Prince Album of the Day (Day 4): C-Note (2003)

Prince Album of the Day (Day 4): C-Note (2003)

Standout track: Empty Room

You're probably asking, "C-Note? What the hell is C-Note?" C-Note, my friends, was a fan club-only release (and you thought I only liked him for his body) that Prince released after promising members four albums just for them and then not following through, which led to lawsuits from the fans. A pretty ugly situation, no?

The album itself is a live New Power Generation recording, taken from soundchecks and live performances during the 2002 tour. The title is named after the order of the song titles, most being the cities where they were recorded: Copenhagen, Nagoya, Osaka, Tokya, Empty Room. (There is a sixth song that I have as a bonus, Copenhagen (Slight Return), which is, as you'd expect, a slightly different version that the opening track.)

It is a mostly instrumental album, Empty Room being the only cut with any actual lyrics. (Tokyo features Prince occasionally chanting "Tokyo," but that's as far as it goes.) It's very jammy and jazzy, which is pretty great because the NPG who perform on this stuff are all super at what they do. The most notable member is long-time NPG player Maceo Parker, probably best known for playing with James Brown back in the day. So musically, there are a lot of good things happening here.

I'm a little unimpressed with the recording quality, however. Osaka has way too much distortion, so the very prominent bass sounds really bad and everything else on the track thus sounds a little fuzzy, where it shouldn't. (I listened to the album through three different sets of speakers, and this track sounded horrible on all of them, so it wasn't just a bad speaker here.) Copenhagen and Empty Room have the best quality for sound, but Copenhagen, while a fine jam, just wasn't powerful enough to sit strong in my mind. Empty Room is killer though, as close to rock and roll and you're going to find here. I would put the song into regular rotation on a playlist, which I may create when all this is said and done.

Nagoya just misses the mark of being a standout track, only because of the sound quality. It has some nice horn solos and the usual inspired guitar work, but it just sounds so muddy to me.

The bottom line is, musically, this has a lot going for it, but if you care about sound at all like I do, you'll walk away a little unimpressed. This would be perfect music to study by though, at the right volume, and would maybe even be something you could sleep to.

Rating: $350 (out of $500).