C-Note (album)

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C note
Live album from Prince

Publication
(s)

January 3, 2003

admission

October and November 2002

Label (s) NPG Records

Format (s)

Download

Genre (s)

Funk , fusion , jazz , concept album , rock

Title (number)

5

running time

33:36

occupation All songs were produced, arranged, composed and performed by Prince. The following people added to the recordings, although the respective contributions to the songs were not made public:

production

Prince

Location (s)

Copenhagen , Nagoya , Osaka , Tokyo

chronology
One Nite Alone… Live!
(2002)
C note Indigo Nights
(2008)
Single release
no

C-Note ( English for one hundred US dollar banknote ) is the third live album by the US musician Prince . He recorded it with his backing band The New Power Generation and released it on January 3, 2003 on his music label NPG Records . The album was only available as a download from his website at the time. The album name is made up of the first letters of the five songs C openhagen , N agoya , O saka , T okyo and E mpty Room . All five songs are from sound checks Prince did before concerts on his one-nite-alone tour in 2002.

The music on the album belongs to the genres of funk , fusion , jazz and rock . Candy Dulfer and Maceo Parker are guest musicians . Prince did not do any noteworthy music promotion for C-Note and since it did not make it on the international music charts, it had no way of achieving gold or platinum status .

Mass media interest in C-Note was very low in 2003; It was not until after Prince's death in April 2016 that it was occasionally reviewed , with the song Empty Room receiving praise.

Emergence

On August 4, 1985, Prince recorded the song Empty Room in a recording studio called Washington Avenue Warehouse in Eden Prairie , Minnesota, after he had an argument with his girlfriend at the time, Susannah Melvoin . Various members of his then back-up band The Revolution were involved in the original recording of Empty Room , which The Revolution drummer Bobby Z. confirmed; he had given a "huge party" on August 3, 1985, but when Prince joined the party, Prince interrupted the party. After an argument with Melvoin, Prince asked his backing band if they wanted to record a song with him. "We recorded a song called Empty Room and I think it's about Susannah," Bobby Z. said later. Prince's then sound engineer Susan Rogers said a lot of people were upset that Prince let them work that day. Everyone was aware that Prince Empty Room would not be placed on any album. That's why he could have sung a song about Melvoin by himself, recorded it on cassette and put it in front of their doorstep with the words “I love you, goodbye”. In 1992, Prince reworked Empty Room and in 1994 he produced a music video for the song, but both productions have not officially been released until today (as of 2020). Prince wrote the four songs Copenhagen , Nagoya , Osaka and Tokyo in 2002.

In November 2002 Prince released his first live album, One Nite Alone… Live! , which is a compilation of his one-nite-alone tour with which he toured the world from March to November 2002. Before every main concert, he did sound checks that lasted up to 90 minutes. These sound checks were only available to people who were registered as members of Prince's website at the time, NPG Music Club.com. The website existed since February 2001 and membership initially cost US $ 100 (then about DM 218 ), for which one was registered for life. In the years that followed, Prince reduced the amount to $ 25 a year (then about 22 euros) and in July 2006 he closed the website.

The five songs on C-Note are taken from the soundchecks Prince played before the main concerts. He recorded two pieces in Denmark and three in Japan . He played the two songs Copenhagen and Empty Room on October 25, 2002 in Copenhagen at the Falkoner Center. The photo of Tokyo is from November 18, recorded in the Nippon Budōkan sports hall . Prince played the piece Osaka on November 28, 2002 at the soundcheck before the concert in Osaka-jō Hall , and a day later he recorded the song Nagoya at his soundcheck at the Nagoya Kokusai Kaigijō Convention Center .

Album name C-Note

With the term "C-Note", Prince chose an album name that can be understood ambiguously ; On the one hand, it is a term for the one hundred US dollar banknote in colloquial US language because the number "100" is represented as the letter "C" in Roman numerals . On the other hand, membership of his website NPG Music Club.com had to pay exactly 100 US dollars. In addition, the album name C-Note is made up of the five initials of the album songs.

Music and lyrics

Drummer John Blackwell
(* 1973, † 2017)

All five songs by C-Note are live recordings and come from sound checks that Prince completed before the respective main concerts. The music can be assigned to the genres of funk , fusion , jazz and rock . Empty Room is the only song with lyrics . Copenhagen , Nagoya and Osaka are instrumentals ; In the song Tokyo , Prince only sings the title name several times, otherwise no further lyrics are available.

Copenhagen is a jazz-inspired improvised instrumental piece based on a motif of funky keyboard and electric bass playing . The song begins with drumming, supported by saxophone and scratching . Piano playing by Renato Neto uses, as well as synthesizers . After a drum solo by John Blackwell, the saxophone returns and the band jams until the end of the song.

The instrumental Nagoya based on funky synthesizer and electric bass in combination with a fast drum - beat , the pattern at times to the Prince song Mad Sex from the album newpower soul (1998) recalls. The rhythmic foundation of Nagoya consists of improvised instrumental game on guitar and trombone based.

The instrumental song Osaka begins with the sound of rain and thunder. Compared to Copenhagen , Nagoya and Tokyo is Osaka much more sophisticated Prince composes Service. The song is a calm and atmospheric number with a one-note bass interrupting the calm music at regular intervals, similar to the Prince song West from his album NEWS (2003). Renato Neto's piano can be heard in the foreground of Osaka . Towards the end of the song, Prince plays a guitar solo .

Tokyo can be assigned to the genre Easy Listening . The piece begins and ends with a strike of the gong . The song consists mostly of instrumental music, with Prince singing "to-kee-o" repeatedly from start to finish. His voice is accelerated by pitch shifting . Tokyo begins with Renato Neto's piano playing and is then accompanied by a hybrid piano . At the end of the song, noises similar to the flutter of birds can be heard.

Empty Room is a dark rock song in which three chords - without a chorus or bridge - keep recurring. In the lyrics, Prince wonders how to fill his empty space after he's left. "Lonely hearts, separate worlds, why do they have to be broken?" Prince sings among others.

List of titles and publications

No. song author length
01 Copenhagen Prince 10:06
02 Nagoya Prince 8:44
03 Osaka Prince 5:40
04th Tokyo Prince 5:05
05 Empty room Prince 4:01

C-Note was released on January 3, 2003 and was initially only available for download as a download from Prince's website at the time, NPG Music Club.com . In 2015, the album was also released for download on the music streaming service Tidal . C-Note has not officially appeared on compact disc and no singles have been released. Cover versions of songs on the album are not known.

Prince originally put a version of Copenhagen online that was 13:37 minutes long. This version contained a Belchbläser - interpolation of Miles Davis ' piece of Jean-Pierre from his album We Want Miles from 1982. Four days after the release of Copenhagen put Prince song from his website and found it a shorter version available, Jean-Pierre does not contain. He did not provide a reason for his decision, but copyright infringement could have been responsible.

In 1994 Prince produced a music video for Empty Room , which has not yet been officially released (as of 2020). The video shows his girlfriend and future wife Mayte Garcia , as well as the members of his backing band The New Power Generation . You can also see Prince with the term "slave" on his cheek because he was in a dispute with his former record company, Warner Bros. Records . The version for the music video from Empty Room is not identical to the version on the album C-Note . Music videos for the songs Copenhagen , Nagoya , Osaka and Tokyo do not exist.

reception

Press

In 2003, mass media interest in C-Note was extremely low because the album did not go on sale. It was only occasionally reviewed after Prince's death in April 2016 . The album is mentioned in several books about Prince, but there are no reviews either.

The music critic David Wilson and John Alroy-reviewed album in 2003, but gave off a final judgment. They were not very enthusiastic and wrote, among other things, that C-Note was "another fan club album that was hastily thrown together to calm people who felt they didn't get their $ 100". Although the song Empty Room builds up from a “desolate beginning to an anthemic climax”, Prince's accompanying band is “not particularly well presented on the album. The jams are either simple funk licks ( Copenhagen ) or subtle mood pieces ( Tokyo ) ”.

The British music journalist Matt Thorne of the British daily newspaper The Guardian compiled a list of the “20 best Prince songs you have never heard” in 2012 and put Empty Room at number 6. He said that Prince has never had a “breakup -Album "like Blood on the Tracks (1975) by Bob Dylan or The Boatman's Call (1997) by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds , but with Empty Room he comes close to the songs of the albums mentioned. Thorne did not rate the album C-Note .

Posthumously

Iman Lababedi of the Rock NYC website was disappointed with the album C-Note and posthumously awarded it C- , with A being the best possible award. She said that only one song has "the discipline to be more than just jingling around". Alluding to Prince's dispute with the Warner Bros. Records label in the 1990s, the song Copenhagen should be compared to the song When You Were Mine on his album Dirty Mind (1980), which is why Lababedi asked: “What does he think [Prince ] what has brought him his freedom? ”.

Seth Colter Walls of the Pitchfork Media website posthumously compiled a list of "25 Modern Prince Songs You Need In Your Life", including Empty Room . The song contains "a soulful Prince lead voice and one of the glowing guitar solos" that Prince has recorded in recent years. Empty Room is "by far the best" on a C note .

Charts

The album C-Note was not listed in the international music charts because it was only available for purchase via Prince's website at the time, NPG Music Club.com. Nothing has been publicly known about the sales of C-Note .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. C-Note. In: Princeestate.com. 2018, accessed June 30, 2018 .
  2. a b c d e f Uptown (2004), p. 446.
  3. One Nite Alone… Tour. In: Princevault.com. October 11, 2017, accessed June 30, 2018 .
  4. a b US dollar exchange rate from 1971 to 2017. In: reisebuch.de. 2018, accessed June 30, 2018 .
  5. Draper (2016), p. 177.
  6. ^ Ro (2011), p. 347.
  7. a b Uptown (2004), p. 447.
  8. Uptown (2004), pp. 446-447.
  9. Uptown (2004), pp. 446-447.
  10. Greenman (2017), p. 275.
  11. Copenhagen. In: Princevault.com. May 3, 2018, accessed June 30, 2018 .
  12. ^ Uptown (2004), p. 629.
  13. ^ Wilson & Alroy's Record Reviews - Prince. In: Warr.org. 2018, accessed June 30, 2018 .
  14. Matt Thorne: The 20 best Prince songs you've never heard. In: Theguardian.com. September 27, 2012, accessed June 30, 2018 .
  15. Iman Lababedi: Prince's C-Note and NEWS Reviewed. (No longer available online.) In: Rocknycliveandrecorded.com. December 22, 2016, archived from the original on July 1, 2018 ; accessed on June 30, 2018 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / rocknycliveandrecorded.com
  16. Seth Colter Walls: 25 Latter-Day Prince Songs That U Need in Your Life. In: Pitchfork.com. April 22, 2016, accessed June 30, 2018 .