Prince - Purple Rain (1984)
Prince recorded a lot more material during the making of the 'Purple Rain' album and film than appeared on the record, and so it's possible to get a better idea of what he wad doing at the time by expanding the soundtrack album into a double. The original unedited version of 'Let's Go Crazy' starts the album, more or less how it was played by the band in the film. 'Take Me With U' was originally intended for Apollonia 6 before being added to 'Purple Rain', but as it wasn't even on the first two album configurations and seems a bit too mainstream compared to the other tracks, I've replaced it with the superior 'Erotic City'. 'God' is the original instrumental version which is used in the film during the scenes showing his dysfunctional family life. The long instrumental sections of 'Computer Blue' in the film were edited out from the album to make room for 'Take Me With U', so I'll use the 7:30 edit they were originally planning to use before it got chopped down to 4 minutes. Apollonia comes to the fore on 'Sex Shooter', a song written by Prince who also played all the instruments. I've used the rehearsal take of 'Electric Intercourse' as this has better audio quality than the concert version, and the album ends with the vocal version of 'God' that was used as the b-side to the title track, as it contains the same melody as the 'Love Theme' instrumental, and nicely ties everything together.
Track listing
01 Let's Go Crazy 02 Erotic City 03 The Beautiful Ones 04 God (Love Theme From Purple Rain) 05 When Doves Cry 06 Computer Blue #4 07 G-Spot 08 Darling Nikki 09 Sex Shooter 10 Irresistible Bitch 11 She's Always In My Hair 12 Another Lonely Christmas 13 17 Days 14 Electric Intercourse 15 I Would Die 4 U 16 Baby I'm A Star 17 Purple Rain 18 God
From The Album Fixer May 2016, and all notes and opinions are his.
Big thanks for today's installments. For the most part, everything you have posted (and I don't mean just today) has been something I have really enjoyed from the first play. Thanks for all of them.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kind words, and there's plenty more to come.
DeleteIf you are going to add "Sex Shooter", you should also add the Time's "Jungle Love" and "The Bird" given that Prince wrote both of those songs and basically gave them to the Time to perform. It's likely that much of the backing tracks on those two songs were performed by Prince, and those songs were centerpieces of drama in the film. I'm also inclined to add "Modernaire" by Dez Dickerson, who also had a featured song and a couple of minutes of screen time with his band. It's a good groove and Prince very likely added his talents to that track.
ReplyDeleteThese aren't PJ's choices, he has been occasionally reconstructing the archival posts of another album reconstructor, the Album Fixer, whose site has been gone since 2016, but can be accessed via the Wayback Machine @ archive.org...The difference being that AF would give you the sources to construct it yourself, while PJ does the work to provide an actual downloadable album to enjoy.
DeleteI'm sure PJ would say, if you want to add those songs to make it more palatable to you, feel free LOL
Do you have documents with all of Albumfixer's notes?
ReplyDeletehttps://web.archive.org/web/20180215171830/http://albumfixer.blogspot.com:80/2016/05/prince-revolution-purple-rain.html
DeleteOh well, PJ, a thousand thanks for making that Fixer's reconstruction available: sorry for the purists but, for me, it's a far beyond more gorgeous album than the original (that I always considered a little thin despite its high reputation). Fixer & you give us a fine fixing revenge against history. I really enjoy your work!
ReplyDeletezardoz1984