Peach + Black 2 (#SOTTSDC) is not a symposium. #SOTTSDC is a virtual Sign O’ The Times (SOTT) Super Deluxe Celebration on Saturday, 10 Oct 2020 for the September 2020 box set release by Warner Bros. Records, featuring 45 unreleased studio tracks from the vault, a full unreleased concert from the Sign O’ The Times era in Utrecht, and 2 hours of unreleased video from a New Year’s Eve benefit concert at Paisley Park on December 31, 1987, showcasing his only on-stage collaboration with jazz legend Miles Davis.

#SOTSDC is a polished solid production, curated by De Angela L. Duff.

#SOTTSDC consisted of four roundtable discussions. The celebration kicked off with the original core four from De Angela’s first Prince gathering #SOTT30BK in 2017 at NYU Tandon, Oral Historian Zaheer Ali, CEO Anil Dash, Author and Music Journalist Miles Marshall Lewis, and Professor Elliott H. Powell, who have met for every polished solid production since. This makes their fifth appearance together. 

The second roundtable moderated by Arthur Turnbull of The Music Snobs and MadUnreal podcasts, featuring Nicolay of The Foreign Exchange, jooZt Mattheij of princevault.com, and De Angela’s brother in Lovesexy Harold Pride, focused on SOTT Live with the Utrecht show as a starting point of conversation.The third roundtable moderated by Edgar Kruize, author of the book Prince: The Dutch Experience (2017) and co-founder of the #PrinceTwitterThread series, featuring Keyboardist Dr. Fink of The Revolution, Documentary Filmmaker, Musician, and Founder of FunkJazz Kafé Jason Orr, Ricky Wyatt of Grown Folks Music, focused on Madhouse Live. Madhouse was a side project that consisted primarily of Prince and Eric Leeds in the studio. A band was formed which included Dr. Fink to open for Prince during the SOTT tour.

For the final roundtable, De Angela L. Duff and Michael Dean of the Podcast on Prince was joined by three music legends who were in Prince’s Sign O’ The Times band as well as many other configurations over the years, Trumpet Player Atlanta Bliss -iii<, Keyboardist Dr. Fink of The Revolution, and Saxophonist and Flutist Eric “Blow Your Horn” Leeds.  

In 2017, De Angela L. Duff was introduced to Mable Ivory by Deanna Martin in front of Webster Hall in NYC, after a Revolution performance. Spontaneously, they decided to grab some dinner. De Angela casually mentioned that she very much wanted to watch the Sign O’ The Times film together with some Prince friends in a small screening room at NYU. Mable responded, “Why do you want to do that, when it can be much bigger?” And that is how it all began.

De Angela owes immense gratitude to Mable for encouraging her to think on a grander scale and to Deanna for introducing her to Mable. She is grateful for the journey and indebted to Mable Ivory for getting her to dream bigger. With Ron Worthy also on board, the Peach + Black panel and screening was born within weeks.

In response to the reception of the event, De Angela realized that this work was important to the Prince community and for exposing new people to Prince’s full body of work.

The original peach + black panel of Zaheer Ali, Anil Dash, Miles Marshall Lewis, and Elliott Powell, moderated by De Angela herself, has convened in every Prince symposium that De Angela has created since. She is eternally grateful for their continued participation and Prince passion.

#SOTTSDC marks De Angela’s fifth Prince event. De Angela’s mission is to keep Prince’s name on the lips of the children and in constant and critical dialogue.