One of the sad things is that when Prince died, a lot of his best work wasn’t on the Internet let alone YouTube as he famously hated the Internet (mostly, apart from his own site and fan club) and tried to get everything pulled.
Great to finally see the full First Avenue concert that Purple Rain was recorded at (it’s an edit of the full 21 minutes, with a few studio extras but basically it was recorded live – yes that’s HOW good him and the Revolution were, could record a song live and no-one would know).
The testament to how tight and prepared they were is the Basement Rehearsals tape – recorded here it says in 1984, but given the tracklist it looks more like the 1999 tour which would be 1983? Anyway some amazing versions of Something In The Water (Does Not Compute) and When Doves Cry, and you can see Prince practising the soon-to-be trademark moves, even with the James Brown style ending of Possessed! It’s also interesting that some of his best songs were actually B-sides, and fan/live favourites practised here – Erotic City, Irresistible Bitch, 17 Days…
Lets hope these stay or even better now get a proper HQ release. I for one would love a full quality DVD with these, if the original tapes exist – and given Prince’s hoarding habit of The Vault, they might very likely do.
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