prince

In a Large Room With No Light would have fitted perfectly either after or *instead of* Anotherloverholenyohead on Parade IMO. You'd let that fade out, there'd be a long pause then Sometimes It Snows In April. I mean i haven't even heard the cleaned up version yet; but it's always been my favourite of the unreleased cuts.

Y'all should join Duane Tudahl's facebook page it's great.

Silly, silly prince. How was the black album evil, but dirty mind not? Or gett off and sexy mf? In.the DMSR book, Alan Leeds says TBA could have been a good career marker, an album to spark debate, kind of like princes yeezus if you like, at a time when prince really needed it. I'd agree. Never mind the fact he stumped up to pay for the vinyl to he destroyed himself! Funny how one month hes feeling slighted by warners for denying him a triple album, then a few months after, hes telling them not to release his album, despite them approving it!

(Sexy mf is a nadir btw)

>TBA could have been a good career marker, an album to spark debate

that's exactly what it was! in early 1988 it was hardly difficult to find. we all had the cassette dubbed for each other by December, in Berkeley Leopold's had vinyl boots before Christmas, every record store I saw in Greenwich Village a month later had different varieties of pressings (mine had 'bob george' at the end, which, as the most fucked up track, totally worked)

so there wasn't even much debate, it was an album in Housequake mode but overall rushed, 'Dead On It' was embarrassing, 'Rock Hard' was all time & just when you began to think the hype about it being evil was overstated you get 'Bob George' (which, again... really kinda worked as the last track)

I take that back; the cassette I was dubbed had 'Bob George' at the end

the copy I bought in NYC: https://www.discogs.com/Prince-Black-Album/release/8488157

On the cassette I bought in NYC the track listing went like this:

1 Le Grind
2 Cindy C.
3 Dead On It
4 When 2 R In Love
5 Bob George
6 Superfunkycalifragisexy
7 2 Nigs United 4 West Compton
8 Rockhard In A Funky Place

And I feel like it might have had "Old Friends 4 Sale" tacked on at the end of Side 2...?

Hmmm Bob George at the end is good, agreed. I'd have it like: le grind, cindy c, super..., 2 nigs United... (his greatest jazz fusion track?), rock Hard..., Bob George. Ballads have no place here!

I'll try and copy the Alan Leeds quote later. He thinks dead on it would have inspired a lot of critics to think about prince vs hip hop.

I didn't know The Black Album until a relative had a copy of the official release and told me what it was. (I only knew Prince via the Hits compilations.) At the time, I remember people saying it was overhyped, but even under those deflated expectations, I liked it a lot. "Dead On It" still sucks, "When 2 R In Love" and "West Compton" were just okay (though I've grown to appreciate the latter), but I always thought the rest was pretty awesome. It's no grand statement, it's just a dirty, funky party record, and for the most part it does the job really well.

xxpost that cassette tracklisting was the same as on the vinyl boot I got back in 88 for $35 (big money then).

With the vaults opening as they have been, I wonder if we will get the Black Album again in some form.

Prob if they do (pleasepleaseplease) a Lovesexy box!

Pretty sure lovesexy will be rereleased but as an album that doesnt have any huge hits attached to it, it might be a while. Be cool to get the original versions of the songs though before prince went to town with his new studio though (you can hear the earlier versions on YouTube).

Interesting that as soon as he got PP up and running, his records became slicker and more polished (overproduced in some cases)

I love his Lovesexy demos. Many don’t seem overproduced and they date from ‘87-‘88 ish. Thinking of “Anna Stesia” in particular and “Positivity”.

here's that alan leeds quote -

"it would have had a bigger impact than either parade, sign, or lovesexy did. That doesn't mean it would have sold more, but to people who bought it, it would have meant more. its certainly a record people would either love or hate. and as such, it would have gotten an awful lot of conversation... i think the critics would have had a field day, arguing the pros and cons of the album and whether this was his move into the future, the next step in the evolution of prince the artist, or if it was just a sidetrack. pretend youre a critic in 1987 as this album comes out and youve never heard lovesexy or his subsequent work, are you going to sit there and say 'ok this is thew new prince, this is his next step, prince continues to lead pack in the the evolution of black music, he leads the way into the 90s with his take on hip hop'. or do we review this as a misguided sidestep from sombody who is not a hip hop artist but is trying to be? the critics would have had a ball... it would have been a kind of marker in a career, a turning point, for better or worse, at a time when he arguably needed one'

"Bob George" is the only essential TBA track, hence the only one I need, and I don't care for Lovesexy at all, the long mix of "I Wish U Heaven" excepted.

just reading that has forced me to grab it off the shelf to listen to 'Rockhard' and in my heart I need to believe you will also eventually consider that track essential

listen to the Thelonious horn line one more time and imagine how much fun that thing is to play, it goes everywhere

The distinctive horn arrangement/hook was written by Eric Leeds years earlier. It was part of his song called Pacemaker. This Pacemaker part was often played live as a horn interpolation in both I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man and It’s Gonna Be A Beautiful Night, in the latter cued by Prince shouting 'Kick some ass' and then accumulating in the hook from Duke Ellington’s Take The ‘A’ Train.

http://princevault.com/index.php?title=Rockhard_In_A_Funky_Place

Take The "A" Train / Pacemaker / I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man (Live In Utrecht) *****

Corrected! Dolphy not Monk

"Prince wanted this line for 'Rockhard in a Funky Place,' and I think I had it half done. He wanted something that was really out there. So I kind of completed the line for that."

Leeds says he was inspired by the '60s avant-garde jazz pioneer Eric Dolphy. "This cat was, like, really out there. He was an early influence on me. So I said, 'OK, I'm gonna try to be Eric Dolphy for a minute. It was very angular, almost a mathematical kind of thing. For every time the line went up, I wanted to turn it around and have it come down in a similar fashion, interval-wise."

sorry, just obsessed with that riff! worked it out on keyboard once. quality construction

https://diffuser.fm/prince-rockhard-in-a-funky-place/

the long mix of "I Wish U Heaven" excepted

part iii of this is top ten Prince for me

i think not liking "alphabet st." is incorrect

All the lovesexy singles are top notch

Finally got my sott SDE. Very weird to have it and then to hear these songs I've only known from iffy quality audio for years. Very strange and weirdly I feel guilty, even though I bet prince losyebrd to every jb or Hendrix note he could find out there. Both astonishing to have all this, so accessible now, and a bit sad, as I doubt it would ever have happened if prince was still around. Not everything, in fact a lot of this, isnt going to blow me away, but its just great to hear these dorothy parker horns, even if they are totally unnecessary lol

Such great horns, just not at all needed here!

lol yes agreed

what is revelatory is plenty tbh

cf. "when the dawn of the morning comes"

I just started listening to it. Skimmed the main album a bit to see if it sounded different, realised I wasn't actually bothered, then went straight to the vault discs

I'm listening to witness, thinking prince was such a studio rat, the ultimate studio rat maybe, then thinking fuck, he recorded all THIS, maybe out of fear it might not come to him in such volume again, or whatever, and he died in his own studio, which by that point, was also his house. He deserved better.

Lol never mind that. Thank god this 60s version of big tall wall never came out. Wendy and lisa were often good influences, but sometimes they deserve blame.

i am not really a "big tall wall" fan in general

thinking fuck, he recorded all THIS, maybe out of fear it might not come to him in such volume again, or whatever

not news to anyone obv, but I've been retagging this into the various albums he intended to release, for a listening exercise (downloading "missing" tracks for Camille and from the Crystal Ball compilation, etc) and:

basically between March -> July 1986 he wrote & recorded three versions of the Dream Factory album, ending up with a 1hr 24 double LP
and 30 minutes of songs dropped from early cuts of the album

in six weeks from mid-September 1986, but mostly in a few days, he conceived & recorded the 42min Camille album
(and wrote and recorded most of The Black Album)

across a few sessions, in five months of late '86, he writes and records another 44min of new stuff for the Crystal Ball triple LP (inc. one song for Sign O' The Times when Warners reject the triple)

from less than 13 months across December 1985 to Jan '87, there's two hours of unreleased songs* written and recorded (I'm quarantining the alt. Big Tall Wall and Dorothy Parker here for listening btw)

the box also includes a CDs-worth of worthwhile alternate takes and mixes (I'm adding the Mavis Staples Train and subscription club live Rebirth and Strange Relationship to push this to 81 mins)

...and the box generously remasters half an hour of unnecessary 7" edits for posterity's sake too.



*plus another hour or so of finished songs that the archivist & team whittled away as being lesser!

it's exhausting just thinking of listening to all this in album context, let alone writing and recording it

tl;dr

Or more like tl;dl amirite

Feel like I read the story of the three other unfinished albums a few times after he died and sort of grasped it for a while but now my head is exploding like a Paisley Piñata.

fucking hell

his output even crazier than i thought it was when it’s put into context like that

(looks like his only writing for other artists in 1986 was three songs for/with Brownmark's band Mazarati, plus the Bangles recording 1984-written Manic Monday)

and Miles Davis, no? "Can I Play with U?"

there was a lot of writing intended for other artists. "emotional pump" is, hilariously, a song for joni mitchell to sing. most of the songs he reportedly wrote for bonnie raitt are here xp

yeah, iirc four of the unreleased songs on the box were for Bonnie Raitt, and mostly rejected for being too horny

true that Can I Play With U was for/with Miles, I was just looking for any stuff additional to this release

and Miles Davis, no? "Can I Play with U?"

I thought Mitchell had made up "Emotional Pump." I wish she had sung, say, "Power Fantastic," arranged and written in her style.

Then after Miles died they requested Prince sweeten it up along with some other tracks for Doo-Bop but he turned them down.

i love "emotional pump" so so so much tbh, it's so slinky

yep

sharhp horn arrangement too

*sharp

four of the tracks were recorded for Bonnie Raitt in these versions, but had all been written for other acts:

I Need A Man and Jealous Girl were recorded in 1981 as The Hookers, and not overdubbed with Vanity vocals when that band turned into Vanity 6

Jealous Girl was re-recorded in 1985 for, and rejected by, The Bangles - this version was spruced and saxed up for Bonnie Raitt

There's Something I Like About Being Your Fool was also recorded in 1981, and mixed in the Controversy mix sessions but not used. He also offered it to Jill Jones in 1985

Promise To Be True was recorded in 1983 for Vanity 6's non--existent second album.

All those tracks feature first-person female protagonist too.