'It's Prince, thinking aloud on the piano'

September 15, 2018 3:03 AM

It's January 1983 and Prince is sitting at the piano in his home studio in Minneapolis. He has a cassette recorder, some spare time and a bunch of songs in his head. direct soundcloud link

Over the next 35 minutes, he stomps his feet and stretches his muscles, careering through gospel, jazz, funk and - for 88 tantalising seconds - a nascent version of Purple Rain.

Then he gets up, chucks the tape in his vault and goes off to become a megastar.

posted by jouke (8 comments total)

But I'm here to tell you
There's something else
The after world
posted by chavenet at 3:45 AM on September 15, 2018 [3 favorites]

From the article: But now the tape is being released as Prince: Piano And A Microphone 1983; the first in what will presumably be a stream of posthumous records.

*side-eye*
posted by petebest at 8:38 AM on September 15, 2018

He has a cassette recorder, some spare time
He is going through a desk and asks the engineer to adjust effects and mix.

Snippets of Nothing Compares and Little Red Corvette in that 6'22". No interesting chords though.

By highlighting this intimate, insightful performance, the star's estate is making a statement about how it intends to treat his archive - not as a cash cow, but as a way to explore and illuminate Prince's extraordinary creativity.

Not a very convincing statement perhaps, but a statement nonetheless. (Not that I'm against this )
posted by hawthorne at 9:22 AM on September 15, 2018 [1 favorite]

It's long been known that the music Prince was able to release publicly was just a small fraction of what he wrote. Full albums, music videos, documentaries, songs that he wrote for others to perform, etc etc etc. He was wildly prolific.

I mean, just look at this list! And that's just what is publicly known about. Even if he had lived to be 110 years old, there would still be a huge library of unreleased Prince material out there just because there is so much of it.
posted by Elly Vortex at 9:35 AM on September 15, 2018

No interesting chords though.

They're all interesting chords, Bront
posted by thelonius at 9:42 AM on September 15, 2018 [15 favorites]

I remember coming across this recording as a vinyl bootleg in 1989 or 1990 and spent a pretty penny to obtain it. I collected bootlegs of his work rather obsessively back then and, believe me, there's a LOT of them, but this has always remained among my favorites.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 9:50 AM on September 15, 2018 [1 favorite]

I found the wikipedia article about the unreleased albums fascinating for a lot of reasons, unfortunately one of them being

Of the tracks included on Corporate World, three tracks were kept for Pandemonium: "Donald Trump (Black Version)", ...

*sigh* goddammit (sorry Prince), and the link that eventually led to 2017's mea culpa by Kevin Smith, which was really pretty moving and unexpected.
posted by petebest at 7:42 PM on September 15, 2018

I just miss him so much. I can't tell if the promise of new material makes it hurt less or more, truly.
posted by donnagirl at 1:08 PM on September 17, 2018