The Time - Corporate World

During the early stages of Graffiti Bridge, Prince decided to get Morris Day back in the picture with the intention of including The Time in the film, at least in name. Morris and Prince proceeded to record an album of new Time songs and named it Corporate World. Warner Bros., being the people funding the Graffiti Bridge project, wisely decided that Morris' presence wasn't nearly enough to constitute a Time reunion and they wouldn't proceed unless a full-blown, legitimate reunion were to occur. With that, Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, Jesse Johnson, Monte Moir and Jellybean Johnson were brought back in the fold and it was decided that the songs recorded for Corporate World that appeared in the film would be relegated to the soundtrack album with the rest of the songs either appearing alongside newly written and recorded pieces or shelved altogether.

The reunited Time album, Pandemonium, would be half written and completed by The Time themselves, with the other half being Prince produced and primarily created. Technically speaking, this is the closest The Time ever came to recording a proper album of their own performances, as the majority of their first three albums are simply Prince and Morris in the studio. It's a pretty great effort, but it's no surprise that it doesn't sound like a traditional Time album, what with Prince's presence diminished, whereas Corporate World sounds more like a Prince album built around Morris' image and personality. It's pretty great too, with four unreleased tracks, a number of alternate versions and only one track unchanged from its final release. The big items of note are the wonderful Murph Drag, an upbeat number about a dance only people with money can do, 9 Lives, a slower groover initially intended for Prince-protege, Cat, and finally the title track, an ode to reinvesting in the community and improving the world. There is also a completely different recording of The Latest Fashion, done instead as Morris telling a deceitful lover "what time it is" to a Prince-stylized version of a James Brown rhythm. The rest of the songs are relatively unchanged from their released versions with Release It remaining identical to the version on the Graffiti Bridge album.

Corporate World would have been a worthy album for release, although the majority of it has seen the light of day. Even Murph Drag received a pseudo-release as part of a radio show Prince held for the NPG Music Club. That said, it was replaced by the superior Pandemonium so you can't say it remains unreleased for a dumb reason like so much of Prince's vault recordings does. What I wouldn't give for the keys to that big door, and not only would you find racks of unreleased Prince songs, you'd find even more unreleased Time material. Hopefully one day we'll get to hear those recordings too.


The Time - Corporate World

FLAC, Part 1
FLAC, Part 2
V0 MP3

01 Murph Drag
02 Nine Lives
03 Donald Trump (Black Version)
04 Love Machine
05 Data Bank
06 Shake!
07 Corporate World
08 The Latest Fashion
09 Release It
10 My Summertime Thang
11 My Summertime Thang (Remix)

Prince - Graffiti Bridge: Homemade Deluxe Edition

Big thanks to Sean for providing both the vinyl for the main album as well as the artwork!


download links

liner notes

UPDATE: For anyone having problems with tracks 6 and 7 on the FLAC version of disc 3, download this update. That said, all my Prince uploads have recovery records which will fix broken files in WinRAR if that helps. Thank you.

The Family

With Morris Day and Jesse Johnson having left The Time in 1984, Prince decided to take the remaining members of the band, Jellybean, Jerome and St. Paul, and form a new band for them. Eric Leeds, in his first prominent role within Prince's camp, also joined the band and Susannah Melvoin, Wendy's twin sister and Prince's long-time girlfriend, were also added to the line-up. This new band, like The Time, was primarily a Prince curated project, with the majority of the songs written and recorded by him, only to have vocals and other embellishments added later. This group was named The Family, and their self-titled album is recognized as one of the best Prince side-projects released.

Sadly, The Family, like many other projects for Prince, was short-lived, playing only one show, releasing only one single, and having only one album. St. Paul left after the band disintegrated, much to Prince's disdain, to begin his solo career, Jerome was briefly integrated into the Revolution, which earned him a major role in Under The Cherry Moon, and Eric Leeds became a regular Prince collaborator.

What most people immediately tie The Family to is Nothing Compares 2 U, Prince's wonderful ballad which was so exquisitely rendered by Sinéad O'Connor. The album stands on it's own though, with Clare Fischer's lush orchestrations, St. Paul's strong lead vocals and Prince's thorough production. The quality of these songs is so great they all could have been released as standard Prince tracks, and to drive that point home there are rough mixes of most of the album in circulation with Prince on lead vocals. If you compare the roughs to the finished recordings, it becomes clear that St. Paul is purely aping Prince's vocal performance, much in the way that Morris and just about every other Prince protege has ended up doing. That's not a bad thing though, as some of Prince's alternate vocalists are better than others, and St. Paul is rather good, capturing Prince's vibe excellently.

The Family's one single, The Screams Of Passion, pops it's head up every once in a while and appeared on the Prince curated soundtrack to Spike Lee's Girl 6, but otherwise their material has languished in obscurity lacking a reissue. With that said, I present to you The Family's sole album in lossless FLAC and MP3 V0 formats. Grab this, burn it to a CD and go driving around your neighborhood imagining it's 1985 all over again!


The Family

FLAC Part 1

FLAC Part 2

MP3 V0


01 High Fashion
02 Mutiny
03 The Screams Of Passion
04 Yes
05 River Run Dry
06 Nothing Compares 2 U
07 Susannah's Pajamas
08 Desire


PS - The wikipedia page for the album gives a nice rundown of who the tracks were credited as written by, but in reality all songs were written by Prince except River Run Dry which was a Bobby Z. composition. Also, if you'd like to see the art for the album, follow this link to a discogs reference with just about everything you could want scanned in very nicely.

Prince Week, Day One: BLAME PRINCE

I don't think I've said much about my relationship with the purple one, but it's rather convoluted and has led me to the point where I love his older stuff but have no appetite for anything new he may release, at least not if it's "new" music. With Prince, just because he says it's "new" it doesn't mean he didn't write it twenty years ago. A lot of his songs, both for himself and other artists, are re-treads he wrote and recorded years earlier. Sometimes the re-treads are practically identical. A great example of this, which I'll post later this week, is The Time's Chocolate. It was written for Purple Rain/Ice Cream Castles but shelved. A tape exists of the 1983 recording with a guide vocal by Prince doing his Morris Day impersonation and the backing track is IDENTICAL to that of the released version! Hell, Morris went so far as to use most of Prince's improvisations on the released version and Prince even makes an appearance, from the scratch vocal, as the annoying waiter! It's pretty incredible but, after listening to enough Prince records, these things aren't that shocking.

If we want to talk about shocking, or at least confusing, we can talk about Prince's long list of proteges and the unavailability of their catalogs. Prince owns the rights to just about everything released on his Paisley Park label, despite the fact Warner Brothers were his source of income for it's signings, and everything the label released, apart from his own albums, is out of print, has never been reissued and most likely never will be. The only exceptions are pre-Paisley Park releases by Sheila E. and The Time, all of which use the same masters that they have been pressed from for years, same as all of Prince's Warners catalog. Apparently, within the last decade Warners/Rhino had green-lit a Time greatest hits release, but due to Prince's bullshit, even a remastered collection of their hits and some rarities could not be issued, and it looks like Warners owns those masters to boot! I guess that's what you get when you let one of your most prolific artists write, record and create bands for your label, but it honestly seems very unfair, both to the label and the artists.

Anyway, there are tons of great records Prince was involved in that are no longer unavailable for reasons only the purple one and his lawyers may know, but due to the power of the internet we can now enjoy these classics regardless! So, to kick off the week, I've prepared a small compilation of some rather rare Prince-related singles and productions which are otherwise completely unavailable. This will probably be the smallest of the Prince posts this week, at least in terms of content, so make sure you come back for much more over the next few days. I've got lots more where this came from!


BLAME PRINCE

01 The Time - Tricky
For many years, this was the last new track The Time had ever released, and it barely qualifies as a Time recording, let alone a full-fledged track. This was released as the B-Side to Jungle Love and, despite starting with Morris goofing on someone (I've heard reports the whole track is a goof on George Clinton), Prince takes over doing his best Morris impression while Morris and others laugh in the background. The backing track may be from the same sessions that produced Cloreen Bacon Skin which was recorded during the What Time Is It? sessions.

02 Apollonia 6 - Sex Shooter (Long Version)
This is the 12" version of the fabulous Sex Shooter. Unlike the album version, this goes on for near seven minutes and is much closer to the original draft of the song. A demo with Vanity singing over a less complete version of the backing track with Prince on backup vocals exists, and it's a bit funkier to boot, but this version is still great.

03 Andre Cymone - The Dance Electric (Long Version)
Andre was a member of Prince's earliest professional band before The Revolution became Prince's official group. He went solo and was openly miffed with Prince, but Prince, surprisingly enough, tried to squash whatever disagreement remained by giving Andre this excellent track recorded around the time of Around The World In A Day. There are versions of this with Prince singing, and apart from the vocals, they are identical to one another. There is a actually a VERY LONG version of this track where Prince solos all over the place and the bands rocks out. That will be hear soon enough, but for now you can enjoy the excellent released version.

04 Jill Jones - Mia Bocca (Extended)
This song was written around the time of Parade/Under The Cherry Moon and actually makes a brief appearance in the film as background music early on. It was given to Jill for her solo album in 1987, easily one of the best Prince-produced albums ever released. This version is a little different from the album version, having been remixed for single release.

05 The Family - The Screams Of Passion (Extended Version)
Another song from a Prince-produced project. The Family and Jill Jones' albums are some of the best things Prince ever did that didn't carry his name, and it's ridiculous that they're not available at least digitally. This song is a great slice of eighties dance/funk and this version was released on it's corresponding 12".

06 Sheila E. - Holly Rock (Extended Version)
Holly Rock was released on the Krush Groove soundtrack and as a single, but has never appeared elsewhere. Despite being listed as an Extended Version, this is probably the complete track with the album and single versions being radio friendly edits. It's pretty obvious Prince is all over this one, you can hear him counting off the band at the beginning heaven's sake! More reasons that his proteges should be given greatest hits collections at the very least. Great songs like these shouldn't be stored away to gather dust. Simply put, this track is THE SHIT!!!

07 Taja Sevelle - Wouldn't You Love To Love Me?
Trying to explain Taja is really difficult, so you should simply visit her wikipedia reference and official site where you can learn much more about this incredible woman. As for the song, Prince had been kicking this one around since before signing with Warners. He had recorded a very sweet version around the Dirty Mind era, but it simply wasn't right for that album. He re-recorded it in 1987 with his then-current personnel, and then gave the track to Taja for her debut album which was released on his own Paisley Park Records. The backing track is identical to Prince's 1987 version, although it fades out a little earlier.

08 The Time - Grace
This is the B-Side to 777-9311 and features Vanity, as Bridgette Harrington, trying to interview Morris as he keeps calling her Grace. The backing track is actually an edit of 777-9311, so it's really not a new track, more like a goofy skit, but memorable nonetheless.

09 Vanity 6 - Drive Me Wild (Extended Mix)
Susan Moonsey handles vocals on this minimal Vanity 6 classic. Oh god, how hot Susan, Brenda and Vanity were! No, I am not dissing Apollonia, lord knows she is hot as hell too! This version has a kickin' guitar solo towards the end.

10 Sheila E. - The Glamorous Life (Club Edit)
This was actually intended for the second Vanity 6 album, but with Vanity leaving the production of Purple Rain, Prince found a new use for it with Sheila. This version is from the 12" single, and is, as the title infers, a re-edit for clubs. This has appeared on some versions of the album released on CD, and may actually still be available for purchase, but how many people actually have it? I don't think I'm doing any harm by posting it here for all to enjoy, so let's enjoy it then!