Prism - See Forever Eyes

Continuing on my trip through 1978 and here's Prism's second album See Forever Eyes. I remember going with my cousin to a hole in the wall record store to pick up an 8 track copy he had special ordered. Yeah, it was like that once upon a time in smaller towns and suburbs.

Like any good Canadian kid I thought "Spaceship Superstar" was as close to a perfect song as there ever was. Here was their follow up, and I was going to hear more than one song. After ejecting the ever present Double Live Gonzo! from the truck's player this one got a fair amount of play over the summer, and I liked what I heard. Especially the rock songs where Lindsay tore it up.

The early Prism albums were as much driven by the interplay between the guitar and keyboards as they were by the soaring vocals of Ron Tabak - a pattern some of my favourite bands employ to my delight (SAGA I'm looking at you).

When the album launches into "Flyin'" arguably one of the best tracks on the album, it was a song that would draw comparisons to Styx mainly because both bands had gotten their hands on the German Oberheim synthesizer and used the same preset (I'm guessing it was a preset, did they have patches then?).

Now at the time I didn't know who was in the band. I was just a 15 year old shy lanky kid who loved music. A year of so later when I did pick up this album, I also picked up their debut and both albums were played constantly, so looking back it's a bit blurred as to what goes where.

Of course being the 70s there were sucky songs (opinion courtesy of 15 year old me), and Prism would become pretty proficient at the power ballad. Listening now to "You're Like the Wind" and "You're My Reason" I can imagine there were a lot of burnt thumbs at their concerts for all the waving flames.

See Forever Eyes likely contains the only bowling strike captured in a rock song (I'm just guessing, but really, name another song). "N-N-N-No!" is a song played so high and fast it's amazing Ron was able to hit the notes. Apparently the guys used to joke about how high a key they could write their songs in. I love this song. N-N-N-No kidding (don't you roll your eyes at me).

At the time I was (and still am) enthralled by Lindsay Mitchell's guitar playing but over the year's what really emerges on the first couple of albums in particular was John Hall's keyboard wizardry pre-midi and sequencers. What he accomplished is kind of mind boggling in it's complexity.

Even now, this album is a lot of fun and not just for the nostalgia that takes me back to my youth. These were solid songs.

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