix" could be a P rendition of the released Family version, only strings, sax and pads?!?!?!?

I think Dream FActory and Crystal Ball would be great "Record Store Day" releases. Camille as well.

TrevorAyer said:

I think Dream FActory and Crystal Ball would be great "Record Store Day" releases. Camille as well.

Great idea, but you have to remember there is a lot of overlap. Now if the powers that be actually could make a 10 disc set covering the best of the 1985-87 recordings that we would recognize as SOTT outtakes or at least songs considered...that would be better. But no, they would probably screw it up. Even though Originals is their first step in the right direction. It's going to take a major box set with tons of unreleased material to get me on their side. And it has to come out before we are all in our 70's or dead. I'll try to be positive, but my best gut feeling is it will be some type of Jughead/Wedding Feast moment.

TrevorAyer said:

I think Dream FActory and Crystal Ball would be great "Record Store Day" releases. Camille as well.

Nah, there are too many differing versions and too much overlap (as stillwaiting said). I think the best way to handle those projects would be a Bowie style anthology - Prince: 1987

Artistic sentiment/intention kinda goes out the window when we're talking posthumous works. I mean, I'm all for it when the artist is alive, 40, even 30 minute albums, sure, if they intended it, fine. But if the artist is gone and no longer allowed to design albums "as intended" I feel like you're almost being disrespectful in the opposite direction by trying to construe, say, Piano&Mic '83 as an "album" arguing artistic intention when the actual artistic action designated it to be an old cassette thrown in the back of a vault over 25 years ago.

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The man finished releasing "albums" with the Hit'n'Rn records. His albums releases as "albums" proper with 100% Prince artistic intention are done. It doesn't make sense to me to compare and consider something designed and approved completely by Prince as comprobable to something designed and approved by Jay-Z or some old dude holed up at Iron Mountain.

TrevorAyer said:

I think Dream FActory and Crystal Ball would be great "Record Store Day" releases. Camille as well.

Since it has been pretty much confirmed that His Majesty's Pop Life has the incorrect speed on

LRC and Rasp, God only knows what speed the Camille tracks would be. Rebirth of The Flesh might have the Rainbow Children voice, and Shockadelica might have the Breakfast Can Wait voice. It is obvious that Warners and "Quality Control" Is like me understanding restraint at a Pizza Buffet.

well if originals sounds pristine we will know what is possible .. if originals sounds cassette sourced than my guess is that they don't have the vault sorted out yet and are just giving us whatever they can put together easily for now .. supposedly prince worked out this album with jay z right? .. that would suggest a higher quality source than the cassettes used on pr deluxe and pnm 83

They need to do better than this. That CD of vault tracks on PR Deluxe is what I'm talking about.

PurpleBlackmon said:

They need to do better than this. That CD of vault tracks on PR Deluxe is what I'm talking about.

They can't do better. Or at least won't do better, but give them some points for Originals. At least it is 64 min, instead of 34 min. Problem is, they don't have too much time. The fan base is not getting any younger. And they insist on hiring non-fans with no true interest in the material to handle everything

makes no sense.

Kares said:

databank said:

I'm a bit confused by the "pause track". Was it supposed to be something you could program between any given track before you'd play the CD? How? Why? How long would it have been? I don't really undertand the concept the way you've explained it but I'm very intrigued now

.
Naming it 'pause track' was misleading. It was actually just a normal 6 or 8 second long track of silence. They could've named it 'There's A Riot Going On' too, I guess...
You know you could program the CD players (at least the more decent ones) to any order you wanted to play the tracks. So if you wanted to use this 'pause track' you'd program it as the 4th or 6th or whatever track to play, and if you wanted more silence after a certain piece of music you'd program it 2x or 3x in sequence.

Oh yeah I 'member those CD players that you could program, I had totally forgotten you could to that!!! God, the ideas they came up with back in the days