We all hear about the wonderful vault. But equally, many collectors have heard a great deal of its contents. If ONE great album of classic outtakes was created, would the wonderful vault just be full of b sides and other tracks that could not make the cut?

Example. If NPGMC released the following album...

1. I Wonder
2. Empty Room
3. In A Large Room With No Light
4. Open Book
5. Theres Other Here With Us
6. Extra Loveable
7. Witness
8. Moonbeam Levels
9. All My Dreams
10. Electric Intercourse
11. A Place In Heaven
12. Wonderful Ass
13. Rebirth Of The Flesh
14. Dance With The Devil
15. The Grand Progression
16. Leaving For New York

Give or take a song or two, how much quality is left in the vault???

whatever's in the vault is usually there for a reason.

but i wouldn't be surprised if there is an instumental album in there that no one has ever heard about or am I just dreaming

Squirrel: I agree with you

Problem is, I don't think we'll ever know. So even if all these (admittedly great) songs were released, we'd still all be begging for more stuff we haven't heard, because the claims are that the best stuff is stuff we haven't even heard of...

Increasingly, I suspect "The Vault" is more a repository of cool guitar licks, piano riffs, beats, melodic themes and other promising disjointed elements than complete masterpieces most of which we haven't already heard. Given Prince's inconsistent musical turnout over the 90s, I just can't believe he willfully, repeatedly passed up stored-away gems to give us crap like "Jughead."

As an aside, though, with some embellishment and reworking, I'd have to add "Big Tall Wall" and "Heaven" (from the CHARADE boot) to the list of potentially great unreleased songs.
[This message was edited Thu Dec 18 8:26:56 PST 2003 by Lammastide]

Yeah, if I added personal choice, then Train, Heaven and I am the DJ would make it. But Equally, some people find those songs as appealing as "Do U Lie", so I left them off!

I think ,say 10 years from now, when he's "found" his most trusted "fans" (less than 20)...he'll invited them over and play them the vault tracks.


But until then it would be cool to have a "celebration" every year and have a "lstening" party. Have everyone strip searched for any recorders and let them
hear tracks. This would be cheap for him also--no CDs to manufacture.

I have rarely been disappointed with the outtakes I have heard from the 80's and frequently disappointed with outtakes from the 90's.

I think "The Vault" is a trick. I think there's what's out there in circulation, and then I think there's a small amount of semi-finished stuff that he protects with his life, and then there are the same pile of bits and scraps that any working musician would have. My image of The Vault as some kind of Wonka-like treasure trove went south quite a while back. I don't buy it anymore, or else Prince wouldn't be so stingy about the fate of the unreleased stuff we DO know about.




OH...And I love love LOVE "Train".

The only thing that would be left was just rarities for a fan base that decreases by the year.

Was the "Old Friends For Sale" CD really vaulted material? Or was it new material posing for older stuff? I liked that CD a lot. It was a present to me and probably the first "new" Prince CD I have owned since Diamonds And Pearls. I like it. Its better than most of his stuff that I've been hearing in recent years.

PapaSmurf said:

Its old stuff...

posing? haha

I think its real.

Somebody was quoted during that BBC Radio documentary, commenting on the number of unreleased videos he's made.

The Kevin Smith thing too - how much footage did he shoot and where is it?

Remember, its not just music but videos too.

I don't think the question should be "Is there a Vault?" but "Is there anything in it still?". I wouldn't be surprised if he was systematically erasing anything which doesn't fit his current beliefs.

Sdldawn said:

Sorry. I couldn't think of a better word.

PapaSmurf said:[quote]

Sdldawn said:

I know what you meant.

You only have to look at the Uptown books to see that there is a wealth of unreleased material, hundreds of complete songs and alternative versions.

Add that to all the unreleased videos, concert recordings, rehersal recordings, finished and unfinished albums, configurations, and abandonded side-projects.

*sigh*

i think without a doubt there is a huge vault of material in there and to date i have most of the tracks listed in Uptown [not different versions of existing tracks] and some a really great. It beggars belief sometimes that some real gems just sit there waiting for 'the spirit' to tell him to release them. The scary thing of course is that with LGs influence has Prince erased some of the 'real erotic' Prince tracks.

SquirrelMeat said:

there's stuff in the vault we have never even heard titles for. prince can record music faster than most of us can listen, so the vault ain't no myth. believe it!

He's run out of excuses for not releasing them, the ball has been in his court for several years now.

The mysterious vault phenomenon is really wearing thin, and to be honest, im somewhat bored with the bootlegged tracks since Ive had them for over 10 years now.

Tom said:

its not his fault you're bored of them. he goes on and on about not wanting to live in the past etc so maybe sometimes he gets excited and thinks yes ill release old stuff, but then thinks nah. he said right away about the miles davis stuff he'll release it some day just not now and he doesnt know when. there are too many people going on about the vault, not just prince,for it to be fake

plus, its like, people think he's recording less now cos you hear less. maybe he just guards it better, or cares more about it. its not like he recorded just 12 tracks or whatever for TRC etc. he will havetonnes of shit from every album leftover. i dont know why he doesnt release it, he probably cant fully afford to but then again why not as downloads? id guess cos he wants a legacy, the vault is, in a sense, his mealticket for the rest of his life.

no one truly knows what happens bar prince and very few others. and often hindsight is a magical thing!

Tom said:

I don't understand why he needs to have an excuse to begin with. It's his product he can do with it what he wants. Would I like to hear it, sure, but that doesn't mean he has to do what I want.

Wasn't he suposed to record two new songs a day at one point?

Hard to believe maybe, but if it's true there could be thousands of songs collecting dust in that vault.

Marrk, if the newer songs in the vault are anything as bad as 'eye am the DJ' then lets hope they continue to collect dust.

javed said:

I agree with that. I have that on 'Fantasia'.Terrible.

softandwet said:

Universaluv said:

He spent several years complaining publicly about how he wanted to release all this great music he has building up in his vault but hit contracts and the record labels wouldnt let him.

Then once he was free, only a handful of those tracks ever got released.

I'm not demanding he explain himself, Im simply responding to the big fuss he made.

softandwet said:

Lets imagine a 7 disc set of unreleased Vault material. My point with my post was that this 7 disc set probabbly would have sold better in the mid 90s than it would now, certainly much better than it will 10 years from now.

I like Joni Mitchell's "Hissing Of Summer Lawns" album, I listen to it alot these days, right alongside newer releases. That doesn't mean I'm living in the past, it just means I enjoy that album.

Tom said:

Yeah I understand, but that was years ago. Obviously he's changed his thoughts about that for whatever reason. All I know is that for the past 25 years Prince's behavior, no matter what he may have said, has demonstrated that he's in no rush to "open the vault".

I just don't see why year after year people keep chasing that particular holy grail. But hey, maybe next year he'll open the vaults for all of us to hear!

Seriously, you don't think Prince himself is responsible for the Vault hoopla? Who opened up The Vault to attendees at the first Celebration? Who named one of the few sections in this year's incarnation of the so-called Music Club "The Vault I-III"? He's the reason we know he has so many songs, and he's the one who put it in our heads that once he got free we'd be swimming in them.

If Prince has any intentions on releasing stuff from the Vault, he should re-record those old tracks. Moonbeam Levels, Empty Room etc etc etc. I've had those tracks in demo and outtake form for years and years. To be offered a release of songs from the vault would be pointless to me. I almost never reach for those tunes anyways. He should re-record or at least remix those old tracks. Give us something fresh. I could care less about a polished mastered version of songs I have been listening to for 10+ years.