Purple Rain Expanded

The original album has been remastered to sound better. You get two other CD's that feature B-Sides and remixes for this time period of Purple Rain. You also get a DVD with it. It has a cool insert too!

The original Purple Rain was one of the best albums by anyone during the mid 80's. Period. This reissue couples the classic album with two discs of bonus material, and a DVD. The two bonus CD's include numerous previously unreleased songs, as well as all of the singles from the album. The singles disc includes both the 7" and 12" versions of Let's Go Crazy, and it's controversial non-album B-side Erotic City. The 7" edits of these songs and the other singles from the album are highly superfluous, though. The Purple Rain and When Doves Cry edits are particularly worthless, being virtually identical to the album versions, but each fading out as the respective guitar solo begins. More interesting are the B-sides to the Purple Rain singles, both being versions of a song called God. The version that appeared on the Purple Rain 7" features Prince's falsetto vocal (something that some people may or may not enjoy listening), while the 12" version is a guitar heavy instrumental, vaguely in a similar style as Santana.Another highlight is the 12" version of I Would Die 4 U, which is a completely different recording of the song from the album version, featuring a combination of Prince, The Revolution, and Sheila E's backing band. Eric Leeds' David Sanborn wannabe alto sax playing gets a little old very quickly for my tastes, but I imagine other people will enjoy it just fine.The DVD is a reissue of Prince And The Revolution Live, a concert video that was released in 1985, and until this release, had been unavailable for 3 decades. Shot at the Carrierdome in Syracuse NY, and originally broadcast live to Europe as part of a Rockpalast broadcast, this captures the band in full flight. It's not perfect, largely owing to some audio gaffes. Prince's guitar solos on the first couple songs are largely inaudible, as are Brown Mark's vocal at the start of 1999 (Brown Mark sings the part Dez Dickerson sang on the studio version). Also, there's some audio weirdness on the vocal during the first verse of Purple Rain itself. That's to be expected in a live TV broadcast, but one wonders why, if they were planning to release this show on home video (and they must have been, given how quickly the original VHS release came out), they could/should have made sure those anomalies were corrected by remixing the audio (of course, if they didn't think to run multi-track tape on the show, that would have been impossible).But the performances mostly make up for the shortcomings. The band fires on all four cylinders throughout the entire concert. There's an interlude in the middle of the show where Prince sits down at a Yamaha CP-70 electric grand piano and does several songs, as well as short but silly "conversation with God" skit. But THE highlight of this recording is the 18 minute version of Purple Rain that closes the concert. Featuring three guitar solos from Prince that take up the majority of the performance, it's a tour de force proving once and for all how brilliant an axeslinger Prince was (and believe it or not, there are still people who don't realize Prince could hold his own against any of the top rock guitarists of that or any other era).My only real complaint about the DVD is the lack of bonus features. I wish they had included the live videos for I Would Die 4 U/Baby I'm A Star and Take Me With U that MTV aired at around the same time. The video version of Take Me With U in particular is worthy because unlike the Syracuse version, Prince plays another excellent guitar solo.This definitely a worthy addition to the collection of any Prince fan.

All things considered, a good package. The remaster, by Josh A.M. Welton (who is not a mastering engineer), is too hot - emphasizing volume increase over dynamic nuance. Still, it's not unlistenable - just not the definition version that might've been had original 'Purple Rain' mastering engineer Bernie Grundman handled the job.Grundman did remaster the "vault" material disc and the B-sides/extended mix disc. Most of the "vault" songs sound like they were sourced from cassette or some other non-first-generation tape. The songs are sometimes interesting (numerous have been widely bootlegged previously) - the "Hallway Speech" long version of "Computer Blue" is a highlight, as is the "Our Destiny/Roadhouse Garden" medley - and sometimes uninspired, like the disc-opening "Dance Electric" that goes on for over ten minutes with little purpose. Important to keep in mind, these are not "finished" tracks and Prince did not consent to their release in his lifetime. Essentially this is tomb-raiding and it might leave you uneasy, as it did me. And there's really nothing essential in terms of classic tracks.The B-sides and extended mixes disc is a mixed bag - but at least all this stuff was sanctioned by the artist in the first place. The 7" edits are largely useless space fillers, included for completeness (some haven't been commercially-released CD before, including the four-minute edit of the album's title track). Finally the ultra-gorgeous "God" instrumental version is officially available (for the first time since its original 12" vinyl release). If you haven't heard the live rehearsal version of "I Would Die 4 U" yet, you haven't lived.The DVD sounds great. This Syracuse concert was previously available back in the day on VHS and laserdisc. It has never sounded this good. It looks okay - an upgrade from my dropout-plagued old VHS, for sure - but if you're new to this show, be aware going in that suffers from the same shortcomings of any live, standard def TV broadcast of its era (1985). The concert itself has some slow, self-indulgent portions that are short on music, but the show is still loaded with highlights including the epic encore versions of "Baby I'm a Star" and "Purple Rain."If it was any more expensive, this would be a disappointment in some ways - but it's fairly priced for the amount of material included.