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Showing posts with the label Ron Tabak

Prism - Small Change

Prism was a band I loved - right up until I didn’t. But it was complicated, because I still loved the band, but it was conditional. Those first two albums on GRT were foundational for me. Heck, Armageddon was as cool as it got, but if push came to shove, I’d throw the band under the bus without a second thought. Then came Young and Restless , an album with some (one for sure) killer songs, though honestly, I didn’t consider it essential. When Small Change dropped in 1981, I remember really liking the cover - Norman Rockwell, how can you not? My old friend Robert Baldwin (rest in peace, Robert, you were one of a kind) was the only person I knew who had it (apparently there were 49,999 others who had it too). I remember seeing the record in his room and teasing him for owning it. We sat and listened to the record; the first track sounded like classic Prism, but the rest didn’t. That’s how I remember it. Looking at the back cover there were major changes in the band: Ron Tabak, the vocal...

Prism - Armageddon

The other day I was listening to GNP's lone album, the one with Robert Bevan on vocals, and it brought to mind the old CBC television show The Raes - that featured Robbie Rae (who was really Robert Bevan if that wasn't obvious) and Cherrill Rae. Prism guested on the show, and they played a couple of songs from their latest album. It's funny the pointless stuff you remember, but I still can't figure out where I hid my spare keys in case there was an emergency. Armageddon was Prism's third album in three years, and this would be the album that would stand as the band's commercial high watermark. In the summer of 1979 the title track "Armageddon" was the best song I'd heard in a long time and over the decades has aged into one of the coolest rock songs - ever. It was pushing nearly eight minutes but it there were no wasted moments. My summer job in 1979, the year I turned sixteen, was with the forestry service, and along with a youth crew of close to ...

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 ...