Hey y'all,

.

Just some thoughts I wanted to share with oldskoolers, inspired by the recent SOTT Deluxe rumor, I just wanted to check how y'all feel about this and if our past execptations were similar.

.

IIRC, the first time the 3 known Dream Factory configs were revealed were in a 1998 Uptown issue, though it's possible Uptown revealed them earlier, but here I'm talking about those days before these tracklists were unearthed, the early 90's. The existence of a 4th Prince And The Revolution album titled DF and finally replaced by SOTT was known, but - at least for me and the other, older fans I hung out with back then - the content was not assumed to be an SOTT-in-progress, as was finally revealed, but some entirely different project altogether with few, if any track at all in common with SOTT. What we had were bootlegs with many tracks from that era, and I remember us speculating about what DF could have been like. We imagined a more group-oriented effort sound and a very light jazz-pop record that, we assumed, probably contained more or less the following songs: the then unknown Dream Factory of course, but also Movie Star, Power Fantastic, Last Heart, Sexual Suicide, A Place In Heaven, Witness, Large Room, Can't Stop, Wonderful Ass, Girl O' My Dreams, Databank, We Can Funk... This epic record would have been a very different album than SOTT and, it turned out, despite some of the aforementioned tracks being included on one or several DF configs, a very different album than any of these as well.

.

In the end, I remember being disappointed when I finally discovered that DF had so much in common with SOTT, and it's very likely that even if P had not disbanded The Revolution and maintained the DF concept, the album we would have gotten in March 1987 would have evolved from that July configuration and would have been even more like SOTT anyway. So while the tracks do exist, the magical Prince And The Revolution album me and my friends were so certain they'd be on never existed outside of our imagination, and when I think of it I'm somewhat nostalgic of this imaginary album.

.

Did you and your friends also fantasize about DF before you knew what was on it?

[Edited 6/15/20 8:10am]

I think of the June 86 tracklist as the real last "Dream Factory" by July it starts turning into Crystal Ball (and then SOTT). But even the July track list is still a very different album from SOTT.

In my mind I did have Old Friends for Sale on this but overall I still think the Estate shoud still consider working with the Revolution to make a Dream Factory release with one of the close to final tracklisting and include cover art and photos from that era. I'd buy it multple formats. See what Brian Wilson did with Smile.

[Edited 6/15/20 11:26am]

Both Thunderball and Sabotage did a Dream Factory release.

So they do exist...

Can't remember when I first heard or knew of the existence of DF, probably not before the late 90's.

Only got to actually hear it when it was released by Thunderball. Not that it wasn't a let down, but found very little substance in it -All in all, very little of it was actually *new* to us by then.

The configuration or flow of the album felt a bit as a hodgepodge to be honest. It lacks some cohesiveness to me. Perhaps that's just the consequence of being used to SOTT as we know it for over a decade by the time I got to hear it.

Joy In Repetition should have been there with Crystall Ball, Dream Factory, In A Large Room, Old Friends 4 Sale, Power Fantastic, We Can Funk, Last Heart, A Place In Heaven, Movie Star

databank said:

[color=blue] I really get what what you are saying, a more group oriented project was what existed in my head.Every now and again I still make playlists of tracks that were slated for early and later Dream Factory configurations + bits and pieces of "the dawn" musical or "Coco boys" musical + tracks from Wendy and Lisa's debut.

I was a big Prince and the revolution fan, and really had in mind an "everybody jam expanded revolution" kind of band with shiela on percussion and Miko and Levi and Boni and Susannah in there as well [\color]

databank said:

Hey y'all,

.

Just some thoughts I wanted to share with oldskoolers, inspired by the recent SOTT Deluxe rumor, I just wanted to check how y'all feel about this and if our past execptations were similar.

.

IIRC, the first time the 3 known Dream Factory configs were revealed were in a 1998 Uptown issue, though it's possible Uptown revealed them earlier, but here I'm talking about those days before these tracklists were unearthed, the early 90's. The existence of a 4th Prince And The Revolution album titled DF and finally replaced by SOTT was known, but - at least for me and the other, older fans I hung out with back then - the content was not assumed to be an SOTT-in-progress, as was finally revealed, but some entirely different project altogether with few, if any track at all in common with SOTT. What we had were bootlegs with many tracks from that era, and I remember us speculating about what DF could have been like. We imagined a more group-oriented effort sound and a very light jazz-pop record that, we assumed, probably contained more or less the following songs: the then unknown Dream Factory of course, but also Movie Star, Power Fantastic, Last Heart, Sexual Suicide, A Place In Heaven, Witness, Large Room, Can't Stop, Wonderful Ass, Girl O' My Dreams, Databank, We Can Funk... This epic record would have been a very different album than SOTT and, it turned out, despite some of the aforementioned tracks being included on one or several DF configs, a very different album than any of these as well.

.

In the end, I remember being disappointed when I finally discovered that DF had so much in common with SOTT, and it's very likely that even if P had not disbanded The Revolution and maintained the DF concept, the album we would have gotten in March 1987 would have evolved from that July configuration and would have been even more like SOTT anyway. So while the tracks do exist, the magical Prince And The Revolution album me and my friends were so certain they'd be on never existed outside of our imagination, and when I think of it I'm somewhat nostalgic of this imaginary album.

.

Did you and your friends also fantasize about DF before you knew what was on it?

[Edited 6/15/20 8:10am]

There were definitely 1986ish references to a forthcoming DF album, maybe even referenes to a specific song or two. It's been a long time since I revisited the Billboard and other pop magazine clippings I collected back then.

databank said:

Hey y'all,

.

Just some thoughts I wanted to share with oldskoolers, inspired by the recent SOTT Deluxe rumor, I just wanted to check how y'all feel about this and if our past execptations were similar.

.

IIRC, the first time the 3 known Dream Factory configs were revealed were in a 1998 Uptown issue, though it's possible Uptown revealed them earlier, but here I'm talking about those days before these tracklists were unearthed, the early 90's. The existence of a 4th Prince And The Revolution album titled DF and finally replaced by SOTT was known, but - at least for me and the other, older fans I hung out with back then - the content was not assumed to be an SOTT-in-progress, as was finally revealed, but some entirely different project altogether with few, if any track at all in common with SOTT. What we had were bootlegs with many tracks from that era, and I remember us speculating about what DF could have been like. We imagined a more group-oriented effort sound and a very light jazz-pop record that, we assumed, probably contained more or less the following songs: the then unknown Dream Factory of course, but also Movie Star, Power Fantastic, Last Heart, Sexual Suicide, A Place In Heaven, Witness, Large Room, Can't Stop, Wonderful Ass, Girl O' My Dreams, Databank, We Can Funk... This epic record would have been a very different album than SOTT and, it turned out, despite some of the aforementioned tracks being included on one or several DF configs, a very different album than any of these as well.

.

In the end, I remember being disappointed when I finally discovered that DF had so much in common with SOTT, and it's very likely that even if P had not disbanded The Revolution and maintained the DF concept, the album we would have gotten in March 1987 would have evolved from that July configuration and would have been even more like SOTT anyway. So while the tracks do exist, the magical Prince And The Revolution album me and my friends were so certain they'd be on never existed outside of our imagination, and when I think of it I'm somewhat nostalgic of this imaginary album.

.

Did you and your friends also fantasize about DF before you knew what was on it?

[Edited 6/15/20 8:10am]

Hi Databank.

This is an interesting subject. I wasn’t really a fan until around 98 / 99, so I was never a true oldskooler. Having said that, there was still a period where I had to discover the development history of ‘Sign O’ The Times’ for myself. I was never subscribed to the fanzines, as such the first encounter I had with the finished ‘Dream Factory’ album was the Thunderball release. Despite this, I did have a similar experience to the one you are describing with “Crystal Ball”.

I remember the first Prince bootleg I bought was a copy of ‘The Black Album’, which contained 8 additional bonus tracks labelled ‘Crystal Ball’. The tracks were…

Witness 4 The Prosecution (labelled as just ‘Witness’), Wonderful Ass, Last Heart, Moviestar, A Place In Heaven, Girl O My Dreams, Can't Stop This Feeling I Got, We Can Funk

So before I had any deeper knowledge of Prince’s unreleased music I assumed there was a work in progress album named ‘Crystal Ball’ recorded in the SOTT / Black Album era. I don’t think I was ever sold on this being a final configuration, but suspected it was a collection of songs from those recording sessions.

Shortly afterwards I picked up another bootleg that was also named ‘Crystal Ball’, but I’ve since learned is more commonly known as ‘Hot Chocolate’. This included the tracks…

Crystal Ball (labelled as ‘Expert Lover’), Strange Relationship (the version with Wendy & Lisa), Wonderful Ass, Neon Telephone, Movie Star, A Place In Heaven, Joy In Repetition (the unsugued version), Data Bank, All Day All Night, Eternity.

This reinforced what I suspected, that ‘Crystal Ball’ was indeed an unreleased album, but neither of the bootlegs I had were a true reflection of the final track list. Little did I realise at the time was that the bulk of the songs I was discovering were in fact of the ‘Dream Factory’ era, rather than the post Revolution era.

.

[Edited 6/19/20 2:24am]

emesem said:

I think of the June 86 tracklist as the real last "Dream Factory" by July it starts turning into Crystal Ball (and then SOTT). But even the July track list is still a very different album from SOTT.

This is actually the version I keep on my media player, pretty much for that exact reason. Although it still shares a small handful of songs with SOTT, I think it’s far removed enough to be considered a great album in it’s own right, rather than an early version of Sign which the July configuration sounds like. It was this version of DF that made me appreciate the song ‘Power Fantastic’ despite owning it for ages on ‘The Hits / The B Sides’.

databank said:

Hey y'all,

.

Just some thoughts I wanted to share with oldskoolers, inspired by the recent SOTT Deluxe rumor, I just wanted to check how y'all feel about this and if our past execptations were similar.

.

IIRC, the first time the 3 known Dream Factory configs were revealed were in a 1998 Uptown issue, though it's possible Uptown revealed them earlier, but here I'm talking about those days before these tracklists were unearthed, the early 90's. The existence of a 4th Prince And The Revolution album titled DF and finally replaced by SOTT was known, but - at least for me and the other, older fans I hung out with back then - the content was not assumed to be an SOTT-in-progress, as was finally revealed, but some entirely different project altogether with few, if any track at all in common with SOTT. What we had were bootlegs with many tracks from that era, and I remember us speculating about what DF could have been like. We imagined a more group-oriented effort sound and a very light jazz-pop record that, we assumed, probably contained more or less the following songs: the then unknown Dream Factory of course, but also Movie Star, Power Fantastic, Last Heart, Sexual Suicide, A Place In Heaven, Witness, Large Room, Can't Stop, Wonderful Ass, Girl O' My Dreams, Databank, We Can Funk... This epic record would have been a very different album than SOTT and, it turned out, despite some of the aforementioned tracks being included on one or several DF configs, a very different album than any of these as well.

There was actually a fantastic bootleg that was released around 1989 / 1990, which had I been a fan at the time could have fooled me into thinking was a genuine and complete unreleased Prince LP. Not only was it incredibly well sequenced, but every song on it was unreleased at the time.

This bootleg was 'Crucial' with the following tracklist...
1. Paris (the original Power Fantastic intro)
2. Power Fantastic
3. Crucial
4. Last Heart
5. Sexual Suicide
6. Girl O My Dreams

7. I Can't Stop This Feeling I Got
8. We Can Funk

9. In Large Room With No Light
10. Witness
11. Can I Play With U
(there was also another cut of Crucial and a Miles Davis track on the end)

Had you told me at the time that this was the unreleased 4th Revolution album 'Dream Factory' I probably would have believed you.

VaultCurator said:

VaultCurator said:

If Prince & the Revolution continued, I still don't think we would have gotten SOTT as we know it. We might have gotten Dream Factory-Crystal Ball or a bigger version of the June 86 Configuration. A big part of me still believes we would have gotten Dream Factory & Camille released. Prince becoming his own protege(Camille)
.
I think with the breaking up of that era and band not only did WB become shaky with Prince a bit but Prince also felt shaky about releaseing music and direction that might have been more tied with the band and people that were no longer there. Prince was spooky like that enough. We saw it happen with the Time and Vanity/Apollonia 6 too

.

I will say that 86-87 shift is like a time warp

Honestly, I don't rememeber the 'Dream Factory' concept leaking until the 90's.

I was deep in the underground and I had 2nd gen tapes of of what would be known as 'Charade' in Nov 86, prior to the release of SOTT. The tape doing the rounds (via old fashioned post) had the charade flow, plus 'Heaven' and the kfunk interview.

SquirrelMeat said:

Honestly, I don't rememeber the 'Dream Factory' concept leaking until the 90's.

I was deep in the underground and I had 2nd gen tapes of of what would be known as 'Charade' in Nov 86, prior to the release of SOTT. The tape doing the rounds (via old fashioned post) had the charade flow, plus 'Heaven' and the kfunk interview.

I know in a lot of Parade show, "This is what it's like in the Dream Factory woooo oooh" was sung/mixed into certain songs, often.

Sorta that thing he did in the 80s preparing the way for the next album

I also noticed in some later Parade shows/after shows some of the stage set up that was used on the SOTT show, was being incorporated on the Parade set. Susannah's outfit that Cat ended up wearing was already in, before the disbanding of the Revolution. And clothing styles were being made, ie Wendy was wearing an outfit Prince wore during the SOTT sets, when they joined the Bangels on a show(right after the disbanding). But this is all a different side of the Dream Factory preporation.

OldFriends4Sale said:

I also noticed in some later Parade shows/after shows some of the stage set up that was used on the SOTT show, was being incorporated on the Parade set. Susannah's outfit that Cat ended up wearing was already in, before the disbanding of the Revolution. And clothing styles were being made, ie Wendy was wearing an outfit Prince wore during the SOTT sets, when they joined the Bangels on a show(right after the disbanding). But this is all a different side of the Dream Factory preporation.

Can you post some of these pics?