Princely Catalog

The news that Rhino and Prince have entered an agreement to reissue his back catalog has everyone licking their chops over what could come out.  I for one would be interested in digitally upgraded copies of his classic years (late 70's to late 80's).  The fact that Rhino (remember them?) is handling this is good news.

But we all know Prince is a perfectionist.  Someone tweeted earlier in the day joked that he is now in the studio adding overdubs to all those old titles.  

At some point in the last year Prince realized that it was time to step back into a spotlight he had been ignoring.  There was an appearance on the TV show New Girl, an Arsenio Hall hour devoted to him and a cover semi-interview feature in the UK's Mojo magazine.  None of these were very revealing, because Prince knows the power of mystery over an audience.  And I can't say the new stuff that has been released does much for me, but they might sound better on a whole album.

And as of this writing you still can't find any of Prince's music videos on YouTube in the U.S., which remains pretty hilarious because you could find them anywhere else if you look hard enough on the good old Internet.

All of this coming out has to do with promoting a new album, but most of the talk of the Web had nothing to do with that.  It had to do with his catalog titles getting a long awaited sprucing up.  Prince's catalog label, WB, is notoriously bad in upgrading.  I'd happily buy updated versions of titles from Joni Mitchell or Jackson Browne if someone down there had stepped into the 21st century.

But back to Prince.  He's a savvy businessman here.  Getting to keep the masters of his old recordings is something every artist should strive for, especially one with a huge catalog.

I'm overly cautious here.  The first title is supposedly coming out this Summer.  Let's see what happens.