prince

no idea why that vault link isn't working but:

l Do Anything is an unreleased soundtrack for the James L. Brooks movie I'll Do Anything, with songs written by Prince. The album features eight tracks sung by actors Nick Nolte, Albert Brooks, Tracey Ullman, Julie Kavner, Whittni Wright (all of whom had a part in the movie) and by singer Melissa Etheridge.
The project began when Prince was approached in 1992 by James L. Brooks to write original songs for his planned movie musical I'll Do Anything. Carole King and Sinead O'Connor were also asked to contribute. Prince wrote and recorded ten new songs between mid-late March 1992 at Paisley Park Studios in Chanhassen, Minnesota and mid-April 1992, in Australia while on the Diamonds And Pearls Tour: I'll Do Anything, Make Believe, My Little Pill, Don't Talk 2 Strangers, Poor Little Bastard, The Rest Of My Life, There Is Lonely, Be My Mirror, Wow and I Can't Love U Anymore. An eleventh track, Empty Room was pulled from the vault and also considered, but was not rerecorded for the project by the actors.

Of the proposed songs, eight were considered for the movie and were subsequently re-recorded by the cast and unidentified musicians for the soundtrack and musical scenes: Wow, Make Believe, My Little Pill, There Is Lonely, Be My Mirror, I Can't Love U Anymore, Don't Talk 2 Strangers, I'll Do Anything.

Wow was re-recorded by the ensemble cast for the movie, basically as a solo vocal performance by Tracey Ullman (who also sings lead on Don't Talk 2 Strangers) and was weaved into the movie at six different points during a rough cut of the movie. Five versions of Wow were recorded, one of them using the music of Sexy M.F.. Two versions of Make Believe in the movie were made to appear at three different points in the movie : one by actress Julie Kavner and the second by the ensemble cast. My Little Pill was also sung by Julie Kavner, as was an early version of I Can't Love U Anymore. After a first test screening and sub-par reactions to her vocals, a second version of I Can't Love U Anymore was made with Melissa Etheridge. Nick Nolte re-recorded Be My Mirror as a duet with Whittni Wright who played the role of his young daughter in the movie.There Is Lonely and I'll Do Anything were sung by Albert Brooks. Prince was not involved in the re-recording sessions, which also comprised a medley of some of the songs and a track called DNG Groove (containing no input by Prince), which was placed as an intro for I Can't Love U Anymore. Two other songs without Prince input ("This Lonely Life" by Sinead O'Connor and "You Are The Best" by Carole King) also appeared in the first cuts of the movie but were not planned for the soundtrack album.

After different test-screenings, and overwhelmingly negative reactions to the music, all production numbers from the film were cut, and the proposed album was canceled. James L. Brooks shot new scenes and I'll Do Anything was released in 1994 as a satirical comedy-drama film and not a musical. Despite the new editing, the film was a commercial and critical failure. None of the songs Prince wrote specifically for the movie were used in the film or the released original motion picture score, which is made of four instrumentals composed by Hans Zimmer and a track ("You Are The Best") written by Carole King and sung by Whittni Wright.

None of the re-recorded Prince tracks by the I'll Do Anything cast saw the light of the day. Prince would later release his own versions of some of the songs planned for this project:

Don't Talk 2 Strangers would be used for another soundtrack, Girl 6 in 1996. Another version, sung by Chaka Khan would be included on her Come 2 My House album, produced by Prince and released by NPG Records.
My Little Pill and There Is Lonely would be included in The Vault... Old Friends 4 Sale, as was The Rest Of My Life.
In 1995, Prince made a video for Empty Room, which was not recorded for the film, but offered for consideration. A live version recorded during a soundcheck in 2002 was released as a download by the NPG Music Club and later included on the C-Note album. A rehearsal take with 3rdEyeGirl was streamed on YouTube in 2014.
Be My Mirror, Wow, I Can't Love U Anymore, I'll Do Anything, Make Believe, and Poor Little Bastard remain unreleased.

i never listen to podcasts but i could maybe make an exception
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jLtcGgdTG0

Love these podcasts. But the professor interviewed there does know prince was quite the Reagan supporter in the early/mid 80s right?

the podcast is good yes. susan rogers seems like such a fun interview

saving folks a click: that is a 46 second video that, in second 45, reveals that it is an advertisement for an eight-part podcast about the making of Sign O' The Times.

the podcast does not appear to actually exist as a podcast, only on streaming / walled-garden services, but transcripts of each episode can be found at the website of the MPR station that created it, and the mp3 files can be downloaded by reading the source code of each transcript page.

well whatever it is I just subscribed to it

Eh? It's a regular ol podcast, I subscribed to it through Apple's app.

i feel this way every time one of these deluxe editions has come out but it's wild to me that i'm listening to "all my dreams" and it's not a bootleg

It's a regular ol podcast, I subscribed to it through Apple's app.

That's a walled garden!

yr such a commie

if it cannot be cast to a pod, then the people are not truly free it's not a podcast

lol

Unless I’m missing something, I see it as a regular podcast, using my (non-Apple) podcast app. It’s the most recent four episodes of Prince | Official Podcast.

Thanks! Couldn't find anything websearching, and MPR are aggressively hiding it - from the Art19 link I found that The Current also produced The Story Of 1999, on whose transcripts they link to four external account-required services, vs only two for SOTT. Especially bonkers since they host mp3s of it themselves.

fwiw the Art19 files are 128kbps, the MPR ones are 192 but with no metadata ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

_It's a regular ol podcast, I subscribed to it through Apple's app._

That's a walled garden!

This kind of a drag, literally, but the Dutch show on the new Sign 'O' the Times super deluxe box set runs a hair too slow, which means everything is a touch flat. You have to speed it up by 2% to get everything back to the correct pitch.

Not the worst thing in the world - the show still sounds great - but FYI.

*This is kind of a drag

I'm in tears thinking songs like "Cosmic Day," "Blanche," and "There's Something I Like About Being Your Fool" exist.

Was the off-pitch live show ported over from a previous release, and did it have the same problem on the previous release?

Of this era, "Adonis and Bathsheba" I think has always been my favorite outtake. I just think the song is so lovely, I can't believe he just dumped it in the vault.

can’t believe we can hear “wally,” and it rules

Dang, box not arriving until next Tuesday, was really looking forward to getting it day-of-release and diving in over the weekend...

Other folks got theirs?

I like how he rummaged through "Adonis..." so he can write "The Question of U" later.

my friend who works at rough trade brooklyn said all the LP and CD expanded sets are already gone, they only have the 3CD version left. Questlove came in and bought a dozen copies of the vinyl set lol.

what source did ppl end up going with online for this?

*they = the rough trade store, not the record company

Questlove came in and bought a dozen copies of the vinyl set lol.
does questlove have some kind of side hustle as an ebay record flipper?

He's got a closet full of Phish Record Store Day releases

I bet this could very well be his favorite album, or one of his top 10. if I had to guess, I bet he bought sets as gifts for friends.

This set is great in so many ways but I also can't help scratching my head at some of the decisions to include somewhat weaker versions of things that have existed as boots for ages that are - in my mind at least - superior to the ones on this official release. "Crucial" for one. And where's "101" or "Yo Mister" or...? Weird decision making on the part of the folks putting these deluxe releases together. having said that, much of the stuff that never saw the light of day til now is Woooooow.

It's funny how I can get so attached to copies of copies of outtakes from some act, and then when I get the official version I prefer the shitty copy of a copy of a copy that I've lived with for so long.

yeah some of the inclusions are on the bizarre and inessential side. this is of course outweighed by how much is downright incredible. "walkin' in glory" for instance

Just batched together some gift cards and pulled the trigger on the box after listening to some of it on Spotify. Kind of love the slowness of If I Was Your Girlfriend on the live album. Guess I could have waited to see if Questlove would send me a copy, but I can't count on that.

what source did ppl end up going with online for this?

I went the ImportCDs route, as suggested upthread. Still en route but I have the tracking info so all good.

like, i get why they put "dorothy parker" w/ horns on there. i like that eric leeds was blown away that they found it. but the answer to what song in human history needs a horn arrangement the least is probably "dorothy parker"

Yep.

Why "Crucial" with those...lamer alternate lyrics?

also i get not including stuff prince had already released but i'm still like... it would be cool to have it all in one place and know it's not remixed (cf. "move star")

And things like "The Cocoa Boys" which are so much funkier in their sparse bootleg iteration ( no horns, no crowd noise) showing up in a much more fleshed out yet -- i mean, this is all subjective but to my ears a much more "mainstreamy" and palatable version. Freaky, minimal Prince is GOOD. That's the essence of much of his best shit. Why go the fully produced route?

eh i'm sorta into that

Dunno. Kills the vibe for me.

So glad they didn't fuck with "All My Dreams". Now THAT"S the maximalist Prince stuff I dig - but that's also closer to a "Parade" vibe.

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

they uploaded the new years show w/ miles davis to youtube, which is great bc i was mad they didn't include it with my promo lol

They will prob do a mop up set of outtakes at some point.

I'd have preferred if they released stuff like movie star, we can funk 86, on this too, so its all here, as well as things like splash and empty room. I dont need a shep remix of strange relationship or inferior alternate takes either tbh. They should have filled it back back with unreleased songs! That said, this is an incredible undertaking. Hoping things like the original cocoa boys are on the parade SDE. Do find it odd hearing old bootlegs in pristine quality. All that 'cant believe I'm hearing this/cant believe it's not released' frisson is gone.

excuse me while I have a latepass freakout over the 1979 ICNTTPOYM

If they ever do a re release of dirty mind, surely it would belong there?

Not sure if I trust the guys on Steve hoffmann forums saying that the masters are mp3s for certain songs, Or that the speed on the live CD is slow. Unless by 'lossy' sources they mean cassette tapes. In which case, yeah, they prob did use cassettes.

It's easy to see if you open tracks in Audacity set to spectrum view - mp3s usually employ a lowpass filter at 16kHz as part of the encoding, so the spectrum cuts off abruptly aside from transients. "Visions" has nothing above 12kHz, "Can I Play With U", "Colors", "It Be's Like That", "Rebirth of the Flesh", "A Place in Heaven (Lisa vocal)" have a hard limit at 16kHz with transients, exactly like an mp3, lots of tracks have an odd line running through at 16kHz which is suggestive. The remastered album and the live discs have absolutely nothing like that, so it's not part of the mastering process for the set.

The main archive guy said in an interview when the set was announced that there's clearly some sort of big plan at work for these kinds of sets -- my money is on a radically expanded deluxe Purple Rain at some point -- but I'm content to see how it plays out. Seems like it'll be one from the Warner's years and one from the NPG era each year along with some other things like the Piano and demo sets.

Will also say that the one thing I kinda most feared in the immediate aftershock of Prince's passing -- that the absolutely unsettled nature of his estate could lead to the archive completely being scattered or worse -- seems not to have come to pass, and I'm pretty damn grateful for that. Matos has a little more about that in his GQ feature:

https://www.gq.com/story/prince-sign-o-the-times-review

All I'm asking for is a complete Time set.