50 great things about Prince's 'Sign O' The Times'

Anyway, the weird, weirdest? most interesting? most surprising? chord of "Sometimes It Snows," which appears in the third line of the chorus, seems to be a G#7 with an open B and E on the top. Which I guess you could call a G#7#9#5, which is a strong enough chord in itself, but is particularly surprising in the context of the song, since a) the prior two times in the chorus he just played a G#m7 and b) the chord introduces a new note, the B#(=C), which your ear will not be expecting given what the harmony was doing up until then and c) if you voice the chord so that the B and B# (=C) are right next to each other, a half-step away, instead of using a more open voicing, it packs even more of a punch.

Re: "Now he's doing horse" — wow, I've misheard that lyric all these years. Embarrassed to admit I thought it was "now he's doing whores."

Reefer was totally a hooker gateway drug back in the day, don't worry about it :)

78. He rhymes "moon" with "June" in the title track.

79. "Her favorite number was 20"

https://theshibeparkvaults.bandcamp.com/album/sign-o-the-times-rehearsals-disc-1

https://theshibeparkvaults.bandcamp.com/album/sign-o-the-times-rehearsals-disc-2

cool but who gets the 7 bucks if you actually pay for those things?

80. The way "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man" takes a curve from 80s New Wave pop into an early 70s "Can't You Hear Me Knocking"/Traffic blues rock jam, from which it only returns for a very brief instrumental reprise of the first part of the song, then out.

78/79/80 all v great things

Those Sign O The Times rehearsals are currently free to download btw

still looks like they're $7 to me. weird to see bootlegs posted so brazenly on Bandcamp.

wtf I'm not paying some asshole for these

i've just been streaming, it's free to stream in full

maybe just free in Europe then?

interesting recreationg of "Dream Factory" the album that was scrapped then combined with the Camille album to become Sign O the Times

http://albumsthatneverwere.blogspot.com/2016/05/prince-and-revolution-dream-factory.html

Heyo

http://www.okayplayer.com/music/princes-sign-o-times-concert-movie-will-air-showtime.html

I haven't seen this since we threw out our VCR (we had a VHS copy) so I'm pretty excited to hear that my Twin Peaks:the Return-motivated Showtime subscription comes w this bonus

I don't understand why that article calls the SotT movie "rare" and "out of circulation"? It's been reissued on Bluray which is pretty easy to find, or at least it was when I bought it a couple of years ago. Great concert movie anyway, all the little stories that come with each song's performance are neat, and the choreography is gorgeous. And it has that massive Sheila E drum solo, my favourite part!

it is not available in America

multi-format copies of it on Amazon are currently $175

Oh, that's weird. Why would they reissue it in Europe but not the US?

some rights dispute, I assume. bigger Euro market, who knows

Forget it Shakes, it's Paisley Park.

[snips nostril]

There's a Japanese Blu-Ray you can get for about $50 which is Region A, meaning it will play on standard US players.

Here you go.

80. The way "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man" takes a curve from 80s New Wave pop into an early 70s "Can't You Hear Me Knocking"/Traffic blues rock jam, from which it only returns for a very brief instrumental reprise of the first part of the song, then out.

― Hare in the Gated Snare (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, July 6, 2016 1:23 AM (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes, with a screaaaaaaaaam.

That's my favorite song on this. It has a good message too -- don't lead on single mothers looking for companionship when you're out at the bar on a lonely friday night.

Region 2 DVD available for as little as £3.36 - multi-region DVD players are CHEAP

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Prince-Sign-O-Times-DVD/dp/B0009PZ89E/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1503572329&sr=1-1&keywords=sign+o+the+times

yeah I had that dvd and... gave it away :O

quite a few dvd players can be made multi region using a universal remote (or another customizable ir-transmitter, some old phones can be used)

Until Youtube just started putting up Prince videos, I had never seen the video for Sign O The Times before, so I didn't realize that Prince was somewhat responsible for the birth of the lyric video.

movie news

PSA: Sign O’ The Times is on Amazon Prime.

— Chris McKay (@buddboetticher) March 10, 2018

If only Stop Making Sense had plasma ball interludes, then it might be as good as Sign O' The Times.

Also, the outfits in the So'TT film have held up better than Purple Rain.

Um...holy shit.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EZM5i3CXkAA3Dbm.jpg

Oh man I needed this.

This is my favorite album so I guess I have to get the big box.

I need to know what's in the box but yeah, I'm definitely buying some version of this.

Presumably the big box will include all the stuff that ended up on Crystal Ball + B sides and unreleased tracks from that era + the movie? It's easy to imagine all that measuring to 8 CDs... The 1999 box already had two CDs worth of unreleased tracks from the vaults, and AFAIK there's way more of those from the SOTT era.

Oh hell yes

ALERT ALERT partial tracklist

fucking hell, the end of music, ciao pic.twitter.com/Giga0lLSNQ

— Boomkat.com (@boomkatonline) June 12, 2020

Why yes please.

That live show (12/31/87) is the one where Miles Davis appeared.

I don't know why I want to throw more money at this when the big box will bankrupt me, but I would love standalone releases of Camille, Dream Factory, Crystal Ball...

I’m s bit surprised that Dream Factory isn’t included within this box

C U R R E N T L Y U N K N O W N

with Australian ears I've always thought "turn on the telly" in the title track sounded slightly incongruous - like, I associate "telly" with the UK and feel the US is more of a "teevee" kinda place - or is this just the result of over-reductive generalising

sorry for this monumentally inconsequential q but every time I listen to this it makes me curious and I will never find a better place to make the enquiry

It's always stuck out for me, too. A weird affectation. It's not like saying "telly" instead of "TV" changes the flow of the line in any way.

Well, fwiw, he was coming off the Parade tour through Europe, maybe that had something to do with it.

I listen to the fan remastered Sign-era box all the time, this will be great. I'm beginning to sense a pattern: release a deluxe edition of a Prince masterpiece, then a bunch of shitty stuff from the 90s and beyond, then a deluxe masterpiece, then a bunch of shitty stuff, then another masterpiece ...

It's a marathon, not a sprint, I guess.

One of the fondest compilations in my collection: a CD-R of those DF and CB outtakes.

We appear to have a formal tracklisting:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BMXT2SK/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=prince&qid=1592933387&refinements=p_lbr_music_artists_browse-bin%3APrince%2Cp_n_date%3A1249114011&rnid=1249111011&s=music&sr=1-4

Tracks not listed in the earlier summary include "Wally," "Cosmic Day," "When the Dawn of the Morning Comes," "I Need a Man" and various others.

The CD version is https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BMSF4XT/50.