Prince and The Revolution – Dream Factory
(soniclovenoize reconstruction)
THIS RECONSTRUCTION WAS UPDATED IN JANUARY 2021
http://albumsthatneverwere.blogspot.com/2021/01/prince-and-revolution-dream-factory.html
Side A:
1. Visions
2. Dream Factory
3. Train
4. The Ballad of
Dorothy Parker
5. It
Side B:
6. Strange
Relationship
7. Slow Love
8. Starfish and
Coffee
9. Interlude
10. I Could Never
Take The Place of Your Man
Side C:
11. Sign o’ The
Times
12. Crystal Ball
13. A Place In Heaven
Side D:
14. Last Heart
15. Witness 4 The
Prosecution
16. Movie Star
17. The Cross
18. All My Dreams
In honor of the passing of Prince, this is a reconstruction
of what would have been his final album with The Revolution, 1986’s Dream Factory, which eventually evolved into Sign o' The Times. Originally conceived as a double album with a
significant amount of creative input from the band (at least compared to
previous Prince releases), the album was scrapped after Prince broke up The
Revolution in 1986. Prince then turned
his attention to a solo concept album Camille, which was also scrapped and combined
with the Dream Factory material to create the unreleased triple album Crystal
Ball. Warner Bros Records then asked
Prince to whittle the 3LP down, and the result was the double album Sign o'
The Times, which many consider to be Prince’s masterpiece. This reconstruction attempts to present what
Prince originally intended the Dream Factory album to sound like,
volume-adjusted and using the best possible masters—EQd to match a virgin vinyl
rip of Sign o’ The Times—to make the
most natural-sounding album possible.
Prince was truly the reigning star of the 1980s. Armed with both worldwide smash hits, musical chops and the artistic credibility
to back it up, Prince also had the vision and determination to prove himself a
modern music legend… But let's not forget he also had the band to back it up. Even though Prince was a great songwriter,
producer and multi-instrumentalist who had the ability to mastermind his own
works and retain both commercial and critical success, his output throughout
the 1980s grew to allow more collaboration from his backing band he formed in 1979. The lineup of The Revolution seemed to be in
flux at times, but after the transcendent success of Purple Rain in 1984 and their
subsequent albums Around The World in a Day and Parade, the classic core of the
band coalesced as guitarist Wendy Melvoin, keyboardist Lisa Coleman,
keyboardist Matt Fink, bassist Brown Mark and drummer Bobby Z. In working on the follow-up to Parade before
it was even released, Prince invited members of The Revolution—although mostly
Melvoin and Coleman—to contribute backing vocals, songwriting, instrumentation
and even lead vocals to the material. Reworking
older songs as a starting point—the 1982 recordings of “Teacher, Teacher”,
“Strange Relationship” and “I Could Never Take The Place of Your Man”—as well
as the project's title track in December 1985, most of the work occurred in Prince’s
newly built home studio on Galpin Boulevard.
By April 1986, Prince had created a rough cut of an album called Dream
Factory that elevated both Wendy and Lisa as major players (although they later
claimed they didn’t receive the credit they thought they deserved!). At this point in time, Dream Factory was a
single-disc album that included: “Visions”, “Dream Factory”, “It’s a Wonderful
Day”, “The Ballad of Dorothy Parker”, “Big Tall Wall”, “And That Says What?”
“Strange Relationship”, “Teacher, Teacher”, “Starfish and Coffee”, “A Place in
Heaven” and “Sexual Suicide”.
Work on the album continued throughout the summer with
Prince often tracking all the instruments himself, although he also continued
to work with Windy and Lisa in the studio.
A mountain of tracks began to collect and by June a double album had
emerged. Although songs such as “Big
Tall Wall” and “That Says What” fell to the wayside, great and interesting new
tracks such as “It”, “In A Large Room With No Light”, “Crystal Ball”, “Power
Fantastic”, “Last Heart”, “Witness 4 The Prosecution”, “Movie Star” and “All
My Dreams” were added to the running order as well as linking tracks “Wendy’s Interlude”
and “nevaeH ni ecalP A”, the later based around “A Place In Heaven” played
backwards and meant to introduce the title track. Now a double-album, this sequence of Dream Factory went through
further refinement over the month when more work was done to the songs. By July, Prince had dropped “Teacher,
Teacher”, “In a Large Room With No Light”, “Sexual Suicide” and “Power
Fantastic” and replaced them with newly completed tracks “Train”, “Slow Love”,
“I Could Never Take The Place of Your Man”, “Sign o' The Times” and “The
Cross”. A master was prepared on July 18th and Prince concentrated on the Hit n Run Tour, which would signal the closing
of the Dream Factory.
For the summer’s Parade/Hit n Run Tour, The Revolution was
expanded to include former members of The Time as well as The Family—jokingly
dubbed The Counter-Revolution. This
would include a full horn section, Melvoin’s twin sister Susannah (who was
romantically involved with Prince) and a set of former-bodyguards-turned-dancers. This
created a strain in the relationship between Prince and his band members, who
were questioning Prince’s artistic direction—why did the band nearly double in
size? Why are on-stage dancers getting
more attention than the musicians proper?
Wendy was especially annoyed at the addition of her sister as an
official member of the band and most of the core members of The Revolution
attempted to quit, only for Prince to convince Wendy, Lisa and Mark to stay
until at least the remainder of the tour in October.
As fate would have it, the growing animosity between Prince
and his Revolution was at least reciprocated.
At the end of the tour, Prince called in Wendy and Lisa to Paisley Park
and fired them. Bobby Z was replaced by Sheila
E. Allegedly out of loyalty to the rest
of his band members, Mark quit. With The
Revolution over, the collaborative Dream Factory was shelved and Prince went
back to his roots—being the sole maestro.
Prince promptly began work on a concept album called Camille, in which a
vocally-manipulated Prince would perform as the character Camille. Intending to fool the public, the album was never to be credited directly as Prince and the cover art was to be blank! A master to Camille was prepared in October
but that album too was scrapped and Prince rethought his strategy. In a bold move, Prince combined the best of
both the scrapped Dream Factory and Camille albums into one triple-album
entitled Crystal Ball (not to be confused with the 1998 rarities boxset of the
same name). With The Revolution no longer existing, Prince generally
mixed-out Wendy and Lisa’s contributions
from the Dream Factory tracks destined for Crystal Ball: “The Ballad of
Dorothy Parker”, “It”, “Starfish and Coffee”, “Slow Love”, “Crystal Ball”, “I Could
Never Take The Place of Your Man”, "The Cross" and “Sign o' The Times”.
In a final turn of events that makes the Dream Factory
mythos even more complex, this 3-LP Crystal Ball album was ultimately rejected by Warner
Brothers Records, and in December Prince was tasked to pair the album down to at
least a more marketable double album. After
adding a more commercial single “U Got The Look”, the result was retitled into
Sign o’ the Times and released as a Prince solo album in 1987. Although not quite hitting the commercial
peak that Purple Rain had three years earlier, Sign o’ The Times was
universally critically acclaimed and recent revaluations fairly state it as his
masterpiece. But to be fair, the album was
the culmination of three other scrapped albums—Dream Factory, Camille and
Crystal Ball—so it’s glory should come as no surprise. But to truly see how Sign o’ the Times was manufactured,
we must first see what it’s like in the Dream Factory.
While there were three different masters of Dream Factory
prepared throughout the summer of 1986, my reconstruction will focus on its
final iteration, using those specific mixes and track sequence; luckily all the
tracks are available on both official and high-quality bootlegs. In the name of creating the most
natural-sounding reconstruction, I choose to use a pristine needledrop of an
unplayed virgin vinyl copy of Sign o’ The Times (by thesnodger) for the songs
also found on that release. Furthermore, all of the
tracks taken from bootlegs were EQd to match the
mastering and EQ parameters of that unplayed copy of Sign o’ The Times. The result is an
attempt to preserve the sound originally intended by Prince in 1986 and to
avoid the temptation for anachronistically maximizing specific frequencies (such as a certain, unnamed
Dream Factory remaster with exaggerated bass frequencies).
Side A begins with “Visions” taken from the collector's edition of Wendy & Lisa’s
Eroica album, which hard edits into the unlisted “nevaeH ni ecalP A” taken from
the Work It bootleg. The original mix of
“Dream Factory” appears here taken from the Work It bootleg but EQd to match
the released version from the 1998 compilation Crystal Ball. Following is the fantastic “Train” taken from
the Work It bootleg but EQd to match the aforementioned vinyl Sign o’ The Times
parameters. Concluding the side are “The
Ballad of Dorothy Parker” and “It”, both taken from thesnodger’s needledrop of
Sign o’ The Times since the Dream Factory mixes are identical to the official Sign
mixes. Side B begins with the superior original
mix of “Strange Relationship” that features Wendy & Lisa’s overdubs that
Prince exorcised for the Sign album, here taken from the Work It bootleg. “Slow Love” and “Starfish and Coffee” follow,
mixes identical as heard on Sign so again taken from the needledrop (but with “Starfish”’s
alarm removed, as per what is heard on Dream Factory). “Interlude” follows,
taken from the Work It bootleg and Side B concludes with “I Could Never Replace
Your Man” a longer mix than on Sign, taken from the Work It bootleg but EQd to
match the shorter Sign version.
Side B opens with the single version of “Sign o’ the Times”,
taken from The Hits/The B-Sides compilation. The
closing drumbeat is hard edited into the opening beat of the jaw-dropping “Crystal
Ball”. The Dream Factory version is
unfortunately an early mix that lacked Clare Fisher’s extraordinary
orchestration. Regardless, this mix
taken from the Work It bootleg, is EQd to match the final version from the
Crystal Ball rarities compilation. The
side closes with the original mix of “A Place in Heaven” from the Work It
bootleg featuring Lisa on lead vocals. Side D
opens with the original mix of “Last Heart” from the Work It bootleg, EQd to
match the final mix on Crystal Ball. The
admittedly less-than-stellar “Witness 4 The Prosecution” and “Movie Star”
follow, both taken from the Work It bootleg and re-EQd. The album closes with the double-punch of the fantastic "The Cross" from Sign and the legendary
unreleased track many claim could have been a hit—“All My Dreams”, here taken
from the Dream Factory bootleg on Sabotage Records, but EQd to match my own
reconstruction.
Sources used:
Prince – Dream Factory (2003 bootleg CD, Sabotage Records)
Prince – The Hits/The B-Sides (original 1993 CD pressing)
Prince – Sign o’ The Times (1987 thesnodger vinyl rip)
Prince – Work It – Volumes 2 & 3 (2008 bootleg, GetBlue
Records)
Wendy & Lisa – Erioca (1990 collector’s edition CD pressing)
flac --> wav --> SONAR and
Goldwave --> flac encoding via TLH lv8
* md5 files, track notes and artwork
included