luv4u said:

Marco81 said:

Thank you christobole to do 'the work'.

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But mostly thank YOU Number 23 !

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It's as if I can hear the music by the way you discribe it without hearing it.

I haven't heard it yet.

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I really appreciate your wit, and mostly the way you use a wide range of colours and emotions to make the unheard music understood in words.

Poetic even.

Thank.

You.

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[Off topic - luv4u]

Number 23 has written up reviews for the first seven songs on Vault Disc 2 - the complete disc review will be posted in a few hours!

themanfromneptune said:

luv4u said:

I did not ban them or the others. The mod that dealt with them is caseyrain.

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I know, it was a second person plural. Generic for moderators. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Back in topic.

No worries.

Thanks for the great review, looking forward to the second one.

Hopefully Number23 can post himself in a not too distant future...

christobole said:

I've been informed, that Number 23's second installment may be coming today!!!

Great!

Romeoblu said:

CD5 / LP7&8: Vault, Part 2

1. “Train”

‘Wooo woooo!’ An extremely on-the-nose visual metaphor about the distance between two people increasing, ‘getting farther away’ as P puts it here, the whimsical yet chugging, full sonic palette of Train certainly sounds like Lisa and Wendy have had their paintbrushes out again. But it’s almost entirely a Prince creation, with Eric and Atlanta Bliss stabbing out the odd, syncopated horn blast to keep the, yes, train-a-chugging, steam-a-blowing, rootin' tootin' rhythm ‘on track’, if you pardon the pun. Two hookline guitar notes ring out to signal the approaching chorus (on a spiky bed of deep fuzz tone distorted riffs buried deep in the mix in the verses) all deeply reverbed, carrying the train’s forward motion, while the drums emulate the wooden railtracks juddering past like the Bee Gee’s Night Fever rhythm track. Prince pulls off a stunningly evocative backbeat here, and if you ignore everything else - the stunning three-part harmonies, the joyous melody gorgeously yet bloodily chaffing against the bittersweet lyrics, grinding onward in motion - and just listen to song’s foundation layer, Prince somehow makes it sound so easy to sonically recreate the notion of movement. But it surely isn’t - and certainly not to achieve it as evocatively as this.

On headphones, the clarity of the vocal weaving and multilayered harmonies is simply jaw-dropping. ‘If you don't love me anymore/I don’t know what to say’. So he lets the music do the talking. The sonic palette undoubtedly achieves it goal of making the listener feel like they could be waving their hat at loved ones pulling out of the station in a cloud of steam, or perhaps sleeping in a straw-covered and shit-stained cargo carriage with some sex offender hobos. It’s far, far away from ‘for real’ country music - deliberately so, perhaps intending the direct opposite of ‘gritty low-fi confessional’, but lyrically, he’s clearly parodying country or Woodie Guthrie-esque travelling cowboy lyrics - trains, leaving towns, lost loves, even going to Santa Fe! - telling his girl if she wants to get on the train and leave him, she can. He won’t stand in her way. No tears here, just like Towns van Sant’s take-it-on-the-chin confessionals.

The music, however, is not grounded in any Americana roots revivalism - it’s pure mid-80s paisley kaleidoscopic pop perfection - perhaps P experimenting to see if he could do this sort of thing without W&L’s input. I’m speculating, but if it was intended for Dream Factory yet has no input from the girls, it seems true to P’s personality to have a ‘I’ll show them’ tune on there. Surely, when they heard it for the first time, they must have known their days were numbered. He’d fully absorbed them. Prince, like, um, Jeffery Epstein, ‘collected people’. Similar to Freddie Kruger at the end of Nightmare on Elm Street 3, when his jumper gets ripped off, we see a lot of souls trapped inside his body, absorbed throughout the years to make their host the most unimaginably powerful being in existence. ‘Come on man, get your bags.’ The train grinding to halt, but not before a final ’Woooo wooooo!’. The journey’s over.

2. “It Ain’t Over ‘Til The Fat Lady Sings”

Is this just a Broadway-style instrumental show tune intended for The Dawn musical then discarded when the idea evolved/devolved from the stage to the, ahem, ‘movie’ Graffiti Bridge? Before you shout at Alexa to skip this one, be aware many treasures lie under the somewhat crusty surface if you spend some time chipping away. What is actually unfolding here is a rope-a-dope, far from some bland Broadway-mimicing background fluff, this is actually a carnivorously woozy, exhausted clown of a mood, achingly melancholy, Wagner on Valium - a soundtrack to a possible future reality, playing out as the last star in the universe finally burns out, watched by the painted eyes of a circus troupe who travel from galaxy to galaxy in search of a willing audience, spiralling tragically throughout the cosmos by way of elephant-shaped folds in spacetime, protected by a shimmering bubble made of bells and sawdust, and held together by dogs’ tears. You can hear them barking in the background. Rhythmically, of course, La La Laa Hee Hee Hee foreshadowed.

This is Prince orchestrating the end of all things and the ridiculousness of existence and consciousness to a controlled jazz freak out mid-section, before the main melody lurches back into view, magic sprung from the wand of a dying, broken ringmaster magician, composing a staggering last gasp, a final shot at immortality through art - a nauseous, climbing, reaching, grasping melody that continually comes close to collapsing upon itself and threatens to go supernova, yet manages to find its feet again at the end of each musical phrasing. A drunk acrobat dances, a strongman falls out his wheelchair, carnival colours are sucked into the vacuum of an eternal darkness as all existence ends in a black deep freeze, time frozen inside time, the mathematical gas that came together to create everything all dissipated. All that’s left in existence is the circus ring and its performers, as we hear the final bars of this song accompaning their end, all all our ends, to the very end, as the last colours ever seen as the final star blinks out bleed out through the sawdust and horse shit and flood the universe … seeding it again. This is reality as a cosmic joke, beginning endlessly. Or it might just be P experimenting with Broadway dynamics and failing, Christ knows. I get a universe from it though.

3. “Eggplant (Prince vocal)”

If there was ever any doubt, it’s 100 percent Prince on this version of Eggplant. Not only the voice, but everything - except for a welcome late appearance by the ever-reliable and always good-to-fuckin-go Eric Leeds. So, a one-man creation, another mutant groove for the pile, later handed over to Lisa and Wendy to see what they could paint with their brushes on the side of this particular train. Verse lyrics are identical to the leak from a few years ago - it’s Prince adopting the persona of a woman over a machine-like, new wave, almost Germanic industrial, intense and odd groove, advising a man who is continually shagging great looking girls with no brains that his empty actions will eventually make him as dumb as them. ‘Oh what a drag’ is a great pre-choral vocal hook - seeing Prince is essentially in drag here. ‘Oh what a double drag’ he says second time around, as he converses with himself as two females. Genuinely funny, smart and self-deprecating. Prince keeps advising himself, again rather amusingly, that connection and conversation are what really matters. Not ‘fluffy poodles’ - although that particular lyric is sadly missing here. Wendy and P going at it remains the preserve of the leak. This version gets darker in groove and lyric - I doubt he’d ever have put this out in the 80s, just doubt he would never want to be defined by something so oddly and outstandingly camp when he was still cultivating the mysterious sex god funk genius personna.

‘You married an eggplant - now what then?’ he asks. Then, some seriously heavy guitar kicks in, Prince screams, shouts, horns enter and a huge nursery rhyme layer of icing is smothered on top of this Germanic oddness. Then, a breakdown cuts through the fog so we can hear that outrageous, European-sounding machine rhythm clearly. Then, some mad, drunken builder with a jackhammer, evoking the image of Fraggle Rock if Trent Reznor directed it.

Seriously, if you thought ‘If A Girl Calls, Don’t Hang Up’ was P’s peak take on exaggerated female voices, wait until you hear this. He really was a funny, freaky, odd little fucker. Very different to the W&L boot - like I mentioned, intense screaming bits, cool synth solo, horn break, haunted house piano, he’s playing around with found sounds, really interesting stuff. It’s superior to the overdone W&L-added version - to my ears anyway. No ‘that’s retarded’ lyric either. Again, the Teutonic beat is to the fore, a Germanic influence showing through, quite Can or Neu! Interesting that it’s now clear what W&L added to it and what P originally took to them. Great Eric solo at the end too. Actually, this is a fucking astonishing Eric solo! Then something really odd happens to it - the production of the sax gets outrageously rich and reverbed, and to these ears, sounds very similar - in tone - to the solo at the end of Lou Reed’s Walk On The Wild Side. It’s a ‘street’ solo, rich, lamentful but groovy - an old pimp showing you his gold teeth. Still got it baby. Changes the vibe dramatically, makes it deeper, odder, alien - then, it’s over. All too soon.

4. “Everybody Want What They Don’t Got”

Prince’s bipolar, manic tendencies have rarely been more prevalent than on Sunday, 13 July 1986. The location: Sunset Sound in Hollywood. The present parties - just Prince and Susan Rodgers. First, P and Susan recorded The Cross. One of his ‘Sunday songs’ as she called his more quasi-religious, solemn and portentous works. Clearly a heavy exhalation of creativity, once The Cross was on tape, Prince must have felt a sorbet of sorts was in order to up the vibe - immediately recording one of his most Beatlesque, playful and sonically trippy songs ever in this marathon studio session.

Identical to the version that leaked several years ago - with perhaps a few more embellishments, I haven’t compared them yet but it does sound slightly ‘fuller’ than the previous - still busy - mix. There is a clear sonic enhancement, however - the drums snap like cracked dinosaur eggs, those simple piano notes carrying the root melody of the song pound like a demented sea shanty, that lovely warm creamy two chord synth wave punctuating the end of each verse, those delicious multitrack cartoon harmonies - and after each verse, the groove stops, Prince goes ‘ohhhhh’, lets the song breathe for a millisecond, then launches into the jaunty verse again. The song has no chorus as such, the whole thing is carried along by the energy and that ear worm, whimsical, jaunty melody being continually repeated. Prince is still in The Cross finger-wagging mode though, chastising his flock - in a playful way - for desiring wealth and material objects over love and God. ‘She spent her last penny on a Jack Benny album full of stupid jokes no-one got, oh ohhhhhh’ ‘Don’t be fooled by your greedy heart/Might be the devil in disguise’. Acutely self-aware, Prince hides his fears of encroaching materialism in his life and the influence of what he perceived as ‘evil’ or Satan himself behind playful psychedelia and surrealism. There’s a wonderful deep voiced vocal hidden really deep in the mix where he sings the whole tune very flippantly. You need to listen very hard to hear it. Get the headphones on.

Like Train, Prince may be stretching himself here to emulate Lisa and Wendy’s soundscapes. They had already expressed their desire to leave by this point, but had been persuaded to come back at Prince’s bequest by Alan Leeds. But their time was up - Prince knew they had to go. And he would be the one to end the relationship. No-one walked out on him. And yes, ‘First you want a little/ Then you want a lot’ may be directed at some folk in particular. Just a guess. It all, mostly, means something with P. each song was a communication to an intended target. So, maybe a bit of bitchiness dressed up in the intended target’s own clothes? Yeah, I’m probably reaching here. But, maybe not.

5. “Blanche”

Well. Here, we get Prince as raw as he allows himself to be when the tape’s running - stripped down, bare, nude, just his talent, energy and a basic idea for a hard, grinding guitar groove. Rarely heard anything like this from him before, sonically. Drums are interesting - like they’re recorded in a different room from the rest of the tracks. A palace’s bathroom, it sounds like. It’s P’s version of straight rock, but seriously fucking funky - and it constantly steps up a gear with a minor key change that blasts adrenaline through the listener’s veins. Vocally, he’s as loose as Bowie’s trousers in the Let’s Dance video - improvising over a groove tighter than Bowie’s trousers in Labyrinth.

P’s letting off steam, wisecracking to Susan, or whoever is present, with some genuinely amusing, infectious improv. ’Blanche you aint been driven till u tried my ride!’ ‘My name is Stanley! Aggggghhhhhhhhh! Yeah!’ ‘My name is desire! Blanche - u got me on fire! Aooow!’ And it’s just that riff, continually, hypnotically … married to that astonishing key change where he ups the tempo. Don’t expect much melody here - it’s all about the groove. Some deep, dubby bass runs late in the song too. A breakdown arrives, then some ridiculously funky bass takes over the groove - not quite slap funk, but not ‘Minneapolis rumble’ either. Somewhere in between, sounds bloody amazing. And that riff just keeps going. Then …it slows dooooooown. Doooooooooowwwwwwwwnnnn. The groove goes with it. That weird P mating call again. ‘Agggghhhhhh!’ Then he says: ‘Ah fuck it, Blanche.’

We hear studio laugher at the flippancy of it and the song is over. Wow. Why’s Prince decompressing like this? Well, again, it was Sunday and he’d just recorded Sign O The Times earlier. Yes, another marathon session where P felt he couldn’t walk away under a cloud, so he’d simply catch a good vibe before leaving the studio. What a groove to just casually create after recording one of the greatest singles of the 80s. GOAT.

6. “Soul Psychodelicide”

Soul Psychdelicide is unrecognisable in comparison to the better-known Graffiti Bridge take, but we already know that. This is The Flesh getting seriously hypnotic and heavy. This earlier version is not in distribution amongst traders as a 60 minute epic, but this 12 minute edit of what is a truly monster groove kicks off with Prince shouting ‘Ice Cream!!’ at the top of his lungs and a wildly thunderous drum motif kicks in - which P will shout for numerous times throughout to recalibrate a Godzilla groove that’d make the dead on another planet dance. It’s so heavy ... deep, masculine funk - performed live in a nice hollowy studio room, probably his house studio ... it has a live warmth. Recorded so incredibly well, it sounds HUGE. Drumming is outrageous - especially that drum roll hook, it actually sounds like Michael B lol, who must have been just a boy at the time. Would actually have loved to hear Michael play this one.

It’s just outrageously, obscenely funky. P’s crafted a song from a jam much the same way he did with It’s Gonna Be A Beautiful Night - presenting this one in three distinct acts - the first, a steely, huge m muscular groove with P shouting that ‘Ice Cream!’ motif when he needs to hear that astonishingly heavy and thunderous drum roll. He fucking loves it, clearly.

Then it gets ... funkier. Stankier. Heady. Go well with a smoke, I’d imagine. You will pull an ugly face. Many times. Sounds like Wally and/or Brooks vocalising, doing a wildly head-nod-worthy Bobby Bird-esque ‘Soul Psychodelicide - it’s a hell of a thang’. Prince shouts ‘Keep singing!’ as Lisa and Wendy do their drone bot cold but deeply funky ‘Soul Psychodelicide’ dead voice repetitions. It’s Teutonic, Germanic, ice cold. With some ‘Beautiful Night’ horn riffs thrown in, which likely originated here.

Then the third movement - Eric appears from nowhere, and fucking takes over this shit. Ripping though every funk scale he knows, ascending to groove heaven, serpentine squeals, outrageously in the zone shit. By this point, around 8 minutes in, the groove is Hypnotic. ‘It’s a hell of a thing’ Wally and/or Brooks repeats again. And, you’re seriously fucking spot on Wally and/or Brooks, it is. It’s a hell of a thing.

Then, the conclusion to the third act ... P breaks the groove down. A new Eric motif plays and the bass n drums take dominance - keeping it outrageously tight for about two minutes. Then, P demands just guitars and drums - nothing else. He gets it. My God, it gets low and weird and nasty. ‘Get dat horn blowing’ P interrupts and then everything kicks in once more - EVERYTHING. A weird ghost horn - added in the studio afterwards no doubt - follows the lead line. A deep, dubby bass groove now dominates. Then, all the vocals burst in - ‘Soul!’ ‘It’s a hell of a thing!’ Prince screams ‘Ice creeeeeam!’ And that fucking awesome carnivorous, room-eating, universe-silencing drum roll busts in again ... along with, extremely late in the day, the first blast of synths. ‘It’s alright’ P shouts. Then, a showy Vegasy horn turnaround and Prince casually quips ‘On the one’. The band stop dead, tight as Jaws’s arsehole.

Fucking hell, what just happened?

7. “The Ball”

‘Welcome 2 the crystal ball. Got any notions about the way things are? Give em up and come on y’all! BALL!’, the preacher in P extols. After asserting that this is a Brand New Thing, Prince extends an invite for his flock to a new Uptown, ushering willing partygoers to a ‘Crystal Ball’, a wondrous event/place free of ideology, dogma and preconceived notions of reality on how things should be. Whereas ‘Uptown’ was street, urban wonderland and Paisley Park a hippyish, flowery playground, this is an etherial slip between the folds in reality, a secret party that perhaps can only exist in one’s own imagination. Where everyone reflects the joy you feel yourself, one nation of believers under your groove.

He’s also telling us that this is NEW by advising listeners to give up their notions of how things are - in the intro - to let it sink in a while, to give it time, to swim deep in what’s to come, not to judge, that gratification will be the reward for getting down with this cosmic new power generation vibe. Along with the soon-to-be-mentioned When The Dawn Of The Morning Comes and Walkin In Glory, this is Prince finally moving out of his period of minimalist, skeletal deconstructionist modern pop - and even his habit of stripping down his most joyous creations to bare bones (Big Tall Wall/Forever In My Life). It’s bubble bath of crystalline, airy, light psycho-funk, carried along with an elastic, addictive bassline, bouncy, tribal drums and weird guitar distortions that keeps the groove grounded as finger cymbals punctuate and Lovesexy-esque sound effects abound from the Fairlight - filling in the gaps while Eric and Atlanta are granted freedom to stretch out over an airy, slightly discombobulating wide open space of a groove. ‘Ball! Ball! Ball! Come on!’

Those incomparable Prince harmonies gasp throughout the spaces in the groove. It’s insanely busy … but spacey, not claustrophobic at all. Joyful. Fun guitar solo deep in the mix is great, thunderous, ruckus, celebratory. Buried like treasure. Plenty of room for everyone to get a piece in this jam - to think this was recorded just a few days after the thunderous jungle funk of Soul Psychedelic shows a near bipolar shift of moods, that funk can suit any emotion. This vibe is heavenly and pure - crystalline funk - while Soul Psychodelicide is a sonic hard-on, reeking of sweat and sperm. Both are Prince recreating that JB vibe he was obsessed by in his youth with his own idiosyncratic touch, but song tunes are different sides of the same coin. While SP is the sound of the night, this is a future soul song bathing in some creator being’s shining light, a synthetic gospel stomp that sounds like it was recorded in a cathedral floating in the sky, carried through the clouds on a prism of rainbow light.

‘Keep singing y,all! Keep singin’ y’all!’ Although this song would have fit in with the original 3CD Crystal Ball set lyrically and thematically, I think this would still have been the odd man out - even in that wildly eclectic set. Then again, it would maybe have served as a better opener than Rebirth Of The Flesh. Although perhaps not the better song. It’s stadium avant-funk, a proto - Eye Know, obviously - and essentially the first track recorded for Lovesexy before the idea of Lovesexy even existed - with a joyous, most-complex-than-it-sounds ‘All for one, one for all, fun for everyone’ multitracked P chant recycled from Sheila E’s Romance 1600, which in turn was nicked from Alexandre Dumas. But you knew that I’m sure. In this track, we’ve entered the church of Prince, where no worshipper is expected to sit down - dancing room only. Excuse me while we kiss the sky. It’s Prince in the heat of his latest evolution. Animals struck curious poses.

8. “Adonis And Bathsheba”

Remember the Flake advert from the 80s? The girl in the bath eating the chocolate bar, inside a Greek palace, exotic fruits, ancient pillars, marble floors? It’s a ready-made video for this outrageously sumptuous, grandiose, harmonically generous declaration of utter desire.Another example of a song that no-one else but Prince could write or perform without looking a bit foolish. Eric is majestic accompanying on one of Prince’s most erotic - but not filthy - lyrics about the sheer madness of unbridled lust. ‘There is no bed, how do they…? They decide to stand!’ Then that thousand-strong choir of Ps gliding though the lushness, observing this passion from over like a flight of angels - it’s exhilarating, heavenly, almost too much. Susan Rogers thought it OTT, saccharine even - but I think that’s missing the point. It is OTT - but P is aware. The guitar lines halfway through attempt to anchor the track back to Earth somewhat with some abrasiveness, but as soon at that harmony hook kicks in again, it’s beaten, not matter how hard he fights himself by shredding like fuck. He’s trying to match the all-encompassing intensity of such lust - perhaps an emotion so deep that it’s unrecognisable to Susan, and, most people? To these ears, it sound like the type of love that only exists in art, the purest love, without the darkest elements of jealously, envy, possessiveness or eventual parting through death. What love could, and should be. And, undoubtedly, that final screaming guitar note ringing out is clearly him coming lol.

9. “Forever In My Life (early vocal studio run-through)”

A jaunty bar-room piano riff greets us here, but it’s a rope-a-dope - the instrument disappears completely after the first bar - gone. It was only there to tease, to throw you, playing with expectations. Or Susannah’s expectations. Because I can imagine her being very surprised by what she heard next. Suddenly we get a warm, full, grounded declaration of maturity and commitment. Lovely, almost Carpenters-style harmonies (this time, in time with the music lol) but that jarring, slightly sharp ‘la la da da da da da daa’ hook serves to wake us up - there’s angst here, still. But the performance is genuinely emotional and honest - persuasive. I believe him. And I don;t always believe Prince - at lot of P is performance. And that’s great, but when you get a genuine piece of raw emotion like the first half of this song, it can be uncomfortable intimate, like it wasn’t really intended for fans’ ears.

The skeletal proto-groove of the SOTT movie’s long jam on Forever In My Life is here, as we all now know, and is underpinned by a slightly threatening bassline - it’s certainly not as carefree in vibe as the first half. There’s foreboding. A storm on the horizon. It’s not a ‘jam’ as such, it’s turbulence. A sonic indicator that all is not carefree in this relationship. It’s two parts are complementary though, which is probably how he felt the relationship worked. Lovely acoustic plucking sweetens the dark tone of the last minute of this ‘jam’, reminiscent of the way he put the same hook at the very end of the album version. And talking of that version, it’s obvious to me that it’s like a negative print of this version - similar to what he did with Big Tall Wall …. he stripped all the sweetness and life and warmth out. All the love. Made them as dark as he could musically. He was sending a message to Susannah, I think, by including that version of FIML on SOTT. He knew she would listen to it. That she would expect to hear that beautiful, warm song she heard that beautiful morning. But instead, she was confronted by something with all the life stripped out of it. He was telling her how he now felt. It was a clear - and cruel - message from a man who communicated in music.

10. “Crucial (alternate lyrics)”

A more guitar-heavy version of Crucial with different verses, it’s that simple. The exact same melody all the way through, but with new lyrics replacing most of the verses. ‘I couldn't watch your body for fear of losing/ the burning heart of my sweet baby’s perfume’ Not, it’s not the greatest lyric. ‘I aint saying anything till I cop/Our bodies entwined/ That’s when you'll be mine/ Always, for all time/ Cruuuuucial’ The sitary hook is still there, but with added distorted guitar, much in the same way as Adonis and Bathsheba, building up in the background to dirty up the sweetness. The ‘knock at the door’ lyric and drum tap-tap-tap is intact and the second verse’s ‘Ill give u mine if u give me urs’ line is too. But the bridge is different completely: ‘Everything ur mama taught me/ Babe u gotta tell me so’ ‘Ur body is a river/I want every drop/Cruuuucial’

After the second chorus, that astonishing ‘la la lah la la lah lalalala la laaaa’ harmony is still there in all its glory, an stunning an accomplishment as it ever was, then the guitar solo takes us on a journey. This is Crucial, so it’s beautiful - rawer than Crystal Ball 1997, but not demoish, this is a full production. The solo essentially just mirrors Eric’s horn in the boot version, or rather Eric echoes it. The song fades at about the same spot as the CB version. This isn’t essential, but I’m glad it’s here - it’s a revealing insight into P’s editing prowess and the ability to spot lyrics that need polished. It’s good to know that he didn’t think everything he did was great first time.

11. “The Cocoa Boys”

The U Got The Look synths sound crystal clear, like the leaked version forming a bed of harmony that lets throughout the song, but this is a much fuller-boded version of the boot. Extra parts, more muscular rhythm, a deep rumbling bass dominting. This is finished. But … I’m not sure about it. I’m not big on P’s vocal delivery here. He’s trying to narrate a story about an imaginary battle of the bands, but it’s just not very compelling lyrically. P also sounds very nasally at times. And, no, he doesn’t ‘mouth’ the horns here - they’re real here. It’s a big production - he’s spent time and effort on it. The chorus is catchy, fun and funky but - to these ears - is too busy with instrumentation and crowd noises. Those nice very high-pitched harmonies are the end of the chorus are very ‘avant purple’ though, love that element. Some fans will absolutely love this as it sounds utterly unlike most of P’s official output.

It’s clearly experimental, and some of it really works, and the bass is outrageously good, interesting horns that change constantly - maybe too constantly. It never seems to nail down a form it’s comfortable with. Perhaps too many ideas for one song - certainly, like Witness 4 The Prosecution 2, much of it was later recycled. The Detroit Crawl gets a shout out, then the Wooden Leg. But this is not the great battle of the bands P thinks it is, I don't think. The Kangaroo also gets a mention - the Cocoa Boys are clearly great dancers. But so what? Near the end, we get the ‘All the boys, and all the girls, you are the new kings of the world’ chant from Lovesexy, which is interesing. ‘Every king must share his prize!’ Prince shouts near the end. ‘Everybody share the prize’! The crowd chant. The band go silent. Then they come back in with an outrageously funky groove and complex horn layering, then …’You are beautiful! It’s gonna be a beautiful night!’. Yes, the chorus from the SOTT song. So many parts, great parts, but to me it doesn’t make a cohesive whole. You might love it though so don’t get downhearted.

12. “When The Dawn Of The Morning Comes”

Think this particular P vibe - The Voice Inside and Trust. Mad, frantic, breathless percussion, only with a full voiced main vocal ghosted by a falsetto version. ‘There’ll be joy and fun, love and joy, when the dawn of the morning comes!’ he exhaults, following by the chasing falsetto about a second behind. Its weird and wonderful. The falsetto ghost sometimes even jumps ahead, like a hype voice, Bobby Bird or something, anticipating and then calling on P’s main ‘head voice’ vocal. Its gospel in roots, but this is an avant purple production. Really uptempo, sparkling fanfare synths throughout, mad computer percussion floating in and out the mix.

‘There’ll be so much happy/When the morn' comes’ Not really deep lyrically, but it doesn;t have to be - the message is simple, it doesn;t need dressing up. It’s joy in enlightenment, in faith, in Tha Lawd. Musically, it’s fascinaitng. Clearly all P. Midway through, a huge gospel rave-up kicks off, huge multitrack vocals invade fro the stars, P harmonises with a million versions of himself, countless handclaps keep the groove, syncopated beautfully with the insane rhythm, like hummingbird wings, …. then a magical drum and percussion section offers a release, a euphoric rush. P then takes the guitar out and puts in a little funk then … an astonishing break of light as the percussion once again comes to the fore … Christ this is good. A real natural serotonin high.

Then, a small build-up with warm synths, chorus some in again, a breakdown to the drums and precision - very Voice Inside/Trust (but better than Trust - richer, deeper, more interesting things going on, it’s a sonic trip). You genuinely want this groove to last forever. ‘Everybody lets work!’ P says, sampling himself. Then a huge church organ blatantly steals the show by holding down a chord for about 30 second while the rhythm builds up louder again. It gets bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger…still holding down that damn chord ‘Open ur eyes!’ P shouts.’Im gonna … I’m gonna be there when the dawn of the morning comes! Every day!’ ‘What a day! What a day! Oh what a day!’ And …groove to fade. Mental and wonderful. The feeling you get when you fall in love, not with girl or boy, but the heavens above … this, like the Ball, was Prince turning into something else before Susan Rogers eyes. What a trip.

13. “Witness 4 The Prosecution (version 2)”

Again, like Forever In My Life and Big Tall Wall, P returns to a previously recorded and ‘finished’ Susannah song and strips all warmth out of it, leaving an ice cold groove that’s clearly a proto-Bob George (and used for parts for a few other future songs). It stands on its own feet, but the fact that P would go on to strip away its component parts for many other tunes makes it fascinating for Prince afficados. Genuinely interesting Hot Thing-esque interplay between the the guitar/synth and Eric’s horn in the middle break. ‘If I couldn't be near you/ If I couldn't feel U/ I wanted what was yours/ But now I just want you to care’ This relationship is over, he’s saying. It’s a post-mortem. Prince was trying to figure it all out the only way he knew how, through his music. ‘I will go to the electric chair!’ - a slice of raw electro funk that a young Trent Reznor would have dug, with many inspired ideas floating in around in the mix.

14. “It Be’s Like That Sometimes”

A big, huge playful, laidback, languid groove kicks in and immediately you feel you’ve known this tune all your life. It’s an instantly likable and cosily familiar song, readymade for radio stations in the summer. a light, slightly strained (deliverately), high falsetto verse talks about how life isn't all its cracked up to be sometimes but ‘It be like that sometimes’. Second verse has got a great guitar accompaniment that’s thrown in the mix, some great jazzy playing, genuinely great. Awesome chord change into the chorus, but the initial big airy groove remains constant through the song, he just paints on top of it. Lovely middle eight with shimmery xylophone/piano rainfall break, a scream then a verse - all sang in the same scratchy high end pitch as he does on Rave Unto The joy fantastic - might be too screechy for some , but it’s cool - then a yeah yeah yeah breakdown to the end. Deep P voice ‘It be’s like that sometimes y’all.’ Nice flamboyant piano solo at the end and it fades. Its great - a simple but infectious big groove embellished tastefully and artfully. A potential summer hit that never was.

christobole said:

CD5 / LP7&8: Vault, Part 2

1. “Train”

‘Wooo woooo!’ An extremely on-the-nose visual metaphor about the distance between two people increasing, ‘getting farther away’ as P puts it here, the whimsical yet chugging, full sonic palette of Train certainly sounds like Lisa and Wendy have had their paintbrushes out again. But it’s almost entirely a Prince creation, with Eric and Atlanta Bliss stabbing out the odd, syncopated horn blast to keep the, yes, train-a-chugging, steam-a-blowing, rootin' tootin' rhythm ‘on track’, if you pardon the pun. Two hookline guitar notes ring out to signal the approaching chorus (on a spiky bed of deep fuzz tone distorted riffs buried deep in the mix in the verses) all deeply reverbed, carrying the train’s forward motion, while the drums emulate the wooden railtracks juddering past like the Bee Gee’s Night Fever rhythm track. Prince pulls off a stunningly evocative backbeat here, and if you ignore everything else - the stunning three-part harmonies, the joyous melody gorgeously yet bloodily chaffing against the bittersweet lyrics, grinding onward in motion - and just listen to song’s foundation layer, Prince somehow makes it sound so easy to sonically recreate the notion of movement. But it surely isn’t - and certainly not to achieve it as evocatively as this.

On headphones, the clarity of the vocal weaving and multilayered harmonies is simply jaw-dropping. ‘If you don't love me anymore/I don’t know what to say’. So he lets the music do the talking. The sonic palette undoubtedly achieves it goal of making the listener feel like they could be waving their hat at loved ones pulling out of the station in a cloud of steam, or perhaps sleeping in a straw-covered and shit-stained cargo carriage with some sex offender hobos. It’s far, far away from ‘for real’ country music - deliberately so, perhaps intending the direct opposite of ‘gritty low-fi confessional’, but lyrically, he’s clearly parodying country or Woodie Guthrie-esque travelling cowboy lyrics - trains, leaving towns, lost loves, even going to Santa Fe! - telling his girl if she wants to get on the train and leave him, she can. He won’t stand in her way. No tears here, just like Towns van Sant’s take-it-on-the-chin confessionals.

The music, however, is not grounded in any Americana roots revivalism - it’s pure mid-80s paisley kaleidoscopic pop perfection - perhaps P experimenting to see if he could do this sort of thing without W&L’s input. I’m speculating, but if it was intended for Dream Factory yet has no input from the girls, it seems true to P’s personality to have a ‘I’ll show them’ tune on there. Surely, when they heard it for the first time, they must have known their days were numbered. He’d fully absorbed them. Prince, like, um, Jeffery Epstein, ‘collected people’. Similar to Freddie Kruger at the end of Nightmare on Elm Street 3, when his jumper gets ripped off, we see a lot of souls trapped inside his body, absorbed throughout the years to make their host the most unimaginably powerful being in existence. ‘Come on man, get your bags.’ The train grinding to halt, but not before a final ’Woooo wooooo!’. The journey’s over.

2. “It Ain’t Over ‘Til The Fat Lady Sings”

Is this just a Broadway-style instrumental show tune intended for The Dawn musical then discarded when the idea evolved/devolved from the stage to the, ahem, ‘movie’ Graffiti Bridge? Before you shout at Alexa to skip this one, be aware many treasures lie under the somewhat crusty surface if you spend some time chipping away. What is actually unfolding here is a rope-a-dope, far from some bland Broadway-mimicing background fluff, this is actually a carnivorously woozy, exhausted clown of a mood, achingly melancholy, Wagner on Valium - a soundtrack to a possible future reality, playing out as the last star in the universe finally burns out, watched by the painted eyes of a circus troupe who travel from galaxy to galaxy in search of a willing audience, spiralling tragically throughout the cosmos by way of elephant-shaped folds in spacetime, protected by a shimmering bubble made of bells and sawdust, and held together by dogs’ tears. You can hear them barking in the background. Rhythmically, of course, La La Laa Hee Hee Hee foreshadowed.

This is Prince orchestrating the end of all things and the ridiculousness of existence and consciousness to a controlled jazz freak out mid-section, before the main melody lurches back into view, magic sprung from the wand of a dying, broken ringmaster magician, composing a staggering last gasp, a final shot at immortality through art - a nauseous, climbing, reaching, grasping melody that continually comes close to collapsing upon itself and threatens to go supernova, yet manages to find its feet again at the end of each musical phrasing. A drunk acrobat dances, a strongman falls out his wheelchair, carnival colours are sucked into the vacuum of an eternal darkness as all existence ends in a black deep freeze, time frozen inside time, the mathematical gas that came together to create everything all dissipated. All that’s left in existence is the circus ring and its performers, as we hear the final bars of this song accompaning their end, all all our ends, to the very end, as the last colours ever seen as the final star blinks out bleed out through the sawdust and horse shit and flood the universe … seeding it again. This is reality as a cosmic joke, beginning endlessly. Or it might just be P experimenting with Broadway dynamics and failing, Christ knows. I get a universe from it though.

3. “Eggplant (Prince vocal)”

If there was ever any doubt, it’s 100 percent Prince on this version of Eggplant. Not only the voice, but everything - except for a welcome late appearance by the ever-reliable and always good-to-fuckin-go Eric Leeds. So, a one-man creation, another mutant groove for the pile, later handed over to Lisa and Wendy to see what they could paint with their brushes on the side of this particular train. Verse lyrics are identical to the leak from a few years ago - it’s Prince adopting the persona of a woman over a machine-like, new wave, almost Germanic industrial, intense and odd groove, advising a man who is continually shagging great looking girls with no brains that his empty actions will eventually make him as dumb as them. ‘Oh what a drag’ is a great pre-choral vocal hook - seeing Prince is essentially in drag here. ‘Oh what a double drag’ he says second time around, as he converses with himself as two females. Genuinely funny, smart and self-deprecating. Prince keeps advising himself, again rather amusingly, that connection and conversation are what really matters. Not ‘fluffy poodles’ - although that particular lyric is sadly missing here. Wendy and P going at it remains the preserve of the leak. This version gets darker in groove and lyric - I doubt he’d ever have put this out in the 80s, just doubt he would never want to be defined by something so oddly and outstandingly camp when he was still cultivating the mysterious sex god funk genius personna.

‘You married an eggplant - now what then?’ he asks. Then, some seriously heavy guitar kicks in, Prince screams, shouts, horns enter and a huge nursery rhyme layer of icing is smothered on top of this Germanic oddness. Then, a breakdown cuts through the fog so we can hear that outrageous, European-sounding machine rhythm clearly. Then, some mad, drunken builder with a jackhammer, evoking the image of Fraggle Rock if Trent Reznor directed it.

Seriously, if you thought ‘If A Girl Calls, Don’t Hang Up’ was P’s peak take on exaggerated female voices, wait until you hear this. He really was a funny, freaky, odd little fucker. Very different to the W&L boot - like I mentioned, intense screaming bits, cool synth solo, horn break, haunted house piano, he’s playing around with found sounds, really interesting stuff. It’s superior to the overdone W&L-added version - to my ears anyway. No ‘that’s retarded’ lyric either. Again, the Teutonic beat is to the fore, a Germanic influence showing through, quite Can or Neu! Interesting that it’s now clear what W&L added to it and what P originally took to them. Great Eric solo at the end too. Actually, this is a fucking astonishing Eric solo! Then something really odd happens to it - the production of the sax gets outrageously rich and reverbed, and to these ears, sounds very similar - in tone - to the solo at the end of Lou Reed’s Walk On The Wild Side. It’s a ‘street’ solo, rich, lamentful but groovy - an old pimp showing you his gold teeth. Still got it baby. Changes the vibe dramatically, makes it deeper, odder, alien - then, it’s over. All too soon.

4. “Everybody Want What They Don’t Got”

Prince’s bipolar, manic tendencies have rarely been more prevalent than on Sunday, 13 July 1986. The location: Sunset Sound in Hollywood. The present parties - just Prince and Susan Rodgers. First, P and Susan recorded The Cross. One of his ‘Sunday songs’ as she called his more quasi-religious, solemn and portentous works. Clearly a heavy exhalation of creativity, once The Cross was on tape, Prince must have felt a sorbet of sorts was in order to up the vibe - immediately recording one of his most Beatlesque, playful and sonically trippy songs ever in this marathon studio session.

Identical to the version that leaked several years ago - with perhaps a few more embellishments, I haven’t compared them yet but it does sound slightly ‘fuller’ than the previous - still busy - mix. There is a clear sonic enhancement, however - the drums snap like cracked dinosaur eggs, those simple piano notes carrying the root melody of the song pound like a demented sea shanty, that lovely warm creamy two chord synth wave punctuating the end of each verse, those delicious multitrack cartoon harmonies - and after each verse, the groove stops, Prince goes ‘ohhhhh’, lets the song breathe for a millisecond, then launches into the jaunty verse again. The song has no chorus as such, the whole thing is carried along by the energy and that ear worm, whimsical, jaunty melody being continually repeated. Prince is still in The Cross finger-wagging mode though, chastising his flock - in a playful way - for desiring wealth and material objects over love and God. ‘She spent her last penny on a Jack Benny album full of stupid jokes no-one got, oh ohhhhhh’ ‘Don’t be fooled by your greedy heart/Might be the devil in disguise’. Acutely self-aware, Prince hides his fears of encroaching materialism in his life and the influence of what he perceived as ‘evil’ or Satan himself behind playful psychedelia and surrealism. There’s a wonderful deep voiced vocal hidden really deep in the mix where he sings the whole tune very flippantly. You need to listen very hard to hear it. Get the headphones on.

Like Train, Prince may be stretching himself here to emulate Lisa and Wendy’s soundscapes. They had already expressed their desire to leave by this point, but had been persuaded to come back at Prince’s bequest by Alan Leeds. But their time was up - Prince knew they had to go. And he would be the one to end the relationship. No-one walked out on him. And yes, ‘First you want a little/ Then you want a lot’ may be directed at some folk in particular. Just a guess. It all, mostly, means something with P. each song was a communication to an intended target. So, maybe a bit of bitchiness dressed up in the intended target’s own clothes? Yeah, I’m probably reaching here. But, maybe not.

5. “Blanche”

Well. Here, we get Prince as raw as he allows himself to be when the tape’s running - stripped down, bare, nude, just his talent, energy and a basic idea for a hard, grinding guitar groove. Rarely heard anything like this from him before, sonically. Drums are interesting - like they’re recorded in a different room from the rest of the tracks. A palace’s bathroom, it sounds like. It’s P’s version of straight rock, but seriously fucking funky - and it constantly steps up a gear with a minor key change that blasts adrenaline through the listener’s veins. Vocally, he’s as loose as Bowie’s trousers in the Let’s Dance video - improvising over a groove tighter than Bowie’s trousers in Labyrinth.

P’s letting off steam, wisecracking to Susan, or whoever is present, with some genuinely amusing, infectious improv. ’Blanche you aint been driven till u tried my ride!’ ‘My name is Stanley! Aggggghhhhhhhhh! Yeah!’ ‘My name is desire! Blanche - u got me on fire! Aooow!’ And it’s just that riff, continually, hypnotically … married to that astonishing key change where he ups the tempo. Don’t expect much melody here - it’s all about the groove. Some deep, dubby bass runs late in the song too. A breakdown arrives, then some ridiculously funky bass takes over the groove - not quite slap funk, but not ‘Minneapolis rumble’ either. Somewhere in between, sounds bloody amazing. And that riff just keeps going. Then …it slows dooooooown. Doooooooooowwwwwwwwnnnn. The groove goes with it. That weird P mating call again. ‘Agggghhhhhh!’ Then he says: ‘Ah fuck it, Blanche.’

We hear studio laugher at the flippancy of it and the song is over. Wow. Why’s Prince decompressing like this? Well, again, it was Sunday and he’d just recorded Sign O The Times earlier. Yes, another marathon session where P felt he couldn’t walk away under a cloud, so he’d simply catch a good vibe before leaving the studio. What a groove to just casually create after recording one of the greatest singles of the 80s. GOAT.

6. “Soul Psychodelicide”

Soul Psychdelicide is unrecognisable in comparison to the better-known Graffiti Bridge take, but we already know that. This is The Flesh getting seriously hypnotic and heavy. This earlier version is not in distribution amongst traders as a 60 minute epic, but this 12 minute edit of what is a truly monster groove kicks off with Prince shouting ‘Ice Cream!!’ at the top of his lungs and a wildly thunderous drum motif kicks in - which P will shout for numerous times throughout to recalibrate a Godzilla groove that’d make the dead on another planet dance. It’s so heavy ... deep, masculine funk - performed live in a nice hollowy studio room, probably his house studio ... it has a live warmth. Recorded so incredibly well, it sounds HUGE. Drumming is outrageous - especially that drum roll hook, it actually sounds like Michael B lol, who must have been just a boy at the time. Would actually have loved to hear Michael play this one.

It’s just outrageously, obscenely funky. P’s crafted a song from a jam much the same way he did with It’s Gonna Be A Beautiful Night - presenting this one in three distinct acts - the first, a steely, huge m muscular groove with P shouting that ‘Ice Cream!’ motif when he needs to hear that astonishingly heavy and thunderous drum roll. He fucking loves it, clearly.

Then it gets ... funkier. Stankier. Heady. Go well with a smoke, I’d imagine. You will pull an ugly face. Many times. Sounds like Wally and/or Brooks vocalising, doing a wildly head-nod-worthy Bobby Bird-esque ‘Soul Psychodelicide - it’s a hell of a thang’. Prince shouts ‘Keep singing!’ as Lisa and Wendy do their drone bot cold but deeply funky ‘Soul Psychodelicide’ dead voice repetitions. It’s Teutonic, Germanic, ice cold. With some ‘Beautiful Night’ horn riffs thrown in, which likely originated here.

Then the third movement - Eric appears from nowhere, and fucking takes over this shit. Ripping though every funk scale he knows, ascending to groove heaven, serpentine squeals, outrageously in the zone shit. By this point, around 8 minutes in, the groove is Hypnotic. ‘It’s a hell of a thing’ Wally and/or Brooks repeats again. And, you’re seriously fucking spot on Wally and/or Brooks, it is. It’s a hell of a thing.

Then, the conclusion to the third act ... P breaks the groove down. A new Eric motif plays and the bass n drums take dominance - keeping it outrageously tight for about two minutes. Then, P demands just guitars and drums - nothing else. He gets it. My God, it gets low and weird and nasty. ‘Get dat horn blowing’ P interrupts and then everything kicks in once more - EVERYTHING. A weird ghost horn - added in the studio afterwards no doubt - follows the lead line. A deep, dubby bass groove now dominates. Then, all the vocals burst in - ‘Soul!’ ‘It’s a hell of a thing!’ Prince screams ‘Ice creeeeeam!’ And that fucking awesome carnivorous, room-eating, universe-silencing drum roll busts in again ... along with, extremely late in the day, the first blast of synths. ‘It’s alright’ P shouts. Then, a showy Vegasy horn turnaround and Prince casually quips ‘On the one’. The band stop dead, tight as Jaws’s arsehole.

Fucking hell, what just happened?

7. “The Ball”

‘Welcome 2 the crystal ball. Got any notions about the way things are? Give em up and come on y’all! BALL!’, the preacher in P extols. After asserting that this is a Brand New Thing, Prince extends an invite for his flock to a new Uptown, ushering willing partygoers to a ‘Crystal Ball’, a wondrous event/place free of ideology, dogma and preconceived notions of reality on how things should be. Whereas ‘Uptown’ was street, urban wonderland and Paisley Park a hippyish, flowery playground, this is an etherial slip between the folds in reality, a secret party that perhaps can only exist in one’s own imagination. Where everyone reflects the joy you feel yourself, one nation of believers under your groove.

He’s also telling us that this is NEW by advising listeners to give up their notions of how things are - in the intro - to let it sink in a while, to give it time, to swim deep in what’s to come, not to judge, that gratification will be the reward for getting down with this cosmic new power generation vibe. Along with the soon-to-be-mentioned When The Dawn Of The Morning Comes and Walkin In Glory, this is Prince finally moving out of his period of minimalist, skeletal deconstructionist modern pop - and even his habit of stripping down his most joyous creations to bare bones (Big Tall Wall/Forever In My Life). It’s bubble bath of crystalline, airy, light psycho-funk, carried along with an elastic, addictive bassline, bouncy, tribal drums and weird guitar distortions that keeps the groove grounded as finger cymbals punctuate and Lovesexy-esque sound effects abound from the Fairlight - filling in the gaps while Eric and Atlanta are granted freedom to stretch out over an airy, slightly discombobulating wide open space of a groove. ‘Ball! Ball! Ball! Come on!’

Those incomparable Prince harmonies gasp throughout the spaces in the groove. It’s insanely busy … but spacey, not claustrophobic at all. Joyful. Fun guitar solo deep in the mix is great, thunderous, ruckus, celebratory. Buried like treasure. Plenty of room for everyone to get a piece in this jam - to think this was recorded just a few days after the thunderous jungle funk of Soul Psychedelic shows a near bipolar shift of moods, that funk can suit any emotion. This vibe is heavenly and pure - crystalline funk - while Soul Psychodelicide is a sonic hard-on, reeking of sweat and sperm. Both are Prince recreating that JB vibe he was obsessed by in his youth with his own idiosyncratic touch, but song tunes are different sides of the same coin. While SP is the sound of the night, this is a future soul song bathing in some creator being’s shining light, a synthetic gospel stomp that sounds like it was recorded in a cathedral floating in the sky, carried through the clouds on a prism of rainbow light.

‘Keep singing y,all! Keep singin’ y’all!’ Although this song would have fit in with the original 3CD Crystal Ball set lyrically and thematically, I think this would still have been the odd man out - even in that wildly eclectic set. Then again, it would maybe have served as a better opener than Rebirth Of The Flesh. Although perhaps not the better song. It’s stadium avant-funk, a proto - Eye Know, obviously - and essentially the first track recorded for Lovesexy before the idea of Lovesexy even existed - with a joyous, most-complex-than-it-sounds ‘All for one, one for all, fun for everyone’ multitracked P chant recycled from Sheila E’s Romance 1600, which in turn was nicked from Alexandre Dumas. But you knew that I’m sure. In this track, we’ve entered the church of Prince, where no worshipper is expected to sit down - dancing room only. Excuse me while we kiss the sky. It’s Prince in the heat of his latest evolution. Animals struck curious poses.

8. “Adonis And Bathsheba”

Remember the Flake advert from the 80s? The girl in the bath eating the chocolate bar, inside a Greek palace, exotic fruits, ancient pillars, marble floors? It’s a ready-made video for this outrageously sumptuous, grandiose, harmonically generous declaration of utter desire.Another example of a song that no-one else but Prince could write or perform without looking a bit foolish. Eric is majestic accompanying on one of Prince’s most erotic - but not filthy - lyrics about the sheer madness of unbridled lust. ‘There is no bed, how do they…? They decide to stand!’ Then that thousand-strong choir of Ps gliding though the lushness, observing this passion from over like a flight of angels - it’s exhilarating, heavenly, almost too much. Susan Rogers thought it OTT, saccharine even - but I think that’s missing the point. It is OTT - but P is aware. The guitar lines halfway through attempt to anchor the track back to Earth somewhat with some abrasiveness, but as soon at that harmony hook kicks in again, it’s beaten, not matter how hard he fights himself by shredding like fuck. He’s trying to match the all-encompassing intensity of such lust - perhaps an emotion so deep that it’s unrecognisable to Susan, and, most people? To these ears, it sound like the type of love that only exists in art, the purest love, without the darkest elements of jealously, envy, possessiveness or eventual parting through death. What love could, and should be. And, undoubtedly, that final screaming guitar note ringing out is clearly him coming lol.

9. “Forever In My Life (early vocal studio run-through)”

A jaunty bar-room piano riff greets us here, but it’s a rope-a-dope - the instrument disappears completely after the first bar - gone. It was only there to tease, to throw you, playing with expectations. Or Susannah’s expectations. Because I can imagine her being very surprised by what she heard next. Suddenly we get a warm, full, grounded declaration of maturity and commitment. Lovely, almost Carpenters-style harmonies (this time, in time with the music lol) but that jarring, slightly sharp ‘la la da da da da da daa’ hook serves to wake us up - there’s angst here, still. But the performance is genuinely emotional and honest - persuasive. I believe him. And I don;t always believe Prince - at lot of P is performance. And that’s great, but when you get a genuine piece of raw emotion like the first half of this song, it can be uncomfortable intimate, like it wasn’t really intended for fans’ ears.

The skeletal proto-groove of the SOTT movie’s long jam on Forever In My Life is here, as we all now know, and is underpinned by a slightly threatening bassline - it’s certainly not as carefree in vibe as the first half. There’s foreboding. A storm on the horizon. It’s not a ‘jam’ as such, it’s turbulence. A sonic indicator that all is not carefree in this relationship. It’s two parts are complementary though, which is probably how he felt the relationship worked. Lovely acoustic plucking sweetens the dark tone of the last minute of this ‘jam’, reminiscent of the way he put the same hook at the very end of the album version. And talking of that version, it’s obvious to me that it’s like a negative print of this version - similar to what he did with Big Tall Wall …. he stripped all the sweetness and life and warmth out. All the love. Made them as dark as he could musically. He was sending a message to Susannah, I think, by including that version of FIML on SOTT. He knew she would listen to it. That she would expect to hear that beautiful, warm song she heard that beautiful morning. But instead, she was confronted by something with all the life stripped out of it. He was telling her how he now felt. It was a clear - and cruel - message from a man who communicated in music.

10. “Crucial (alternate lyrics)”

A more guitar-heavy version of Crucial with different verses, it’s that simple. The exact same melody all the way through, but with new lyrics replacing most of the verses. ‘I couldn't watch your body for fear of losing/ the burning heart of my sweet baby’s perfume’ Not, it’s not the greatest lyric. ‘I aint saying anything till I cop/Our bodies entwined/ That’s when you'll be mine/ Always, for all time/ Cruuuuucial’ The sitary hook is still there, but with added distorted guitar, much in the same way as Adonis and Bathsheba, building up in the background to dirty up the sweetness. The ‘knock at the door’ lyric and drum tap-tap-tap is intact and the second verse’s ‘Ill give u mine if u give me urs’ line is too. But the bridge is different completely: ‘Everything ur mama taught me/ Babe u gotta tell me so’ ‘Ur body is a river/I want every drop/Cruuuucial’

After the second chorus, that astonishing ‘la la lah la la lah lalalala la laaaa’ harmony is still there in all its glory, an stunning an accomplishment as it ever was, then the guitar solo takes us on a journey. This is Crucial, so it’s beautiful - rawer than Crystal Ball 1997, but not demoish, this is a full production. The solo essentially just mirrors Eric’s horn in the boot version, or rather Eric echoes it. The song fades at about the same spot as the CB version. This isn’t essential, but I’m glad it’s here - it’s a revealing insight into P’s editing prowess and the ability to spot lyrics that need polished. It’s good to know that he didn’t think everything he did was great first time.

11. “The Cocoa Boys”

The U Got The Look synths sound crystal clear, like the leaked version forming a bed of harmony that lets throughout the song, but this is a much fuller-boded version of the boot. Extra parts, more muscular rhythm, a deep rumbling bass dominting. This is finished. But … I’m not sure about it. I’m not big on P’s vocal delivery here. He’s trying to narrate a story about an imaginary battle of the bands, but it’s just not very compelling lyrically. P also sounds very nasally at times. And, no, he doesn’t ‘mouth’ the horns here - they’re real here. It’s a big production - he’s spent time and effort on it. The chorus is catchy, fun and funky but - to these ears - is too busy with instrumentation and crowd noises. Those nice very high-pitched harmonies are the end of the chorus are very ‘avant purple’ though, love that element. Some fans will absolutely love this as it sounds utterly unlike most of P’s official output.

It’s clearly experimental, and some of it really works, and the bass is outrageously good, interesting horns that change constantly - maybe too constantly. It never seems to nail down a form it’s comfortable with. Perhaps too many ideas for one song - certainly, like Witness 4 The Prosecution 2, much of it was later recycled. The Detroit Crawl gets a shout out, then the Wooden Leg. But this is not the great battle of the bands P thinks it is, I don't think. The Kangaroo also gets a mention - the Cocoa Boys are clearly great dancers. But so what? Near the end, we get the ‘All the boys, and all the girls, you are the new kings of the world’ chant from Lovesexy, which is interesing. ‘Every king must share his prize!’ Prince shouts near the end. ‘Everybody share the prize’! The crowd chant. The band go silent. Then they come back in with an outrageously funky groove and complex horn layering, then …’You are beautiful! It’s gonna be a beautiful night!’. Yes, the chorus from the SOTT song. So many parts, great parts, but to me it doesn’t make a cohesive whole. You might love it though so don’t get downhearted.

12. “When The Dawn Of The Morning Comes”

Think this particular P vibe - The Voice Inside and Trust. Mad, frantic, breathless percussion, only with a full voiced main vocal ghosted by a falsetto version. ‘There’ll be joy and fun, love and joy, when the dawn of the morning comes!’ he exhaults, following by the chasing falsetto about a second behind. Its weird and wonderful. The falsetto ghost sometimes even jumps ahead, like a hype voice, Bobby Bird or something, anticipating and then calling on P’s main ‘head voice’ vocal. Its gospel in roots, but this is an avant purple production. Really uptempo, sparkling fanfare synths throughout, mad computer percussion floating in and out the mix.

‘There’ll be so much happy/When the morn' comes’ Not really deep lyrically, but it doesn;t have to be - the message is simple, it doesn;t need dressing up. It’s joy in enlightenment, in faith, in Tha Lawd. Musically, it’s fascinaitng. Clearly all P. Midway through, a huge gospel rave-up kicks off, huge multitrack vocals invade fro the stars, P harmonises with a million versions of himself, countless handclaps keep the groove, syncopated beautfully with the insane rhythm, like hummingbird wings, …. then a magical drum and percussion section offers a release, a euphoric rush. P then takes the guitar out and puts in a little funk then … an astonishing break of light as the percussion once again comes to the fore … Christ this is good. A real natural serotonin high.

Then, a small build-up with warm synths, chorus some in again, a breakdown to the drums and precision - very Voice Inside/Trust (but better than Trust - richer, deeper, more interesting things going on, it’s a sonic trip). You genuinely want this groove to last forever. ‘Everybody lets work!’ P says, sampling himself. Then a huge church organ blatantly steals the show by holding down a chord for about 30 second while the rhythm builds up louder again. It gets bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger…still holding down that damn chord ‘Open ur eyes!’ P shouts.’Im gonna … I’m gonna be there when the dawn of the morning comes! Every day!’ ‘What a day! What a day! Oh what a day!’ And …groove to fade. Mental and wonderful. The feeling you get when you fall in love, not with girl or boy, but the heavens above … this, like the Ball, was Prince turning into something else before Susan Rogers eyes. What a trip.

13. “Witness 4 The Prosecution (version 2)”

Again, like Forever In My Life and Big Tall Wall, P returns to a previously recorded and ‘finished’ Susannah song and strips all warmth out of it, leaving an ice cold groove that’s clearly a proto-Bob George (and used for parts for a few other future songs). It stands on its own feet, but the fact that P would go on to strip away its component parts for many other tunes makes it fascinating for Prince afficados. Genuinely interesting Hot Thing-esque interplay between the the guitar/synth and Eric’s horn in the middle break. ‘If I couldn't be near you/ If I couldn't feel U/ I wanted what was yours/ But now I just want you to care’ This relationship is over, he’s saying. It’s a post-mortem. Prince was trying to figure it all out the only way he knew how, through his music. ‘I will go to the electric chair!’ - a slice of raw electro funk that a young Trent Reznor would have dug, with many inspired ideas floating in around in the mix.

14. “It Be’s Like That Sometimes”

A big, huge playful, laidback, languid groove kicks in and immediately you feel you’ve known this tune all your life. It’s an instantly likable and cosily familiar song, readymade for radio stations in the summer. a light, slightly strained (deliverately), high falsetto verse talks about how life isn't all its cracked up to be sometimes but ‘It be like that sometimes’. Second verse has got a great guitar accompaniment that’s thrown in the mix, some great jazzy playing, genuinely great. Awesome chord change into the chorus, but the initial big airy groove remains constant through the song, he just paints on top of it. Lovely middle eight with shimmery xylophone/piano rainfall break, a scream then a verse - all sang in the same scratchy high end pitch as he does on Rave Unto The joy fantastic - might be too screechy for some , but it’s cool - then a yeah yeah yeah breakdown to the end. Deep P voice ‘It be’s like that sometimes y’all.’ Nice flamboyant piano solo at the end and it fades. Its great - a simple but infectious big groove embellished tastefully and artfully. A potential summer hit that never was.

wonderful stuff. a true poet of our times. i wish some other people (they know who they are) valued this man's wonderful input as much as we do.

Fantastic review 23. Thank you!!!

lustmealways said:

wonderful stuff. a true poet of our times. i wish some other people (they know who they are) valued this man's wonderful input as much as we do.

You make a great CASEy. I will MILITANTly stand behind #23.

Fantastic review

I hereby request the Estate give Number23 advance access to all upcoming super deluxes. Amazing writing!

I think I'm going to be head over heels for "When the Dawn of the Morning Comes". It sounds right up my alley as I love "Trust" a ton.

Moonbeam said:

thank you

lustmealways said:

[Off topic - luv4u]

-

He was just saying that Number23 is just passionately discribing the music

in such an appreciative way by most here want more (read the comments).

By the way I'm now even more curious to hear that wonderful newly discribed "The Ball" & ''Soul Psychodelicide".

So I say, again and again, thank you so much Number23.

You make me really happy !

And I'm not alone.

What a wonderful divine way of trying to put this unheard music into words what my ears need right now !

Peace to all.

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[Edited 9/14/20 23:31pm]

this so makes me want to hear it already... I often have different opinions than others about songs, so I'm wondering if I agree with #23's wonderful review!

ThirdStrike said:

Listen, this says something about this guy 23. He gets banned unjustly. And instead of taking his ball and going home, he takes our wants and desires into consideration and finds a way to still contribute...for us members. Not the Mods...not the Founder. But for us. He’s a hell of a good dude, and maybe it’s he who should moderate and they should be the banished ones. Thanks homie. I appreciate you. 💪🏼