Prince's "Sign O The Times" Reissue Features 4 Hours Worth Of Never Heard Before Tracks
Rolling Stone - It seems like even more of an achievement after sifting through the nearly four hours of previously unreleased tracks like “Love and Sex” on Sign’s super-deluxe reissue. He had no singular vision at the time: he was recording songs for a double LP called Dream Factory, a triple LP titled Crystal Ball, a novelty side project where he sped up his voice like a Chipmunk and called himself Camille, a stage musical he wisely abandoned, a project for Bonnie Raitt, a collaboration with Miles Davis, and on and on. It’s impossible to trace his thought process, which makes it all the more exciting to find the diamonds he left in the vault.
His original “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man,” from 1979, rocks as hard as anything the Cars were doing at the time, making it all the more impressive that he turned it into a grand pop song on Sign while adding a “Whole Lotta Love”–style breakdown jam in the middle. An acoustic version of the ballad “Forever in My Life” shows an even softer side to the song. Similarly, his rough drafts show how “The Ballad of Dorothy Parker” transitioned from a brassy horn workout into the LP’s dark-hued tale of him deflecting a woman’s affection and how “Strange Relationship” evolved from an Indian raga–funk fusion, like if George Harrison got deep into George Clinton, into taut dance-floor burner on Sign.
Conversely, there are also tons of greatest misses — songs that could have been hits — if he’d only released them. He wrote the funky “Emotional Pump,” built on slap bass and P-Funk horns, improbably for Joni Mitchell. It’s obvious why she turned it down because the tune exudes the artist’s unique Purple power. The quartet of songs he wrote for Raitt — including the playful “Jealous Lover,” which he also once offered to the Bangles — show how seamlessly he could blend mainstream blues rock with James Brown horns. He commands “Train” with Stax-Watt verve and “Adore”-style raving, croons about “erotic rebellion” and grinds out a trapeze act of a guitar solo over midtempo R&B on “Adonis and Bathsheba,” and blurs the lines between Marvin Gaye and himself on the “Got to Give It Up”-like “The Ball.”
Monster week for new music this week. One of the super highlights for me was this Prince "Sign O The Times" Super Deluxe Reissue.
I'm a huge dork for unreleased material and alternate versions of previously released records. I don't know why but my dick gets hard whenever I get to listen to what usually sounds like works of arts to schlubs like me, but didn't make the cut to the artist themself.
This Super Deluxe box set includes eight CDs and a DVD, including a reissue of the remastered original with its associated singles and B-sides, two live shows from 1987, audio from a stadium concert in the Netherlands, video from a New Year’s Eve show at Prince’s Paisley Park studio complex in Minnesota, and, best of all, three CDs of unreleased material from Prince’s huge vault.
During the original composing and release of the original album, Prince was working his dick off.
From 1985 to 1987, he was not only writing songs for his own albums; he was also touring, devising movie projects, overseeing the construction of Paisley Park, and coming up with material for musicians he admired including Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell and Bonnie Raitt. And he was trying on alter egos — including Camille, created with pitched-up vocals, for whom he had contemplated an entire album.
Listening to the unreleased versions of “It Ain’t Over ’Til the Fat Lady Sings”, “All My Dreams”, “Walkin’ in Glory,” and how incredible they sound, and realizing they weren't good enough in Prince's eyes to be put out for the public is testament to what a perfectionist he was.
I really hope we continue to be able to hear stuff from his vault because if there's one thing that's true, it's that Prince fucks. Dead or alive.