PANDEMONIUM that is, in a sort of Morris Day Marathon I ran this weekend.

I still rank it above ICE CREAM CASTLES despite that album having 2 of the band's best known (but not best-charting) songs, but "My Drawers" was the best thing on there. Title track is totally not "The Time", and it only really serves as "companion" to Purple Rain in a way, instead of standing on its own like the other albums do. All the band members asked about it, particularly Jesse, were not fond of that album.

But PANDEMONIUM really can't compare to this record. And as OldPro and rev75 have said, I don't think even the last few Prince records (as a whole) compare to this.

PANDEMONIUM wasn't bad, but it was disjointed in a way that it CONDENSATE isn't. It's like it has sections: the stuff you know is Jimmy/Terry/Morris, then the stuff you know is Prince cleaned up by Jimmy and Terry, then the Jesse section, then back to Jimmy/Terry/Morris and Jimmy/Terry/Monte...

sonically, it sounds like "1990".

And that's not bad in itself. But IMO the best songs off that record were ones known by Prince aficionados to be "old castoffs": "Jerk Out" and "Chocolate". And I doubt Prince, based on what he gave The Time for GRAFFITI BRIDGE and the CORPORATE WORLD project, was really in the mindset of using either at the time. Considering nostalgia was the order of the day, those were the perfect two songs to start off, and the band actually took off some of the rough edges of both, adding their own distinct flavor.

I liked the "Jesse" songs. "Skillet" especially is a great "concert song", and I think that's the one Pandemonium bit besides "Jerk Out" that gets regular rotation in Time concerts. "It's Your World" and the title track were cool, but I had a feeling that Jimmy and Terry did Morris better with the tracks on his DAYDREAMING album, and hell, what they were doing for other artists were worlds above that.

Monte's "Sometimes I Get Lonely" is the other "takeaway" from PANDEMONIUM. Great song, and the kind of material I would have hoped to hear from the band after hearing all those Flyte Tyme records in between WHAT TIME IS IT? and this record.

The "Prince" songs not mentioned above, aren't bad. However, I know for a fact, that the version of "Data Bank" he recorded years earlier was a scorcher that his albums of the time sorely lacked, and the other songs are just "cool".

I remember reading those song titles on a back of a CD years ago and wondering what the music sounded like. I expected more out of "Donald Trump (Black Version)" (which again, was a "cool" song from an R&B perspective, but rather subdued), after seeing the "Jerk Out" video.

Knowing the back story behind this album now (that Warners mandated The Time's reunion, rather than them uniting again on their own) really puts things in perspective. It's still better than what Prince was going to do with CORPORATE WORLD... only that title track and perhaps "Murph Drag" (which every damn write up I've heard of that set praises, but IMO actually "drags") really would have gotten something approaching the released product's reception.

If I may Maxxx Up for a bit, in 1988-90 Prince was kind of losing his "R&B" ear as his own music was going down different paths. I think he was a lil late getting on the "Rhythm & Breakbeats" sound (the Time songs on GRAFFITI BRIDGE) and while songs like the pseudo-swing of "Housequake" were a life preserver, dude was just not really hitting like he used to. I dunno what it was. So I'm not surprised that some "old" songs he had lying around for The Time were the ones that hit the hardest.

Then again, he was writing cool music for Tevin Campbell so maybe I can't really call it. He went from surefire to "hit and miss" pretty quickly though.