This is odd...

I just noticed on this old auction page, that these test cassettes for a configuration of the original Crystal Ball album, have Camille written on the spine.

https://www.icollector.co..._i29054472

Was this configuration of the album also going to be called Camille, or was Prince planning on calling himself Camille for the aborted Crystal Ball album too? Or both???

Crystal Ball is partially the outgrowth of resistance from the WB suits to the sheer number of proposed albums of the time; more specifically, their horror at the very idea of releasing a free-standing Camille, let alone alongside one or more Prince & The Revolution or The Flesh releases.

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In the hostage-negotiation process to disabuse P of his sense of infallibility, they perhaps reasoned that Camille's oddities could be absorbed and tempered by being distributed among the more conventional material (from some hypothetical double-album TDF).

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The merger of Camille with material from the other albums of the time (and, of course, newly recorded tracks in between) is kind of a lesser-sung, stage_0 starting condition to the better recollected metamorphosis of Crystal Ball -> Sign 'O' The Times.

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The idea of releasing it under a pseudonym apparently survived the first transition, for a priod of time, but the eventual three-LP CB, with a Camille or Prince billing, was clearly not in WB's commercial best interests in 1986.

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After it was pared down and reworked to SOTT, the privilege was granted to release a third LP (in the 'experimental vein') also in 1987 (by now filled up with different tracks, but for one), which is TBA's indirect relationship to Camille and CB.

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[Edited 7/29/20 17:00pm]

Prince changed his mind constantly. Constantly. He woke up in a new world every day. He liked to try things out and revise them. Also, if this was sent to/from Bernie Grundman it could have been simply to prevent leaks about a new album by not using Prince's name. Who knows?