Prince's Music Vault

There's a little more. It turns out that Prince approached Kate about the collaboration. From katebushnews.com:

Prince worked with Kate on two songs, “Why Should I Love You” from The Red Shoes, and the track “My Computer” from his own triple album Emancipation (1996). While Kate’s vocal contribution is tricky to discern in the latter, their collaboration on her own album track created a lot of intrigue and interest in the music press back in 1993. At an early stage of work on the album that would become The Red Shoes, Kate and Del attended a Prince concert in Wembley Arena (in fact she was checking out the venue with a view to possibly playing live there herself). She was handed a note by Prince which said he loved her work and this initial contact eventually led to reels of tape being sent back and forth between his Paisley Park studios in the US and Kate’s own home studio in Kent, with Kate ultimately adding vocal contributions from her friend, the comedian Lenny Henry, shimmering harmonies by the Trio Bulgarka and even a full brass section.

In the Kate Bush Club magazine, Del Palmer described the arrival of the first tapes from Prince:


“Inside the box were two complete 24 track tapes marked with Paisley Park labels. We were taken completely off guard by this and could not wait to put them up and see what was there. Not in our wildest dreams could we have prepared ourselves for what the tapes contained. Prince had taken a small section of the original track, made it into a loop so that it went around and around and then filled the tapes with guitars, keyboards and other goodies. I was completely stunned but Kate was quick to see the possibilities of the thing. It was not the track she had written but with a large measure of rewriting and sampling she would turn it back into a Kate Bush song.”

 

Would anyone be surprised if Prince decreed that in event of his death all vault tapes were to be destroyed? I wouldn't...

 

The Estate should bring Susan back to oversee any future projects. Assuming his wish is to do something with them.

 

Wow, what a quote! Kudos, Sir.

 

There was an interview I saw, in one of the videos I've been binging on the last few days in grief, where Prince seemed to imply that exploiting his vault material would be something to be done after he's gone. He said he's too busy focusing on and creating new music to worry about exploiting the old stuff. But he didn't say "you'll never hear it."

I think the proper course of action, at least as far I'm concerned, would be something like the following:

1) His Warner catalog reissued in deluxe editions with bonus tracks. Finally, and once and for all.
2) His post-Warner material could also be reissued...look at the prices of some of that stuff right now.
3) I'd also like to see all his website stuff reissued. I don't have much of any of that stuff.
4) I'm sure Prince, like Neil Young, has a bunch of fully realized and complete albums ("lost albums") that he just pushed on by for whatever mercurial reason. Perhaps those could get standalone releases.
5) And then perhaps some sort of Omnibus presentation of random rarities and unreleased stuff that might not be tied to a particular album or abandoned album project. So those tracks could maybe get a Neil Young's Archives-like treatment.
6) Live releases, of course; starting with Atlanta, both shows, unedited.

What I don't want to see is a litany of ad hoc releases of random stuff slopped together and presented as "new albums". I hope there's somebody with the wherewithal to handle what's in Prince's vaults, with the wisdom to know how to put it out for the public.

I am on the side that thought that even as maddening as Prince's choices regarding his own work could be, it was his right to do so. It meant a lot to him in his life, and so now that he's gone that should have some respect. I hope he's left behind clear instructions for a generous exploration of his vaults. We shall see.

 

I've got really mixed feelings, and I know they are selfish, because I selfishly wanted Prince around forever.

On one hand, if he had a will, there might be some really wackadoodle part in it that none of his stuff gets released.

On the other, if he didn't have a will then MN state law grants the estate to the next of kin, and in Prince's case that would be his crackhead sister, Tyka. I mean, she's rumored to have been clean and sober for a few years now, but once a crackhead I'm afraid of lingering crackhead tendencies.

Then there's the aspect of nearly everything being dynamically compressed these days. So, I'm afraid off all this beautiful music being ruined by today's "standard."

I guess in the coming weeks and months we'll find out what happens.

 

I'd be happy with a Blu-ray or even a reissue of the Sign O the Times DVD.

Prince: Sign O The Times - Live: Amazon.ca: Prince, Sheila E., Sheena Easton, Dr. Fink, Miko Weaver, Levi Seacer Jr., Eric Leeds, Atlanta Bliss, Wally Safford, Gregory Allen Brooks, Boni Boyer, Cat, Peter Sinclair, Albert Magnoli, Joseph Ruffalo, Robert Cavallo, Simon Fields, Steven Fargnoli, Tim Clawson: DVD »

 

Nothing would surprise me from Prince.

 

I saw that too. I guess the best sign of good news is that he kept a 'vault' at all. And not only had one, but it was legendary. Like he WANTED people to talk about it.

If he really had no interest in his old recordings, he easily could have destroyed them or taped over stuff or whatever. Clearly he intended to keep it all. So allowing people to hear at least SOME of it someday would seem to be a logical conclusion.

 

It would be a cinch for each WB album to be reissued in a 5 disc box: CD1 original album, CD2 b-sides and re-mixes, CD3 outtakes, CD4 era-specific live material, plus DVD of videos and other stuff. In most cases, it could be even more expansive than that.

I mean, take Madhouse: two rather overlooked LPs and that's that, right? Well, in addition to 8 and 16, there are two entirely different unreleased albums called 24 plus half a CD's worth of released b-sides and 12 inch remixes. Plus the Flesh project which was a predecessor and is completely unheard and other 'kinda-Madhouse' stuff done with Sheila E and/or Eric Leeds. Suddenly you're talking box set without really even looking too deep in the vaults. Same with The Time, same with Sheila E., same with Vanity/Apollonia.

I'm not sure what's to be done about the post-WB stuff; it's all over the place as is, and Per Nilsen gets pretty vague about what was recorded when. I think it's against forum rules to name names, but there's an unofficial series out there of officially unreleased material that's leaked (studio recordings only), and it runs 36 full-length CDs. That's to say nothing of the wealth of great soundboard live recordings we know to be out there... and of course the stuff that, to quote Dick Cheney, we don't know that we don't know.

If you're not looking at a series of well-organised rerelease packages, then there's no point even opening the vault, I think.

 

Under the circumstances and considering the history of this music, that's far, far, far the very least of my worries.

But I suppose only in the world of the SHF might we find those who would rather see some music never be released at all rather than be brickwalled....

 

Great post. I'm an avid Prince fan but one that wasn't paying close attention to the spinoff groups and rumors and live material and bootlegs and fan club/website stuff... just keeping up with whatever new album he released and buying accordingly.

I think there's a bunch of people like me out there ready to finally have our shot at this whole other world of Prince.

 

I'm not saying that. It worries me, yes, but I would rather see it released brickwalled than not at all. I mean, even brickwalled recordings sound great in my car, but one can never give a critical listen on a quality system.

 

1) Today, MuchMusic was running a loop tribute of videos and interviews, one of which had aired on MuchMoreMusic in 2004,
where it was intimated that there are "multiple vaults".
2) The figure I heard thrown out on Friday suggested the ratio is 30/70, with the higher figure being in the "vaults".

 

Yeah, but you gotta wonder what's there. Reports have long been that most of the stuff is unfinished works. And a LOT of stuff is available on bootlegs. And while some of it is pretty good, the honest truth is most of the songs were not included on albums for a reason.

I'm sure there's a lot of longer-versions of released songs. Alternate takes.

I would think the holy grail would be things like the Prince-referenced fully-completed Prince and the Revolution and The Time albums. (If they actually exist). Some live-jam stuff.

 

In the end, Mr. Nelson always had the final say regarding "quality control".

 

I'm only a casual Prince fan, so I appreciate these discussions about his vault/unreleased music. I'm filling in holes with his albums I don't own and enjoying these albums.

Question: Didn't he open the vault with his CD Vault: Old Friends for sale? A friend of mine told me these were dull, boring songs. If this is what he chose to release from his vault, how good can the other unreleased stuff be. Or did he purposefully release this bottom of the barrel music to confound the public?

 

I've heard many/most of the available Prince bootlegs. 20 CDs or so worth. Most of it is what I'd call decent bonus tracks. There's very little that is of "OMG, why wasn't that ever released!" quality. But who knows what else exists?

I wouldn't mind seeing most of his albums re-released in deluxe sets with bonus tracks from the period. Not sure how much I'd be into them selling "new" albums of unreleased stuff someone compiles, as is so often the case with posthumous releases. Unless maybe it was intended to be a full album when recorded and never released.

 

It's about half a great album. Your friend's MMV, but I thought there was some very good stuff and some rather undeveloped stuff (the latter was mostly outtakes from a musical that didn't get completed). It's not the only example; Crystal Ball was three CDs of vault material, and in recent years he'd taken a kind of Neil Young approach where years-old material would suddenly get freshened up and appear on new albums His most recent album Hit and Run Vol 2, for example, is mostly vault material from about five years ago, apparently.

Anyway, his chief goal in releasing Old Friends 4 Sale was to complete his WB contract.

 

And IMO the song Old Friends was better in the version he didn't issue--different lyrics with more bite, and no orchestra

 

Even Prince had to dry up eventually I suppose. It had been 5 years between the Hit n Run albums and his most recent release. A LIFETIME by Prince standards. And then a lot of it is old vault stuff?

Maybe he was at the end in more ways than one?

 

huh? 20ten, 2 albums in 2014, 1 in 2015 and 1 this year. 5 years in between what?

 

Even disregarding the existence of PlectrumElectrum, Art Official Age, and Hit n Run Vol 1, I described Vol 2 as being vault items of five years ago, i.e. recorded after 20Ten, so there's a bit of an oxymoron here.

Prince was slowing down, sure. But I mean no one raises an eyebrow at, say, U2 taking half a decade between albums. 'Slowing down' still means pretty damn prolific, if you happen to be Prince.

 

Sorry. 4 years. My bad

 

still though it was 2 albums in 2014. he could have easily released an album in 2012 or 2013