prince

Ha, yeah, it is weird. I don't know that I'd have looked into it any further if the name "TEMPLE OF ECK" hadn't popped up on google maps. Too intriguing not to, honestly.

Is anyone else flipping out over the vault tracks on the 1999 super deluxe reissue? It's like an alternate universe version of the album that's just as good. Unreal that tracks like Purple Music, Rearrange, and If It'll Make U Happy have been unreleased for so long

Tried to buy it at rough trade on Friday but they’d sold out. Gonna check back today

Purple Music is fantastic.

Is anyone else flipping out over the vault tracks on the 1999 super deluxe reissue?

I came here to more or less literally post the exact same thing, as I got a text from a pal asking *me* almost literally the exact same thing this morning.

Uh, Previously unreleased tracks are kinda a mixed bag, but still great to hear them all plus the live ones

imagine 1982 prince releasing a song called "Vagina" with a chorus of "half boy/half girl/best of both worlds"
this demo version of Irresistible Bitch is out of control

a lot of the unreleased have been circulating for years in various forms. And I'd argue that 1999 is perfectly compact and not much would add to it. It's a great box tho.

Shocked by "Vagina," in a good way; his most explicitly queer song?

That said, the song sounds way more like a Dirty Mind track than something off the more expansive 1999. Great to have this stuff finally out there, though.

lots of this was on some bootleg chaki posted once, love moonbeam levels

Shocked by "Vagina," in a good way; his most explicitly queer song?

― Maria Edgelord (cryptosicko)

He wrote "If I Was Your Girlfriend"...

True. "Vagina" is just more direct about the gender (presentation) of the song's subject.

True - it's also third person, an appreciation of someone else... for me the first person directness of "If I Was Your Girlfriend" hits harder with me.

"if i was your girlfriend" is '''''queer''''' if you look at the title but don't actually listen to the song i guess? never understood that take on it

well, it's a tricky thing for me to talk about because i fully support the right to self-determination and i don't think prince did ever, or would ever, have identified as genderqueer. all i can tell you is that, speaking as a genderqueer person, i find "if i was your girlfriend" extremely relatable. regardless of what he may have intended by such actions, adopting (and recording a record as) a female persona known as "camille", dressing in a less than completely stereotypically "masculine" fashion, changing his name to a combination of the symbols for "male" and "female"... there is a lot about prince that i find extremely relatable, and having lived through those times, knowing how much it didn't accept gender nonconforming people, it's hard not for me to be inspired by his courage.

i understand, that makes sense. i never actually knew about the camille persona and am intrigued that that song was originally going to be released as part of that project -- i suppose it's fair to say that he imbued the song/recording with more meaning(/s) and ambiguity than i may be attuned to in the course of my usual experience. i appreciate you sharing how his presentation, art and actions resonate with you and apologize for the perhaps excessive flippancy of my prior post

Dyl, if you have not already, listen to shockadellica a few dozen times as it is a song i love super dearly

it's cool, i took it as a serious question that deserved a serious answer!

I've heard "1999" the album 100 times of course, but I've never listened so closely as to recognize it as his most explicitly sexual album, not just the sex noises but lines like "I sincerely want to fuck the taste out of your mouth." I never noticed that before!

Wow, “Do Yourself A Favor” contains within it the roots of “Bob George.” Kind of amazing that he let that idea simmer for another five years before recording it.

Great news, everyone! Duff McKagan wrote the liner notes to the new Prince reissue! https://youtu.be/K8fTK-h5_Ls

everywhere in my neck of the woods has sold out of the five disc set (i.e. the only one i'm interested in). was really hoping to not have to amazon it. curses.

My 14yr old self is loving the vault tracks

Had to resort to amazon. This is the last time, I swear.

Duff always seems like a good dude

I've heard "1999" the album 100 times of course, but I've never listened so closely as to recognize it as his most explicitly sexual album, not just the sex noises but lines like "I sincerely want to fuck the taste out of your mouth." I never noticed that before!

― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 8 December 2019 16:51 (one week ago) link

that exact lyric you're quoting is one of the more monumental "holy shit" prince moments for me, and this is even for someone that had written "sister" earlier.

Wow, “Do Yourself A Favor” contains within it the roots of “Bob George.” Kind of amazing that he let that idea simmer for another five years before recording it.

There's also a couple of songs among the unreleased ones ("Bold Generation", "Can't Stop This Feeling I Got") that he reworked for Graffiti Bridge, eight years later.

I got no beef with Duff, but I'm wondering why Rhino stopped their search for appropriate liner notes writers with him. Mind you, I've not read them yet, maybe he is history's great unknown historian of early Prince.

But yeah the remaster is terrific — the bass sounds really shine through -- and it is shocking how good much of the unreleased material is. Vagina, good lord; Purple Music, wow.

I always felt that 1999, unlike most of his other records, really sounded like a collection of 12" mixes. Most of the songs are a little long for listening, but a great length for dancing. It's great to have the reissue to focus collective attention on it again.

The booklet has three different essays, one of them by McKagan, plus notes on all the unreleased tracks, so it's not like he was the only Prince expert available. His essay is not bad, it's more personal and less journalistic than the other two. IMO including all three was good choice, it's a good balance of historical writing and more sentimental reminiscing.

been idly reading the Duane Tudahl "Prince and the Purple Rain Era Studio Sessions". It makes an admirable attempt to be exhaustive, sort of like Lewisohn's "Beatle Studio Sessions" book, and seeing the day-to-day productivity laid out that way is pretty mind-blowing. Tudahl, unfortunately is neither a musician nor a particularly sharp writer, so he doesn't always focus on the right thing or get technical details correct.

One thing that's really striking that hadn't really registered with me before is how much Prince loved pre-sets. There's multiple quotes (both from himself and his engineers/collaborators) noting how he never bothered learning any gear enough to customize sounds or really grasp the possibilities as much as he would just instinctively fiddle with stuff until he found a sound he liked and then go from there. Which kind of explains why his records started to sound shittier in the 90s - when the quality of pre-sets for synths and drum machines generally degraded, and he started to sound more like everyone else and not so unique.

I'm sure that's not the whole story, but I like that thesis!

Well ditching his key collaborators was also a big part of it I imagine

Can you explain what you mean when you say the presets degraded in the nineties? Also, while it's well known that in the early years of his career he did indeed use pretty much just presets, I'm not sure if that applies to the nineties. At the very least either he or someone working for him had learned to use a sampler.

I really don't think his synth work degraded in any way in the '90s, there's still a bunch of cool and unusual synth sounds on his records, the difference comes more from him adopting a fuller and more traditional R&B sound, where the freaky synths and were rarely the lead instrument anymore, and his unique drum machine loops were mostly replaced by "real" drumming or hip hop breaks.

One thing that's really striking that hadn't really registered with me before is how much Prince loved pre-sets. There's multiple quotes (both from himself and his engineers/collaborators) noting how he never bothered learning any gear enough to customize sounds or really grasp the possibilities as much as he would just instinctively fiddle with stuff until he found a sound he liked and then go from there. Which kind of explains why his records started to sound shittier in the 90s - when the quality of pre-sets for synths and drum machines generally degraded, and he started to sound more like everyone else and not so unique.

Also true of Miles Davis. When he started using synths heavily in the early '80s (as opposed to the electric pianos and organs of the early to mid '70s) there were more than a few tracks where the keyboard sound was literally whatever sound was "A-1" on the keyboard.

I find Michael Bland to be terribly uninspiring as a drummer

https://www.theringer.com/music/2020/1/29/21112539/prince-halftime-show-oral-history-super-bowl-xli

That's incredible.

I mean, holy shit at this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kkq4FNgNAWQ

That's a nice history and worth accidentally reading part of the introduction of

Coplin: I had made a call downstairs to the backstage area: “Are we good, are we good?” And then I finally heard from one of the people downstairs and I said, “Is Prince OK?” And then he said, “He wants to know if you can make it rain harder.” I was like, “We’re gonna be OK.”

He smiled at us and he invited us in and we were walking and he was gliding, and the reason why he was gliding is because he was wearing these kids sneakers with the wheels on them. He was wheeling down the floor and the lights of his sneakers were lighting up in the back, the same color as his canary yellow suit.
<3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMVFYGYr76A

they appear to be dropping daily cuts from this concert btw:
http://www.youtube.com/user/prince/videos

That is so badass. I mean that lightweight Page had to rely on a Theremin for his spacenoise

Love when he pulls out the classic rock warhorses, too -- I once saw him and the band do "Soul Sacrifice" at an after-party

I wonder why they are leaning so hard on later stuff for reissues, videos, etc.?

Maybe the newer stuff is simpler to deal with? I imagine it takes a lot of effort and time to work out something like the 1999 box, whereas a Rainbow Children reissue must be comparatively effortless and something they can put out while working on bigger projects. Just speculating.

I would love a Sign O The Times box.

The concert DVD that came with 1999 had awful sound and picture quality, and that was seemingly the best they could find, since it was on the official release. I guess it's just easier to find good quality unreleased material from the vault from more recent shows?

And I would presume the next box set will be a Sign o' the Times one... I can't imagine they'd move to reissuing his 1990s albums yet, cos those are more divisive, and SotT seems like the most obvious choice after the Purple Rain and 1999 box sets, since those three are his most acclaimed albums.

Tell you what, I would love to see the actual live footage shot for the SoTT concert film. I never will though, I guess.

Wasn't there some issue with that footage, that it turned out looking bad? And that's why Prince decided to reshoot the whole thing in Paisley Park? I guess seeing the first footage might be historically interesting to hardcore Prince fans, but can't imagine a larger audience caring about it much, since we already got the awesome SotT film with the same song material. Maybe it will included in the eventual SotT box, though? (Unless Prince had it destroyed.)