Tag: The Vault

The Vault… Old Friends 4 Sale (1999)
A couple of years ago I saw Stan Douglas’ film Luanda-Kinshasa in an art gallery. Or at least I saw part of it. The full thing is six hours long and consists solely of a jazz-fusion funk band jamming in retro garb. The film’s music was captivating – no peaks or troughs, just a simmering, Escher groove that could unfold forever. Musical manna. If the gallery wasn’t about to close I could have easily lasted the whole 360-minute duration. When I listen to the smokey lounge jazz of When the Lights go Down I feel similarly in awe. I just don’t want it to stop. The intro is two and a half minutes long (four of The Vault’s ten tracks will have already finished by this point) but there’s no rush – It’s a delight to bask in the sound of a band at the top of their game. And when the vocals do arrive it’s like the loving embrace of a long lost friend. Some of Prince’s creations floor you with their otherworldliness and others hit you with their virtuosic flawless execution. When the Lights go Down is a textbook example of the latter.

Unreleased (1985) / The Vault… Old Friends 4 Sale (1999)
l never used to understand the scorn for the updated Old Friends 4 Sale. Maybe because I heard it before the unreleased original, but to me the two versions didn’t sound too dissimilar. Yes, the haunting melancholy has been slightly bleached with time and we’ve lost the personal references about Dez leaving and Wendy joining The Revolution (first verse), The Time disbanding and the subsequent fallout with Morris (second verse) and Prince’s bodyguard selling an exposé to the National Enquirer (third verse). The newer, vaguer lyrics barely make sense, but the string section is the same one recorded in 1985 and still the shining jewel in this ballad of betrayal. Or so I thought. Not long ago I heard the pre-orchestral demo and realised the strings were a distraction all along. Without Clare Fischer’s input we’re relying solely on the vocals to carry us along and hooo boy do they move. A pit of bleak despair has opened up for us to fall into and it’s now clear his later performance is more 9pm showtime than this 4am hotel room rendition, bloodshot and wrecked. There’s no clearer contrast than in the dying seconds: compare how Prince struggles to summon the lifeforce to deliver the final lines in the 1985 recording, while in 1991 he’s chipper enough to throw in a Louis Armstrong-style croon afterward. Pain has been replaced with theatrics; despair replaced with flair. If you’re after authenticity then the original wins hands down, but is hearing somebody’s spirit break in real time really entertainment?

The Vault… Old Friends 4 Sale (1999)
Coated in irony and full of fisticuffs, catcalls, even a Mutley laugh, It’s About That Walk is Peach for the Vegas set. It’s one of the more immediate cuts on the Vault comp and like most fast burners it has a certain number of plays before it loses its charge. Even so, it still has the capacity to surprise, as I found out this morning when my run for a bus coincided with the breakdown two minutes in. I felt like Jack Kerouac’s character in the Dharma Bums running and leaping down the Matterhorn, invincible to gravity. And as it crescendoed into horns my feet left the ground and part of me’s still flying two hours later. Ooooo-wee!

The Vault… Old Friends 4 Sale (1999)
A canapé of honky-tonk piano and jazz saxophone written for the doomed I’ll Do Anything soundtrack but fortunately one of the few contributions to be saved from its destined obscurity. Plucked, scrubbed, gilded with horns and placed gleaming bright at the start of his Warner Bros kiss-off album, The Rest of my Life is a brisk, in-charge-of my-own-kismet, pep talk. Although not long enough to get its hooks in deep, the production (as with the rest of the album) is faultlessly pristine and doesn’t mess around, throwing you straight into the Vegas-style action with a series of focusing, self-applied cheek-slaps. For all of its forward facing lyrics it lays out the album’s retro blueprint – a warm, analogue nostalgia. Perky in isolation but when compared to the otherworldly Beautiful Strange that Prince unveiled on the same day, you can begin to detect the musty smell of seven years’ storage.

The Vault… Old Friends 4 Sale (1999)
It stretches the definition of the term ’song’ but like Tom Wait’s What’s He Building? or a Dr. Octagon skit it’s a fantastic, passing glimpse into a fully formed universe. Written for the I’ll Do Anything comedy film but ending up on his Warner Bros contractual sign-off comp instead, My Little Pill is a strange, somewhat frightening concoction. It’s a short tale of a single mother taking a pill to escape her troubles and I’ll skip over the unwelcome poignancy later events would shroud this with. I love all 69 bizarre seconds of this psychotropic amuse-bouche but fear I may be in a minority amongst Prince fans. It’s certainly one of the strangest things he’s recorded and the music twists and warps around the half spoken / half sung lyrics like the unravelling fabric of reality. It sounds like one of Frank Zappa’s stress dreams or (and I’m going esoteric here) the animated cupcake scene in 1985’s Young Sherlock Holmes (just YouTube it) but I would lap up a whole album of these hallucinogenic oddities.

The Vault… Old Friends 4 Sale (1999)
Prince in Vegas mode. The consummate professional at matinee, walking amongst the audience, dragging his fingertips across the backs of chairs and ruining your expectations for every hotel lounge band you’re ever likely to experience henceforth. Extraordinary was originally earmarked for a Rosie Gaines album but recalled to be the closer on Prince’s The Vault… Old Friends 4 Sale collection, an overlooked track on an overlooked album and the requiem for his Warner Brothers contract. Later it was given a new lease of life on his live disc One Night Alone at double the length and incorporating a sax solo by Candy Dulfer. Happy, Shiny brilliance that never loses its sheen. I’ve had it on repeat in order to write this and it gets better every time. Never been a fan of the word ‘extraordinary’ though – that silent middle ‘a’ is an abomination. Pronounce it or ditch it!