C-Note Prince album

NPG Records

album

The best Prince song you’ve never heard.

C-Note is a digital album comprising five live recordings captured on the One Nite Alone… Tour during the pre-concert soundchecks attended by NPG Music Club members at shows performed between 25 October to 29 November, 2002. C-Note was issued as five MP3s from Prince‘s official website npgmusicclub.com, individually available on 3 January 2003 and later as a downloadable collection on 29 March 2004. It was therefore ineligible to chart as a conventional retail release.

The first four tracks are instrumental soundchecks from the tour and named after the cities the recordings were captured. The original version of the opening track Copenhagen contains a 3-minute and 20-second silent homage to Miles Davis which was edited out in the in the full C-Note release. This was recorded on 25 October 2002 at the show at Falconer Salen in Frederiksberg, Copenhagen.

The next three tracks were recorded during the Japan leg of the tour. The album’s second track is from Nagoya on 29 November 2002 at the Congress Center. The third was recorded at Osaka on 28 November 2002 at the Osaka-Jo Hall. The fourth is a recording from Tokyo, captured on 18 November 2002 at the Nippon Budokan.

The fifth track is the only officially released recording of the fan favourite outtake Empty Room, a song that originates from the evening of 3 August 1985 when laid down by Prince and The Revolution at their Washington Avenue warehouse studio following an argument with the band. He re-recorded the song in 1992 to give to the soundtrack for the movie I’ll Do Anything, but withdrew cooperation from the project. Whilst a studio recording of Empty Room has never been officially released, the track was intended for inclusion on The Revolution’s compilation of unreleased studio outtakes, Roadhouse Garden, in 1999, however that project never materialised. The version on C-Note is likewise a live recording and captured during the fan attended soundcheck ahead of the Falconer Salenin show in Copenhagen on 25 October 2002.

Together, the first letter of each of the five tracks spell C-NOTE – the nickname of an American $100 bill and the fee for lifetime subscription to the NPG Music Club.

Cover story

Intended as part of the benefits of the membership of the club to receive exclusive physical issues, in 2003 NPG Music Club webmaster Sam Jennings designed the cover and CD packaging of C-Note. The design shows a $100 bill incorporating the splash screen from the club website. The album was instead issued digitally, and the CD was never produced. No official artwork was thereby published, until 2015 when Prince awarded TIDAL exclusive rights to stream his music on their platform. Jennings’ artwork was confirmed as the official cover once the album published on TIDAL in 2015.

Performers

Vocals/Guitar

Prince

Drums

John Blackwell

Keyboards

Renato Neto

Bass Guitar

Rhonda Smith

Trombone

Greg Boyer

Saxophone

Candy Dulfer

Scratches

Dudley D

Data

Producer

Prince

Label

NPG Records

Distribution

NPG Records

Cover/Design

Sam Jennings

Released

22 years ago on 29 March 2004

Running Time

34:03

US Chart Peak

Ineligible

UK Chart Peak

Ineligible

Orig. Format

Tracklist

1. Copenhagen (10:07)
2. Nagoya (5:09)
3. Osaka (5:53)
4. Tokyo (8:53)
5. Empty Room (4:01)

Singles from C-Note

C-Note produced no singles.

C-Note album review

This point in 2003 marked a crossroads, the almost graveyard of Prince’s career. It was a strange moment. Then came the One Nite Alone Tour probably his best, but his then lacklustre jazz fizzed studio offerings Xpectation and N.E.W.S wrote the worst pages in Prince’s discography. It was this stark contrast that seemed to reveal Prince’s inner demons, where on one hand in concert he was growing artistically and heading into deeper more meaningful musical experiences, but in the studio his talent was regressing. Prince was clearly at odds with himself, where on one hand fervently believing music be artful if it is to be done properly. Be damned the fans suffer for this art like it or not.

C-Note was taken from four sound checks during the tour, which will make future listeners ask why the ONA tour became the fabled experience fans still revere. It was a fact even Prince could no longer ignore and on C-Note slotted in the Revolution classic Empty Room – the only reason for finding out and playing this album over and again. Let there be no doubt he would see that music is best when fun and hurriedly followed with Musicology in 2004. And guess what – back to success. Having reinvented himself and kept his music commercial Prince did not looked back since.

C-Note is rated 2 out of 5 by Goldies Parade.