Diamonds And Pearls - SuperDeluxe Edition

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Reply #150 posted 10/29/23 7:05am

JoeyCococo

themanfromneptune said:

Did I like the unreleased songs on Prince's album? Are they important stuff?

They are interesting, there are fewer hidden jewels than the previous SDEs, even fewer pieces that fans were waiting for but - with a view to having an increasingly complete picture of Prince's music-making - this collection offers moments of enjoyable music and here and there also thrilling.

But what's inside?
Meanwhile there are a series of pieces that are closer to the sound of the original album, alternative versions or pieces that were designed for the album's initial setlists: Cream, Live 4 Love, Daddy Pop, Insatiable, Horny Pony, Thunder, The Last Dance (a reworking of Jughead), Diamonds & Pearls are presented in unreleased versions alongside pieces like Schoolyard and Something Funky which were in the initial configuration of the album. This part alternates interesting pieces, reworks that in some cases were as successful as those later put on the album (Insatiable), and useless things, like the one minute longer version of the tacky title track or the bare one of the overrated Cream. Note the delicate instrumental ballet included in Thunder Ballet and the version of Schoolyard which is not the one that has been around as a bootleg for years, but is more complete here.

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A second group of songs which - listening to the various CDs - I find to have their own compactness, are a series of secondary songs which, put together, would create a "normal" pop album with jazz/rnb nuances from the late eighties. Listening to these pieces in succession I had the impression of finding myself in front of a multiverse where Prince had started making, instead of Diamonds & Pearls, a generic album with semi-electronic production. Keyboards, drum machines, backing vocals and production a la Boy George, Cameo, or other MTV rotation music. I'm talking about songs like Get Blue, Skip To My You My Darling, Tip 'O My Tongue, Hey U, The Voice, Trouble, Pain, Open Book. An album with this tracklist would have been an excellent "normal" commercial album by Prince, to which you could also add things like Martika Kitchen, Spirit or Don't Say U Love Me, which however already have a more nineties sound. They are mostly pieces that Prince then gave to other singers and which here and there send out some flashes of their own beauty: the jazzy voice in Pain, the groove of Trouble and Hey U, the absolute and dreamy pop of Open Book.

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A third group could be that of the "monsters", unreleased songs, demos and oddities: the coarse rap with decelerated vocals of Work That Fat, the very elegant blues of I Pledge Allegiance to Your Love, the unexpected jazz of Letter 4 Miles and the rock of Darkside and Blood on the Sheets, the demo (still very bare) of Standing at the Altar and the fiery one of Streetwalker, the unreleased (still unfinished) of Alice Through the Looking Glass with its minor chords, the witness of that which will be Gett Off with the feet still in Love Machine and a refrain taken from Lovesexy (Glam Slam '91), the out-of-time ballad of Hold Me and - perhaps - the two best pieces on the album, Lauriann and My Tender Heart, a slow, saccharine and passionate and an absolutely radio-friendly and energetic pop-rock piece. They are all songs that don't belong together, they wouldn't have made sense on the album but which show our multiple musical interests even in the unfortunate, artistically speaking, early nineties. No one could really believe that the same person went on to record such different things musically from one day to the next, such as styles, voice registers, instrumentations..

And - despite all this stuff - a lot of it is missing. There is always a question of what was or was not included in a collection of this type, but it remains inexplicable why songs from this period such as I Wonder and above all I Hear Your Voice were excluded.

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A good triple to add to the collection of released songs, but still waiting for the next one. There are still eras full of things that have barely been touched: Gold and Parade to name two. Let's hope we don't have to wait years to get them in overpriced packages like this very expensive SDE.

This was a fair review. Amazing one person could do so many kinds of songs. My guess is I Wonder and I Hear Your Voice did not get recorded within the parameters set for this project. In fact, I am very sure considering some things Duane has said.

SoulAlive	My copy arrived yesterday this is a very nice package
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SoulAlive	KingSausage said: My sets are supposed to arrive from Amazon today. In the meantime, I've streamed the whole thing. I love this set. A lot. I was expecting to be underwhelmed. Is it perfect? No. Speak of the devil, Amazon literally just delivered my sets while I typed this post. hey KS,how ya doing buddy? Long time no see.
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dbpdexter	ganster glam is incomplete without clokin the jizz how do you not include clockin the jizz but include dj fades we don't need AKA PDEXTER
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