Sabotage Catalog # 012/13 Release Year    2CD Length 72:52 | 73:59 Date/Venue TV Broadcasts 1989 - 96 Source Broadcast Quality EX

Comments
Mike's Comments (rates this release 5/5.0)
A magnificent compilation of various TV appearances. Several of the songs on here, for example 'Electric chair', 'I wanna melt with U' and 'Dinner with Delores', have never been played as part of a regular concert, which goes some way towards making this set a valuable addition to any collection. The various speeches Prince gives accepting awards range from the mundane to the daft, but they are not the reason to get this as the music is first-rate throughout. The sound quality is as good as if this set had been released officially.

Dean's Comments (rates this release 4.5/5.0)
The second volume of the Sound & Vision series and a vastly superior release to the first in terms of the quality of the sources used. Unfortunately (or fortunately if you are a completist) the acceptance speeches have been left intact, and I find it spoils the flow of the musical performances, although it's completely understandable why they are on here. Again, I take issue with this release being subtitled "The Second Decade" as it covers the period 1989-1996 which is not a decade.

Quality-wise, there are only a few glitches worth me pointing out. Both the acceptance speeches from American Music Awards (1990) and the Soul Train Music Awards (1992) suffer from horrendous crowd noise and at times it's impossible to hear Prince - thankfully his speech is short and sweet and we don't suffer too long. Added to this there appears to be a tape chew on the video recording used by Sabotage to source the Arsenio Hall 1991 recording version of 'Purple Rain' - it lasts barely a second, but it's noticeable. The outro on 'The Sacrifice Of Victor' from The Ryde Dyvine 1992 broadcast suffers from some serious crackling which lasts approx 5 seconds and is shockingly bad - nobody picked up on this before it was released? The editing between tracks also leaves a little to be desired and could be smoother instead of the "jump" which affects the way one performance flows into the next.

Disc 2 is slightly more focused as the time frame consists of 1993-1996. The quality is overall very impressive, but yet again the digital crackling is back, this time for the closing 5 seconds of 'Billy Jack Bitch' from The Sunday Show - a real annoyance and completely ruining it. The source used for the VH1 Honors broadcast is the censored version meaning the word "bitch" has been edited out, and is a slight pity. The remainder is very enjoyable, but there are one too many award acceptance speeches for my liking.