I mean, it begs the question... WHY?

I know.
Throwing in a couple of un-needed remixes doesn't help much either.

When the guy has sooo much music sitting in a vault, and he decides to finally release some stuff from the vaults, why the FUCK would he make each cd 45 minutes instead of filling up each disc?! Why is he holding on to this music?!

The album has no flow whatsoever... Old tracks followed by new tracks... and those remixes... PUKE!

It coulda been so great but alas...

Romance1600 said:

Yeah, each song on that album deserves to stand alone with no segues and stuff.

I don't think I'll ever recover from that moment I heard
"Moviestar" start off with "Jam Of The Year" in the BG..

I felt my heart sink to my feet, where it tried to leave
through my toes.

What a damn shame.

WHY?? WHY?? WHY???

I see what you guys mean, but i like a few of the remixes like "So Dark", "18 & Over" and "Lovesign"(better than the original). As a whole though, it does kinda seem "slapped" together. The sequencing of 'The Truth' isn't bad.

OdysseyMiles said:

'So Dark' I love, the rest ain't particularly good though.
'18 & Over' is pretty cool too I suppose.

Yes, Prince said it would all be previously unreleased and bootlegged material and he lied. The remixes were shit and "Good Love" had already been released. He has hundreds of unreleased songs, yet he doesn't fill up the CDs and pads the release with filler remixes...just maddening.

Terrible. 'Days of wild' into 'last heart' is shocking.

You can blame the editing problems on Hans Martin Buff, his lousy engineer from that period. Everything Buff did was edited poorly and sounds overdriven. His big trick was to get as much volume on the pressed end product as possible and it all sounded so maxed out that it actually clips in places if you listen carefully.

As far as the previously bootlegged statement; all those remixes had appeared on some form of pirated release, so that was all true. The "Fate" bootleg in particular had "18 and Over", "P Control" and "Lemme See That Body Get Loose". The "Love Sign" remix was available on the Lovesign promo CD sold by collectors at conventions and the "Tell Me How U Wanna Be Done" remix was part of The Purple Medley, which had been pirated over the 'net. The only one that I personally hadn't heard of before was the "So Dark" one which the majority of people seem to appreciate. The set contained more than just the previously bootlegged material promised and no they didn't sound like the original bootlegs we had because Buff 'improved' them - ala "Movie Star".

yeah, and cutting the first note off the beginning of 'The Ride'
was the limit!

I'm so glad somebody finally mentioned this. Or maybe they have before and I missed it. The album has no cohesion whatsoever. I jumps around and is barely listenable from disc to disc. I had to pick cuts from it and make my own mix.

Well, if it wasnt for this i wouldve never known Good Love even existed!


and tell me yall dont dig Clorren Bacon Skin? Dream Factory & Crystal Ball is better on here, but yeah, i had 2 dig and find the best ones on here 2

The Truth is awesum

violator said:

Which is exactly what these releases are ultimately bound
to end up like.

People just pick the songs from their favorit era and put
them on a disc together with other tunes or albums coming
from that time period.

This album was basically just a mix of org Crystal Ball &
Come/Gold era songs. With a few Emancipation cuts on the
side.

What I found rather disappointing about this release was
the inclusion of all those remixes when he could have put
on a few more songs from different eras, like a cut from
the Batman era and a cut from Diamonds&Pearls or a demo
from the Grafitty Bridge or original Rave period.

Or even one or two completely new songs for all I care,
just not those rehashed tunes. The proverbial drop here
is "Tell Me How U Wanne B Done". That is such a lame and
utter wasted excuse for a filler track that it's hard to
conceive how on earth he could have even come up with it,
let alone include it on this collection.

Frankly, I could have also done without the P Control mix
or the completely ruined version of "Dark" and the middle
of the road "Lovesign" remix.

For a Prince outtake collection, after all the bragging
about the vault, it was a rather poor cherry picking we
were offered.

As was to be expected, the Crystal Ball era tracks are
the ones that are most worth having in good soundquality
although the tampering kind of watered down the magic of
some of them.

Last, but certainly not least, the inclusion of "The Truth"
as an extra disc was what -imo- saved this release from
being a total gonner. A fantastic, cohesive and very very
good album of new material that, in a way, showed more of
Prince as a human being than the 30 odd outtakes that were
supposed to shed some light on the Prince as we got to
know him from his major releases.

IstenSzek said:

And there you have it, in a very large nutshell! 5's

paisleypark4 said:

Don't credit this crappy album with that.

You would have come across the track eventually considering it's been officially released since 1988.

Wow...

I thought it was a pretty cool collection.I dont like every track either, but I rarely like every track on any album of Prince's.There's usually as least one I dont care for.Im happy to have "official" versions of most of the songs tho.Particularly "Crucial" and the title track.

paisleypark4 said:

Well, there are people who don't know that Controversy exists, but that doesn't mean he should put it on a new album...it would just be a waste of space like Good Love was.

There are certainly some gems on Crystal Ball and I'm glad he released it, but it was just SO much LESS than it should have been and than he claimed it would be.

Plus do you remember the beautiful, display case that the set was supposed to come with? It turned out to be a cheap acrylic container...lol...

The "Crystal Ball fiasco" was probably the low point in the way Prince treats his fans. There are other low points as well and many high points of course, but that was absolutely the worst. Just the way he said it was exclusive to Internet/phone orders and then he began selling it in the stores for $30, before early $50 Internet orders had even been filled.

I refused shipment of mine and disputed the charge on my credit card. I bought it in the store for $30. Then Paisley Park was so screwed up that they credited my card twice, so I ended up making $50 on the ordeal! oh my god, what a mess that was.

Prince has always been great at making music, but somehow he just can't find competent people to work for him at times.


.
[This message was edited Wed Dec 10 15:02:55 PST 2003 by TonyC]

Don't forget how "Crucial" was messed with as well. I can understand not having the horn in there, but to cut the song down to a minimum amount of time when you have roughly 30 more minutes left on the disk you could fill??? WTF???

The sequencing on Crystal ball is very bad.
The lame remixes are very bad, the lame 45 minutes per disc is very bad, the lame claim the songs were all "bootlegs" is very bad, the lame editing is very bad, the lame Emancipation outtakes are very bad, the lame container is very bad, the lame handling of the shipping was very bad, the lame claim it was an exclusive internet release was very bad, and so on and on...
The only exception is 'The truth', but that wasn't offically a part of it. Crystal Ball could have been very good, but it turned out to be very lame and very bad.

IstenSzek said:

I found myself banging my head into a wall.

And what about the silly editing?

I agree,the sequencing on this project is really,really bad.This set has many problems...


***Why include remixes at all? They're totally unnecesary and not the least bit interesting.

***Why is "Good Love" presented in a lame edited version?

***Why do we hear music from a 1996 song ("Jam Of The Year") at the beggining of a 1985 outtake ("Movie Star)"?

***the songs should really be in chronological order.

***Where are the REALLY good outtakes like "ExtraLovable","Open Book","Moonbeam Levels","Lisa","She's Just A Baby",etc??


'Crystal Ball' is essential and there are some fine moments throughout.But it could have been much,much better.

MrTation said:

This is about the bad editing, songs cut off at the end/start, lack of chronology in the track order and so forth.

I'm not defending the choice of songs or the terrible sequencing but, I think the reason Prince did it like that was to "prove a point" that his new music was just as good as his old stuff - hence the mixing up of old and new and the overlapping to try and create a whole and unified feel to the "concept" album. It failed miserbly but I can just imagine what Prince said to his engineers - "make it sound fresh and flowing, I don't want it to sound like a has-been doing a career retrospective". Personally I would have preferred each track to stand alone with no dubbing or editing. I don't so much mind the remixes and live stuff as long as it didn't interfere with the classic studio stuff e.g. Movie Star, Last heart, crucual ... Although I'd prefer just straight studio classics (Witness, Neon Telephone, the line, big tall wall, xtra lovable, grand progression, old friends (orig.), moonbeam levels, sex of it, mutiny, Baby you're a trip, I could go on!)

Maybe he'll do a new outtake set and make it right this time!!!