Good News

I'm not gonna throw a bunch of links at you. That's what search engines are for.

Promising developments lately.

Two men instrumental and central to P's career in the last 20 years are named by the Bremer Trust to manage the future of the remaining art, facilities and assets.

DJ Brother Jules, a fixture in the New Power family since at least the mid-1990s, has announcements. He's worked on two projects with direct involvement from Prince that are nearing release. The Love Experience and The Remix Experience. Whether digital or physical release is unclear so far...

All proceeds will be donated to charity.

Hopefully we're not talking about it coming out a year from now. Maybe yet this summer?!?

Look it up on the org or NPG+, google or whatever for further information. This is good news.

In the end of April or beginning of May, I can't recall when I saw it. Brent Fischer, son of legendary composer and arranger Clare Fischer, spoke with Rolling Stone magazine. In the article he discussed his most recent work with P.

I find myself astonished to read again - another collaborator mentions that maybe 1/4 or less of the works they themselves considered finished or completed have ever been actually released. They got paychecks for their work, but the art P paid them for has yet to be appreciated by the worldwide audience.

In the RS article Mr. Fischer mentions Shades of Umber, a song that was performed at Montreux, and Pangaea - both of these songs arranged with a relatively new approach where the string section tried to play along with a guitar part meant specifically for that purpose.

You've heard of the "guide vocal" to give a singer something to sing along with, mimic when laying down their actual vocal track? Imagine a guitar part meant to be followed by the string section, and then dropped out of the final mix or blended in with the other channels.

We heard just the littlest hint of it on Baltimore. There's a hint of what sounds like the cloud guitar from I Wish U Heaven in the last half of Baltimore. And the string section and the guitar do some impressive, incredible things together. Makes you wish P had played live with the string section for all of us to behold. I'd loooooooove to watch some footage of that!!

Yes, friends, it sounds like P had yet again found an impressive way to reinvent his sound. And there's at least a few tracks, if not a whole album intended for release, waiting to be heard. Finished and meant for the public, if it were not for the clumsiness of the process - it would already be with us.

Then there's the pressing issue of how many more Phases might be in the series of Phase albums we've gotten two of already. Maybe there are more, like enough to match the number of moon phases?

I can't remember where I first heard this, but people keep saying recent collaborator and youtube sensation MonoNeon has mentioned an album called "Black Is The New Black" that was completed and ready for the world in February or March, if not before that. Maybe it was a subtitle to another Phase album, maybe it was an ensemble jam session. Who knows?

I'll try not to throw too many 2000+ word missives like my complicated relationship with bootlegs in the previous post. This should be a fun blog, not like homework or a marathon reading session.

Things are looking up.

Many blessings on DJ Brother Jules, Mr. McMillan and Mr. Koppelman as they turn their attention to the matters at hand.