LoveGalore said:

LoveGalore said:

'Why do the SOTT outtakes feel so disconnected from the album?'

because they're not outtakes in the true sense of the word?
They weren't 'taken out' of of a proposed config of the album, like Days o' Wild and Acnowledge Me with The Gold Experience

[Edited 9/6/22 1:07am]

EnDoRpHn said:

LoveGalore said:

On a long road trip home today, I was playing the outtakes discs on the SOTT SDE. One thing I noticed was that these don't feel connected to the actual album at all m, especially compared to the 1999 and Purple Rain expansions (and of note, several of those PR ones were actually finished after PR was released). Why is that? At first I thought it might be because it's an incomplete collection of songs from 5 different projects - some, completely unrelated to SOTt. Then I just started to wonder, "what is the story the estate is trying to tell with this release?" It actually feels like they decided to appease the Revolution by releasing what amounts to the final Revolution album AND the solo stuff Prince was recording for a transitional album between SOTT and Lovesexy. Thoughts?

You hit it on the nose. No way who was being paid didn’t factor into the selections. But along the same lines, Prince basically scrubbed the Revolution from the final album tracks. It’s well-known he re-recorded any songs on which they had involvement. The lone exception is IGBABN, but the live concert track on which it’s based is skeletal in comparison to the heavily overdubbed release.

'Appease the Rev'... Listening to the podcast, this seemed to be the case

.

'Scrubbed the Rev from the final tracks'....this only applies to one track as far as I know; Strange Relationship.

.

Also, like already stated a lot of the tracks were not actual outtakes. Biggest example being the tracks given to Bonnie Raitt. Even though it was good to get them they had no business being on there really

dodger07 said:

EnDoRpHn said:

LoveGalore said: You hit it on the nose. No way who was being paid didn’t factor into the selections. But along the same lines, Prince basically scrubbed the Revolution from the final album tracks. It’s well-known he re-recorded any songs on which they had involvement. The lone exception is IGBABN, but the live concert track on which it’s based is skeletal in comparison to the heavily overdubbed release.

'Appease the Rev'... Listening to the podcast, this seemed to be the case

.

'Scrubbed the Rev from the final tracks'....this only applies to one track as far as I know; Strange Relationship.

.

Also, like already stated a lot of the tracks were not actual outtakes. Biggest example being the tracks given to Bonnie Raitt. Even though it was good to get them they had no business being on there really

He didn't scrub much if any Wendy, Lisa and Susannah contributions and I don't think the rest of the Revolution had much input in it anyway.

dodger07 said:

uhh SOTT was all over the place as an album anyway, and these tracks are all from the same sessions.

waht did you want to see on there?

I'd agree that SOTT was all over the place. It seemed that there was just so much going on during that post-Parade era.

As far as the outtakes, I'll say this: we know SOTT as it is, but had he put some of those songs on there as DF or CB or whatever, we'd know it as that, and maybe think other songs from the sessions (that were on the album, etc) were weird or out of context. So in short, that part is about perspective.

To think "Raspberry Beret" was written three years before it was released, in a very different period of his musical aesthetic is one of those "out of context, but as we know it" moments.

I was recently talking to a friend from here, Fenwick, and he mentioned how he really loved the 1999 outtakes. They were connecting with him more and he was drawn to them more than the ones on PR or even SOTT. SOTT is a juggernaut, compared to a couple of disks of stuff on the other two. So it's sort of its own beast that way. It's hard to put it in perspective, I think.

I believe the estate isn't necessarily trying to tell a story, per se. They know, like we know, that plethora of material and projects from this period in Prince's life and career. To think that Parade was released on March 31, and its aural aesthetic, then almost a year to the day later, something like SOTT comes out. Totally different, two disks of material, a new band, a totally different sound, his first real live cut (meaning it was promoted and really celebrated as a live cut, whereas the stuff on PR never felt that way, because it was a movie soundtrack and why couldn't there be an audience in those songs?, ya know?). The stages that whole thing went through from one project to the next, to the next, whittling down songs, rearranging them, using different mixes, adding other songs. It's pretty incredible what SOTT became.

So the story is that a lot happened and was recorded in SOTT's orbit. What did he record, what was put on tape for the sake of it and what was a worthy contender for the album? That's all in there. So, because there's so much of that, the outtakes probably do feel disconnected. It's a bigger bang from the source than what we'd hear on PR or 1999 SDEs.

For me, the most cohesive outtakes or session songs are those on 1999. The quality is up there for 90% of it all. It dips - a lot - on the PR SDE, IMO.

im confused as to what would tell the story of SOTT better than other songs recorded around the same time.

i mean, he was really all over the map in this period. which is why there was so much material, and so much of it sounds totally diff to the other stuff.

you couldnt tell the story of it in any more coherent or similiar a fashion like with the 1999 and PR SDEs as he was mostly working with similiar production aesthetics and equipment during those years.

i think with SOTT, each track kind of has its own little world, so youd need songs that are like PITSS, hot thing, starfish n coffee etc, and i think mostly you do get little sets of songs that are related and connected.

the problem is prob the sequencing.

because prince chose the songs that went best together for SOTT ... u can hack up the SDEs and sequence several separate cohesive albums .. i have and they sound good as stand alone records ...

id be interested in alt takes, as with computer blue.

re: demos, the general consensus is that prince started and finished songs mostly (which is prob true), without much in the way of demo-ing or earlier takes, but i mean, somehow theres a demo of kiss, so there must be others like that too.

the problem with the SDE is that the songs are sequenced in a pretty weird fashion with no care for the diff albums they are from, or session, or chronology, etc etc.

[Edited 9/6/22 12:06pm]

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

I think the reason is that none of these outtakes were ever finished in the sense of being released -- he shelved them. They are missing a level of detail that the finished songs on SOTT have, details he continued to refine until he felt comfortable with sending the track into the world. Some of the outtakes have not enough going on, others have too much. I think a lot of them could have been great on the album, but they would've needed several more passes and hours and hours work at least.

I don't think P was the kind of person to finish a song until he released it. Hence, even the version of Crucial on CB is more finished.

The mistake is sometimes thinking "he had all these finished songs in the vault." No. They were all in various states of finished but not final because he never put it out there, for whatever reason.

I've felt this way about the 1999 outtakes. They are amazing, just like those of SOTT, but none of them really work from beginning to end without running out of steam. The genius of Prince during this era was to know what a track needed to fit on a record -- and the outtakes show us that the raw materials, even when refined, aren't the same thing as when they are ready to ship into the world.

paraded said:

I think the reason is that none of these outtakes were ever finished in the sense of being released -- he shelved them. They are missing a level of detail that the finished songs on SOTT have, details he continued to refine until he felt comfortable with sending the track into the world. Some of the outtakes have not enough going on, others have too much. I think a lot of them could have been great on the album, but they would've needed several more passes and hours and hours work at least.

I don't think P was the kind of person to finish a song until he released it. Hence, even the version of Crucial on CB is more finished.

The mistake is sometimes thinking "he had all these finished songs in the vault." No. They were all in various states of finished but not final because he never put it out there, for whatever reason.

I've felt this way about the 1999 outtakes. They are amazing, just like those of SOTT, but none of them really work from beginning to end without running out of steam. The genius of Prince during this era was to know what a track needed to fit on a record -- and the outtakes show us that the raw materials, even when refined, aren't the same thing as when they are ready to ship into the world.

yup.

i LOVE cosmic day, i think its easily one of the greatest songs from this period ive heard, but its obvious he didnt totally finish it - its lacking whatever he would have done in giving it that final draft.

so i guess prince prob did make more songs than most artists that were 80% complete, but yeah, that final 20% makes a lot of difference.

he would also have made changes depending on where they fit on an album.

TrivialPursuit said:

I'd agree that SOTT was all over the place. It seemed that there was just so much going on during that post-Parade era.

As far as the outtakes, I'll say this: we know SOTT as it is, but had he put some of those songs on there as DF or CB or whatever, we'd know it as that, and maybe think other songs from the sessions (that were on the album, etc) were weird or out of context. So in short, that part is about perspective.

To think "Raspberry Beret" was written three years before it was released, in a very different period of his musical aesthetic is one of those "out of context, but as we know it" moments.

I was recently talking to a friend from here, Fenwick, and he mentioned how he really loved the 1999 outtakes. They were connecting with him more and he was drawn to them more than the ones on PR or even SOTT. SOTT is a juggernaut, compared to a couple of disks of stuff on the other two. So it's sort of its own beast that way. It's hard to put it in perspective, I think.

I believe the estate isn't necessarily trying to tell a story, per se. They know, like we know, that plethora of material and projects from this period in Prince's life and career. To think that Parade was released on March 31, and its aural aesthetic, then almost a year to the day later, something like SOTT comes out. Totally different, two disks of material, a new band, a totally different sound, his first real live cut (meaning it was promoted and really celebrated as a live cut, whereas the stuff on PR never felt that way, because it was a movie soundtrack and why couldn't there be an audience in those songs?, ya know?). The stages that whole thing went through from one project to the next, to the next, whittling down songs, rearranging them, using different mixes, adding other songs. It's pretty incredible what SOTT became.

So the story is that a lot happened and was recorded in SOTT's orbit. What did he record, what was put on tape for the sake of it and what was a worthy contender for the album? That's all in there. So, because there's so much of that, the outtakes probably do feel disconnected. It's a bigger bang from the source than what we'd hear on PR or 1999 SDEs.

For me, the most cohesive outtakes or session songs are those on 1999. The quality is up there for 90% of it all. It dips - a lot - on the PR SDE, IMO.

Agreed.

TrivialPursuit said:

LoveGalore said:

Agreed on the last points for sure. The 1999 sessions feel really tight and intentional.

That really nails it, doesn't it? I think since Controversy, he was really on a mission to get to a certain place. There was clear growth on an upward trajectory while maintaining incredible quality and diversity. It felt focused. The PR stuff and the SOTT was a bit more unleashed, unrestrained, no larger goal per se. It worked for the 1999 stuff.

rudeboy4711 said:

It’d be interesting to approach unreleased music in the SDEs chronologically by using the official release dates of albums as cutoff points so to speak. For example- Parade was officially released on 31 March 1986 and SOTT on 30 March 1987. All unreleased music recorded between those 2 dates could be included on SOTT SDE

I like the approach if Prince was that linear as you indeed mention with Big Tall Wall.
The end date for an album period is often more earlier with all the prep going on for a release so it would still be off.