Madhouse - 8 (1987)

A fusion jazz-funk outfit with a fascinating Minneapolis sound, Madhouse only managed to release two albums, both in 1987. Ostensibly, they were just another band on the Warner Bros. distributed Paisley Park label. In fact, though, like most of the protege bands on Paisley Park, Prince was actually running the show. For this first album, there are no player credits, but Prince wrote and played all of the music, with Eric Leeds brought in to play the saxophone. The story goes that Prince created the band for Leeds to "front" to reward him for his years of loyal service. Prince wanted this album to stand on its own and pretended to have no involvement with it. An uncredited Vanity (Denise Matthews) also appears with a sexy bit of vocal moaning, lifted from an unreleased 1983 Prince song "Vibrator."

The mid-to-late 80s were a prolific period for Prince. 1986-1987, in particular was very busy. In addition to work on the projected triple LP Crystal Ball solo release, there were also LPs by protege bands Sheila E., Jill Jones, The Family and Madhouse. In my opinion, it was in this period that Prince produced his most fascinating and complex music.

All of this to say that Madhouse is great fun. It's instrumental fusion jazz with wild funk grooves, peppered with that post-Parade Prince sound. An absolutely amazing relic from one of pop music's greatest personalities.

For these two album postings, I've included all of Madhouse's 12" single mixes and b-sides as bonus tracks. I've pulled these from a bootleg CD release called Rehearsals & Mixes. These extra tracks were mastered louder, so I used MP3Gain to manually correct the levels to match the rest of the album. Madhouse's numbered songs are normally spelled out, but for some of the additional tracks, numerals were used. The titles may seem inconsistent, but they are exactly how they appeared on the label of each release.

Madhouse - 8 (1987)
1. One (7:17)
2. Two (5:28)
3. Three (3:15)
4. Four (2:23)
5. Five (1:16)
6. Six (4:28)
7. Seven (4:08)
8. Eight (10:03)
From 6 12" (1986):
9. 6 (End of the World Mix) (6:19)
10. Six and 1/2 (2:36)

78.6MB RAR archive
MP3: Variable bitrate (231.0kbps average)
Audiograbber 1.83.1 w/LAME 3.97 (--preset fast extreme)

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