Sweet Comfort Band - PRIME TIME The Very Best from the Sweet Comfort Band

There was a short but glorious period in the early '80s where I bought a lot of Christian music. My buddy Gord, who I love to tease, had an older brother, and between them they knew about everything. Gord was also a lot more forgiving than I ever was for sucky music.

I remember the two of us being in the little Christian bookstore by my place when Gord was over visiting, and there on the wall were a couple of records by Sweet Comfort: Breakin' the Ice and Hold On Tight. For whatever reason I can still picture this wall. Phil Keaggy's Ph'lip Side was facing out with the sunburst Les Paul, and the first two Servant albums, Shallow Water and Rockin' Revival, were there too. I'd eventually get all of them...except for those Sweet Comfort albums.

My memory is fuzzy at this point, but I'm pretty sure Gord played Breakin' the Ice and I was less than enthusiastic. That was also the time Gord put an air pistol into my cereal one morning and splattered me, the ceiling, Fritz (his dad's stupid Dachshund), and my breakfast everywhere. We still talk about it.

Then in 1981, with Hearts of Fire, Sweet Comfort shed its jazzy R&B skin and decided to embrace being radio friendly for us kids. The first in the band's one-two punch combination was Hearts of Fire, followed a year later by Cutting Edge. I would also get their 1984 release Perfect Timing, produced by Dino Elefante, but other than one song never really got into it.

Hearts of Fire had "Contender," a deliberate, or was it a divinely inspired, reworking of Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger" for those kids who weren't allowed to listen to secular music. Man, they didn't even try to hide it...and it didn't matter. I ate this up. I loved this song. I still like this song.

Discovering Randy Thomas and his guitar chops stirred up some rather fierce debate among a few of us in Youth Group.

"Randy is the best player ever." 

"Not better than Stu Heiss from Rez Band," someone would say.

Phil Keaggy's name always came up, but we usually set him aside because he was too good. I'd generally throw out Jon Linn's name and someone would throw it right back. Regardless of where he sat in the pecking order, Randy could play. I don't remember a lot from the album aside from this one and "Isabel," but if an album had at least one banger for a mix tape it was considered a keeper.

When Cutting Edge dropped it was "Valerie" and "Armed and Ready" that stuck with me. Oddly, "Armed and Ready" to me is frankly one of their best songs ever, and it didn't make this collection. Oh well, can't please everybody. I'm sure there are real fans who are a bit chuffed that songs from Hold On Tight didn't make the ... cut. The debut is off the table, as it was on a different label.

Man, I am deep in the weeds. I'm gonna need a pitching wedge to get out of this. It may take a couple of shots to get out of the rough. Then again, I could always take a Mulligan. Nah, I'll persevere - and since you're here anyway, can you hand me my club?

Anyway, somewhere in all that meanderambling is the reason PRIME TIME exists in the first place.

Best-of albums are different than Greatest Hits albums, especially for bands outside of the mainstream where the real hits are compiled, indexed, measured and compensated. The Christian market was built primarily on word of mouth. There were some Christian music stations, but the one that bled over into the suburbs of Vancouver only played the safest of the safe milksop drivel.

PRIME TIME came out a year after the band folded, so the fine folks at Light Records were practically obligated to strike while the band still had some cachet. The album and CD contain the same songs, but they're presented in a different running order. Which makes no sense, but it is what it is. 

And that's where things get interesting.

On paper, at least, a Best of - particularly a VERY Best-of album - has one goal: all killer, no filler. So why does this album feel so piecemeal and disjointed?

Because it's not really a Best-of album at all. It's more of a cross section taken from four of their albums.

The compilers leaned heavily on Hearts of Fire, pulling "Contender," "Isabel," "You Need a Reason," and "Just Like Me." This approach makes the omission of "Armed and Ready" even more puzzling, especially when it's one of the band's strongest songs. The earlier jazz/R&B flavoured Breakin' the Ice is represented by "I Love You With My Life" and "Good Feelin'," while Cutting Edge contributes "Haven't Seen You" and "Valerie" but not "Armed and Ready." I'm sounding like a broken record, not unlike this one. Their 1984 swansong Perfect Timing rounds things out with "Prodigal's Regret" and the cool but clunky rocker "Perfect Timing."

Sweet Comfort Band started in one place and ended up somewhere completely different, so from a consistency point of view it was always going to be a challenge to please their fans. Instead, whoever assembled the tracks leaned into the band's diversity, which really wasn't a bad thing. They could have dropped at least one song from Hearts of Fire to make room for "Armed and Ready" ... and that's the last time I'll comment on a glaring omission - maybe.

I know this is probably not a popular opinion, but the band was always uneven. I liked the killers and put up with the filler. It was enough to keep me buying their albums during that final run. I loved TOTO and, dagnabbit, although these guys weren't in the same league they were at least playing in the same ballpark.

With the passage of time, most of their back catalogue seems to have been lost to the ravages of the ethereal remainder bin. Spotify has a little, Apple Music has more, but it's still slim pickings, which is too bad. I may be taking some swipes at the band, but these guys were superb musicians. They were musical chameleons who seemed determined to style-flex their way onto whatever wave happened to be current...except New Wave. Blue-eyed soul, R&B, disco, ballads, power ballads, '70s acoustic singer-songwriter, slick AOR - they dabbled in it all. It didn't all land for me, but dang, they went for it.

Despite all my whinging and complaining about "Armed and Ready" (that is the last time, I promise) PRIME TIME is a really solid album and presents a decent cross section of what they were able to accomplish over their career. It doesn't quite deliver the all-killer, no-filler experience I expect from a true Best-of, but it does remind me why I kept buying their records back in the day. When Sweet Comfort Band connected, they could have been a contender.