Prince RIP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMRCBdhpBIA

This is kind of neat, too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofKyPTXt5co

Interestingly, in an interview around the release of Rave Un2... Prince says that his old Linn Lm1 was taken out of mothballs for that record after long disuse. He says no other drum machine locks in like the LM1.

Anyway, I am here rn to tell you guys that the 1984 First Avenue Birthday Show is beyond essential. Amazing performances, ideal soundboard sound quality, three unreleased songs, opens with 17 days, fucking get it.

I still have a copy of the SOTT DVD that was given away with the Observer newspaper in the UK. Prince loved giving stuff away via newspaper.

yeah, that was a good sunday.
the following saturday evening, big tv, headphones on loud (i had young kids/wife etc who were not interested), and a few glasses of wine.
bloody perfect.
intend on repeating that experience in the near future.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that one, I've probably got it.

I am here rn to tell you guys that the 1984 First Avenue Birthday Show is beyond essential
yeah so good. "noon rendezvous"!

if there are other purple rain era revolution boots of that quality i would love to pointed at em.

Y'all do know that a BIG part of the drums on SOTT was the Fairlight?

Parade too, right? Lot of odd drums sounds on that one.

Here's something I finished up after the news. Had started it a month ago as an exercise in Princely drum sounds. https://soundcloud.com/professorjorge/peach-and-black-raw-mix

xpost yeah I think there may be some Fairlight on that, too. Like the steel drums on New Position...

Yeah - lots of Fairlight used in 1986 ! http://www.princevault.com/index.php?search=Fairlight&go=Go

The bank has its hands on the Vault: http://kstp.com/news/prince-received-out-patient-treatment-bank-trustee-drills-princes-vault-open/4119830/

dead link

Meanwhile, 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS has also been told Bremer Bank, recently appointed trustee of Prince’s estate, hired a St. Paul company to drill through Prince’s personal vault at Paisley Park Tuesday. Sources said the bank had to move quickly to get inside the vault because, as court-appointed trustee, Bremer is legally responsible for safeguarding and handling all of Prince’s assets.

The vault is known to store Prince’s invaluable recordings, of which, dozens have not been released. Prince was the only person who knew the combination, which is the reason Bremer Bank had to hire someone to drill through the lock to retrieve and take inventory of its contents.

Even though the direct link didn't work I got to the article via main page of KSTP's website

I missed the news that Bremer was appointed the special trustee yesterday:

A trust company has been appointed to temporarily oversee Prince's multimillion-dollar estate.

Bremer Trust was named special administrator of Prince's estate on Wednesday after an informal telephone conference with some of the musician's possible heirs and a judge.

The judge says Bremer Trust now has the authority to manage and supervise Prince's assets and determine his heirs. Bremer will act as special administrator for six months or until a personal representative is appointed.

Prince's sister, Tyka Nelson, asked for the appointment of a special administrator, saying she believes her brother didn't have a will and that immediate decisions about his business interests needed to be made.

In his nearly 40 years as an entertainer, there's no doubt Prince made millions. His estate is rumored to value at least $300 million.

Attorney Christopher Burns says roughly 70 percent of millionaires don't have a will.

"A lot of them figure they didn't need it, it wasn't their time, maybe a feeling of immortality," Burns said.

Because it doesn't appear Prince set anything aside, Burns says Prince could pay nearly $150 million in state and federal estate taxes.

"Certainly Prince could have had Paisley Park as a museum, or a resource for the community had he had a plan, but it is sad that he seemingly did not put such a plan in place," Burns added.

jesus that is sad. i worry that to pay taxes they'll auction off a bunch of shit that ought to be in a museum.

Yep.

this is possibly worst case scenario in action here jesus

what's esp. sad is that given his philanthropic bent, prince could have easily put many of his assets in a charitable trust. in such a case a lot of the money going to his estate would end up helping people. i suspect that some kind of trust will be set up, but its assets will be much diminished in the course of determining how the estate will be divided up.

maybe a melvin dummar will come out of the woodwork and allege that prince, after driving his purple motorcycle off a state highway in rural minnesota, made a secret will naming them as the caretaker of the Vault.

xpost: this. It's why I was so startled at the absence of a will.

given his philanthropic bent

Or his litigious bent!

btw i hadn't realized that he and mayte had two children who died shortly after birth. speaking of sad. :(

i worry that to pay taxes they'll auction off a bunch of shit that ought to be in a museum.

This happened to John Entwistle's estate. The situation was different -- he had a will -- but UK taxes, combined with his massive debt, necessitated auctioning his house and his possessions (massive collection of basses and guitars, medieval armor, stuffed fish).

that sort of thing happens all the time, sadly.

some vegas millionaire will end up putting the motorcycle from the cover of purple rain in the foyer of their casino or something :(

xpost: this. It's why I was so startled at the absence of a will.

me too.
surely his lawyer crew must have said something in the last couple of years.
i cannot imagine he had not been urged to crack on with getting something sorted.
maybe, just maybe, he thought : "f*ck it, you can sort it all out, i'm too busy to think about all that stuff, i got some tracks to make".

(nb : as a old man/parent sideline - sort your will out people, we avoided doing ours for years, but bloody hell, it was a good job we did eventually get it sorted when we did.)

xpost

the second child they lost was a miscarriage

prince's longtime set designer heather mcelhatton was interviewed on mpr and she said something interesting, that prince before the death of his son and prince after the death of his son were like night and day. He apparently became super attentive in the aftermath to knowing the names of everyone who worked for him and knowing things about their lives, asking them questions about themselves etc.

i guess we will never know what kind of changes that experience produced in him. certainly it must point the way to the JW conversion?

that shit is totally traumatic, of course he was changed by it

my wife said she hopes there is a hologram of Prince in the vault doing the Batdance

Mayte's statement the day he died ("he's with our son now") was just heartbreaking.

As others have said, eye'm really surprised that Prince never had a will, given how on the button he seemed in terms 'o' his business affairs. Eye have 2 say, there's a lot that's come out over the last few days that has stunned and surprised me. In a way, it often feels like at times there's this strange "big reveal" going on which eye'm unsure that eye and others should be privy 2. There's a whole lot 'o' shit flying out 'o' the woodwork. U Tube suddenly being flooded with videos is one thing, but eye can't help but think that a lot 'o' tongues have suddenly become loose in the immediate aftermath 'o' Prince's death. Add 2 this everything being picked over 2 an insane degree and it's all a bit grim. Eye hope all 'o' this gets sorted out as quickly and painlessly as possible. Until then, it's hard 2 imagine Prince will ever rest in peace.

I think we all understand what you're going for here Turrican, but bear in mind it is kinda unreadable.

Maybe the Minecraft guy or some richer than god cat like that will just buy everything.

I had no idea the vault was an actual vault.

with a combination that only Prince knew! that blows my mind.

im kinda ambivalent about all the youtube videos. its great for people to see. but its also footage that might secure his future earnings. who knows how much that would be these days, but still... im still shocked and slightly disbelieving that he didnt write a will or any sort of contingency plan.

i wonder what happens to the vault now they have drilled into it. does it all stay there? does it go somewhere else? are they just logging whats there? (selfishly would like to see an actual photo of it).

I mean I assumed he had old tape reels appropriately stored away somewhere but that's next level

xp

im sure i read that he would quite often just dub over old tracks, that he wasnt that precious about them (though the extent to which he stored them all makes me think he must have cared about them). maybe a lot of classic outtakes sound diff to how we know them.

xxx-post:

Funnily enough, me neither... eye always thought 'The Vault' was just a name he gave 2 a bog-standard tape archive. Eye kinda like the fact it was an actual vault, though... and 4 Prince 2 be the only person 2 know the combination... just goes 2 show how protective he was 'o' his masters, although it really shouldn't come as a surprise 2 anyone given his actions 2wards WB in the mid '90s!

stuffed fish

I thought this was a jokey comment, but no, a bit of googling later and it turns out Entwistle loved him a stuffed fish.

Presumably notorious trout farmer Roger Daltrey went HAM on them in the auction.

ironically he owes warners for the vault. and PP in general. they paid for it (partly, though prob a lot if not most of it, even prince admitted this i think).

Per future earnings, he had no extended family, he has no children, he has an ex wife and a sister, but that's about it. Anyone and anything that earns for Prince in the future is just free money for someone with no real business with or right to said money. Hendrix had no will, and for decades family/lawyers/people were suing and fighting over his legacy. This seems potentially much, much worse.

i wish someone who cared about and shepherded Prince's career/catalog like Alan Leeds had been granted some kind of control over this stuff but that probably didn't happen.

i pray that his lawyer lets alan leeds handle it.

on that R&RHOF performance:

TOM PETTY (shared lead vocals with Jeff Lynne on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”) Olivia Harrison [George’s widow] asked me if I would come along and induct George. I was told, “Well, Prince is going to play too,” and I was like, “Wow, that’s fantastic.”

Look, we got Prince here willing to play lead guitar. Why should we give him an eight-bar solo? Over a solo that — the Beatles solo, everyone knows it by heart and would be disappointed if you didn’t play that particular solo there. And Prince was a great fan of George’s, and the Beatles in general, but I think he particularly admired George. I think George would have liked it a lot.

I had no sense Prince liked George but whatevs, Tom

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/28/arts/music/prince-guitar-rock-hall-of-fame.html

He did like George... Clinton, that is.

Somebody must have shielded him from the Geoff Emerick book with all the anti-George stuff.