Thunderball Catalog # TB023-025 Release Year 1998   3CD Length 73:31 | 73:35 | 72:59 Date/Venue Studio Outakes 1982 - 1997 Source Soundboard Quality VG+/EX

Comments
Deane's Comments (rates this release 3.5/5.0)
There is very little new or exciting about this collection of outakes. Nearly all have been circulating for sometime now. Many are much cleaner than have been around previously, but at times barely. The packaging is beautiful with full color picture discs and a 36 page booklet. The booklet is mostly pictures, but does have a few pages of info on the tracks in the set. If you don't have many outake collections than this would be an excellent one to start with, otherwise you most likely have much of what's on it.

Dale's Comments  (rates this release 4/5.0)
All in all this is a pretty nice collection of outtakes. The sound quality is very good overall, and the packaging is excellent, complete with an 18 page booklet and comments about each song. Thunderball later re-released many of these outtakes in better quality. I guess they didn't search hard enough for the highest quality the first time. ;) The songs that most people were the most excited to hear improved versions of were the ones with the problems, such as; Moonbeam Levels - has a glitch at the ending that sounds like someone's tape was eaten by the tape player. Your Love Is So Hard - sounds like somebody speeds it up at about 1:18. This might have been an intentional 'signature' by the person that remastered it. Although, if that's true then they are jerks. There are better (unnoticeable) ways to do that. And on 100 MPH the sound varies from clear to muffled, which I find very annoying.

Mike's Comments  (rates this release 4.5/5.0)
A nice round-up of demos and outtakes though there's little here that isn't available elsewhere. Six of the tracks from disc 3 had been officially released more than a year before this set came out so it's puzzling that they should have been included. The prologue and epilogue are, respectively, just the sound of approaching and receeding footsteps and have nothing to do with Prince. The bootleggers who compiled this set obviously felt their inclusion would add a touch of class, but they don't. Overall this is good collection but The work sets would be a better choice.