"Ever see a black man play guitar with no clothes on??!!"

28 December 1985
Prince gets together with Eric Leeds, Sheila E. and Levi Seacer Jr. to jam at Sunset Sound.
The quartet recorded a highly spontaneous "Paisley Jam" session. Eric played saxophone, Sheila drums, Levi bass, while Prince alternated between guitar and piano. Eight instrumentals were committed to tape:


"Slaughterhouse"
"U Just Can't Stop"
"Run Amok"
"Mobile"
"Madrid"
"Breathless"
"High Colonic"
"12 Keys"


They were given titles simply to facilitate their identification. Accordingly "Madrid" was named so because it had a kind of Spanish feel, while "Mobile" (referring to Mobile, Alabama) was a bluesy piece. Similarly "12 Keys" featured mmany key changes (the song incorporates a portion of the melody of "The Question Of U"). Eric went into the studio the next day to record saxophone and flute over dubs on some of the "Paisley Jam" tracks.

30 December 1985
Fired up by the results of the "Paisley Jam", Prince is back in the Sunset Sound studio with Eric, Sheila and Levi. They recorded "U Gotta Shake Something", "Voodoo Who" and "Finest Whisky" during another highly relaxed session. By now, Prince was beginning to realise that the music they were creating was highly exciting and perhaps worthy of release.

5 January 1986
Lisa Coleman, Wendy Melvoin and her brother Jonathan, join the line-up of Prince, Eric, Sheila and Levi in the Sunset Sound studio for an exhausting seven-hour session, the so-called "Everybody's Jam". Six of the pieces hat were recorded were given titles:


"Groove in C Minor"
"Slow Groove in G Major"
"Groove in G Flat Minor"
"Junk Music"
"Up From Below"
"Y'all Want Some More?"


During this session, Prince played primarily drums, while Sheila and Jonathan played percussion, Lisa piano and Wendy guitar and bass.

22 January 1986
An album is assembled from the instrumental sessions held in late Dec. 1985 and early Jan. 1986. Around 20 minutes of the 45 minute "Junk Music" was going to make up side one of the LP, while "Up From Below", "Y'all Want Some More?" and "A Couple Of Miles" were planned for side two of the LP. No test pressing of The Flesh LP was ever made, however, and the album was shelved when Under The Cherry Moon and other activities demanded Prince's full attention.

// So the tracklist for the LP was sequenced:

Side A:
1. Junk Music

Side B:
2. Up From Below
3. Y'All Want Some More?
4. A Couple Of Miles [This was recorded as a tribute to Miles Davis in late December]

//

Featuring largely improvisional music, the Flesh sessions allowed Prince to stretch out musically and develop his musical vocabulary. The Flesh can be seen as a forerunner to Prince's later Madhouse project in more wanys than one.
Much like Madhouse, the musical focus of The Flesh was on instrumental music, basically funk jams with a distrinct jazz flavour added by Eric Leeds, who was given the opportunity to contribute more actively to Prince's music. And much like Madhouse the plan was ro release The Flesh album "anonymously" with few details about the participants and certainly no mention of Prince's involvement.

The Flesh instrumentals remain unreleased, although part of the melody for "Madrid" was later re-used by Eric for "Andorra" on his 1991 Times Squared album. Additionally, some 30 seconds of "Junk Music" made it into Under The Cherrymoon as background music (in the scene where Tricky and Christopher are arguing over what type of man Mary Sharon prefers).

Further Sunset Sound sessions in January included work on several tracks for Jill Jones' album. Before leaving for L.A. in late January, Prince taped 2 songs for Dream Factory, "Last Heart" and "It's A Wonderful Day".


End. //

To put these recordings into perspective of released music, here are some of the tracks recorded around the same time-frame:

- Mountains, An Honest Man, (November 1985)
- Anotherloverholenoyohead, The Dream Factory, Eternity, Can I Play With U?, Love On A Blue Train (December 1985)


It's my opinion, that The Flesh sessions were the genesis of Prince's thoughts about disbanding the Revolution. Whilst I know the decision was not entirely his, as it were, his growing preference of Sheila's drumming skills over Bobby's, and the core of Eric, Levi and Sheila for the initial "Paisley Jam" sessions - which became the core for the SOTT/Lovesexy era band - I think this was getting Prince's cog's working in his mind about whatelse he could do with these musicians.

I think after recording this music, Prince was seeing where he could go possibly with Eric, Sheila, Levi - and it was possibly somewhere where he couldn't go with Wendy, Bobby & Lisa. [Although, as you can see above, the sequenced album was made only of tracks from the "Everybody's Jam" (barring A Couple Of Miles) - so the album featured only recordings from the sessions where Wendy & Lisa participated - so I do appreciate that the whole Revolution-split was not purely based in a preference of new band members issue].

I think this is backed-up by the fact that the first full project Prince worked on after the Parade tour finished was the Madhouse '8' album, recorded 28th Sept. to 1 Oct. 1986 - mainly by Prince solo, but with help from Eric Leeds and Matt Fink too (again, continued to be band members after the Revolution split). It was on 7th October 1986, that Prince told the members of the Revolution that he was disbanding the group.

(Again, this is nothing more than my personal opinion).

It's wasn't on the Flesh album, but was part of the Flesh sessions.


Here's what Uptown say about The Flesh recordings (This is from either the Vault or Days Of Wild, I forget which, I've posted it a few times when similar questions have been asked:



That should help

SHIT IS FUNKY !!! But not like DATABANK

prettymansson said:

OH MY GOD YES!!! DATABANK IS SOME NASTY ASS FUNKY SHIT!!!! I have the 12"!!!
6 FEET TALL, SKINNY LEGS AND ALL...
ALL THEY KNOW IS BASKETBALL!!

prettymansson said:

OH MY GOD YES!!! DATABANK IS SOME NASTY ASS FUNKY SHIT!!!! I have the 12"!!!
6 FEET TALL, SKINNY LEGS AND ALL...
ALL THEY KNOW IS BASKETBALL!!