Yeah, I'm one of those that lumps the whole Come, The Gold Experience, Emancipation and The Truth into the same creative fount: a second renaissance, if you will. I find very little fault in this 4-year flurry. Some of the outtakes that are out there are superb. And think about it, we have nearly the entire year of 1997 that missing. I can't believe that the only thing he came up with was New Power Soul. I'm hoping there is legit a 1997 configuration of The Dawn sitting in the vaults. This period, to me, is akin to the quantity and quality of the SotT era (excluding the majority of New Power Soul, but including the best bits of the NPG albums)
I really like Come, and don't mind Emancipation (would have made a fantastic double), but I got rid of the Gold Experience and The Truth and can't really remember them now - I look forward to hearing them again when we get that far on the song-by-song thread!
While I'm prepared to try them all AGAIN, for decades now I have been of the perhaps cliched belief that among the 1993-98 Prince one could assemble maybe one long single CD of truly superlative Prince songs and recordings.
So you know where I'm coming from, my four fave Prince lps are Lovesexy, Parade, SOTT, and Symbol with probably a fight for five. And I'll list most, maybe all, ofthe 93-98 era that I think are SUPERLATIVE, which I thought about 80 percent approx of the songs he released from Dirty Mind-Symbol. (This is mostly just considering the full lps with his name on them, not soundtracks or NPG or random tracks): Letitgo, Dinner with Delores, The Same December, I Will, Into the Light, Dig U Better Dead, Had U, P Control, Courtin Time, White Mansion, Sex in the Summer, Holy River [in my top five Prince songs ever, this one], My Computer.....I think that's it....for me...tho I can change!! [I own Exodus and NewPowerSoul and have listened to them both a handful of times straight through and shuffle and until perhaps a later revisit I don't think I found a single superlative Prince song on them, for my ears]]
that is one quirky list for sure… not criticizing, everyone has their own opnion, but Dig U Better Dead...? Courtin Time? for me and probably most people the period of 82-88 is where his best ever stuff can be found, but a big mistake would be to ignore the rest of his career. although they might not be groundbreaking mindblowingly fantastic albums, they're still very good to great ones mostly.
I think I agree Freek and it's unfair to come to say EMANCIPATION needing LS or Parade, but Prince for better or worse was his own prime competitor. As his fellow Minnesota music genius eccentric Dylan once wisely sang, "No matter how good you are man you'll never be better than yourself." Had Prince's career started with COME I'd give all his stuff from then on more of a break I bet.
What would you all remove and what would you replace it with in regards to Vault tracks? I would remove "Soul Psychedelicide" from July '86 and replace it with a similar rehearsal setting. The 1-2-3 punch of "Can't Stop The Feeling I Got"/"Girl O' My Dreams"/"We Can Funk" from a month earlier is brimming with ideas, vitality, and not so repetitive. "Soul Psychelicide" is a slog to get through and an instant skip.
I guess the obvious answer would be to replace some tracks (name your dislikes here) with the relevant tracks included on the official Crystal Ball, plus Good Love.
I just finished listening to the live set again. I have to say, that show seems to sound better with every listen. I'm now really starting to dig songs like Housequake and It's Gonna Be A Beautiful Night that I never really warmed up to on the studio album.
69 Love Songs - Wikipedia : 69 Love Songs was voted second place in The Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop critics' poll for 1999, behind Moby's Play.[17] The poll's creator Robert Christgau ranked it as the best album of the year on his "Dean's List".[18] In 2012, it was ranked at number 465 in Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.[19] The following year, NME placed it at number 213 on their own list of all-time greatest albums.[20] The album was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.[21]
i really don't because you said you can get 1 great long discs and i said naw just emancipation is that so i was saying you can get several 70 minute discs from officially released stuff recorded from 1993-1998
Well....you disagree with where I'm coming from, but thought some context for what I think is superlative Prince might help us reach peace, love and positivity and 2 see the dawn. But maybe not!
You seem to be nitpicking. Have One On Me, The Epic, and 69 Love Songs all have critic and user ratings of universal acclaim on metacritic; and Selected Ambient Works Vol II, which you derided as massage parlor music, is probably the most popular/acclaimed ambient album that isn't Eno. Those albums aren't comparable to Emancipation which was much less marginally celebrated than it was and still is widely derided.
Say, the difference between "celebrated" to me has little to do with the critics. If you're going to let the critics dictate your musical tastes then turn off the Prince right now, ya know? It seems the nitpicking is coming from your end, not mine. The point was that Crystal Ball could have been a celebrated triple album, not who measures up to the shoegazing barometer of critical acclaim. The old brigade of Warner Bros. evidently thought that Prince was flying too low to the ground. Yet that's where the true fans are, not within lofty heights of Rolling Stone reviews.
Okay, whatever, let's all use our preferred definition of "celebrated" and agree to disagree. In any case, Emancipation remains an excruciatingly boring lump of hubris.
W.H.A.T.? If "celebrated" has "little to do with the critics" then what does it refer to? Celebrated by whom? And the fact that an album is acclaimed has zero to do with letting critics "dictate your musical tastes". Personal evaluation is up to oneself but one should at least acknowledge the fact that certain albums have a certain reception. You asked for "celebrated triple albums", you got "celebrated triple albums". But only chose to accept.... "Mellon Colie"?
A rarely seen interview with Prince shortly after Emancipation shows things weren't so rosy at the time...
Yeah the performance itself is fantastic, and it is really nice to have another great show besides the SOTT movie audio to enjoy this tour with
Apologies if this was covered earlier in the thread. It's late at night and I just discovered I have 2 disc 7s (the 1st part of Utrecht) and no disc 8 (the 2nd part of the live show). I ordered from Amazon and my initial attempt was going to be one of those stupid "send the whole box back" for a missing disc. I never cared for that option even before Covid. Does anyone know the more sensible path to just get disc 8 sent to rectify this?
(I haven't actually ever heard Emancipation all the way thru and don't have any opinion on the album, but that's one hell of a critique. Can't wait 'till we get to it in the new Prince song-by-song thread...)
Emancipation would be a great single album though. Prince was trying too hard to impress by making it a triple.
