Minnesota Music Awards
Carlton Celebrity Room, Bloomington
20th May 1986
2 CDR
Label: Akashic Records
Cat No: # AR 05
Running Time: 36:30
Source: Soundboard Recording
Quality: EX
Released: June 2009
*Review*
Well this is a surprise. A soundboard recording from 1986 and presented to us here for the very first time. This show will be familiar to many having been out as an audience recording on many different bootlegs for some time now (recommended listening would be FBG’s ‘Minnesota Music Awards’) and it’s remained a popular performance with collectors and fans alike due to the energetic and fun vibe it has throughout.
Unfortunately, despite it being a soundboard, the recording does suffer a few problems and from what I’ve been told it appears to have been somewhat a labour of love (or hate depending on your viewpoint!) to get to the quality presented here. One of the main problems the recording suffers from is a great deal of feedback or ‘hum’ throughout most of the show but it’s certainly more prominent during the opening 10 minutes. My notes point out that most of problems occurred on the left channel which led to some major work to remove it, forcing the team to create some ‘pseudo stereo’ effects. That said, for the sake of retaining a good overall sound not all the hum was fully removed. Fade outs and drop outs were also an issue and for the most part all seem to have been fixed very nicely plus ‘Kiss’ was also incomplete so this has been filled in using parts from the audience recording. However, despite all this it’s of a perfectly listenable quality and the general, overall sound is superb in comparison to the audience recording and I’m kinda reluctant to linger on the bad parts too much because, in the grand scheme of things, it’s simply not needed.
So not the perfect soundboard recording we all wanted nor expected and, as I said, I don’t feel the need for any unnecessary criticism. Let’s remind ourselves this has been made available for the first time in 24 years and should be celebrated accordingly and I always admire the work and dedication the free labels will put in to bring the fans the best quality recordings they can. The fact that so many years down the line we can still be surprised by something new from one of Prince’s greatest musical eras is some to embrace and treasure. So props once more to Akashic Records for making that possible.