Description
Electric Eye is the sophomore studio album by the American pop/rock band Prodigal, released on Heartland Records in 1984, distributed by The Benson Company. (The release was held up for a few months while Heartland Records looked for a new distributor after CBS/Priority closed their doors. They eventually signed a distribution deal with Benson.) The album was recorded by Greg McNeily on a 24-track mobile studio in a deserted cathedral-like hall in the band’s hometown Cincinnati, Ohio; with Jon Phelps producing. Mixdown and additional overdubs by Gary Platt. The songs were written by band members Loyd Boldman (tracks A1, A2, A3, A5, B1, B2, B3, and B4) and Dave Workman (tracks A4 and B5).
Prodigal features Loyd Boldman on keyboards and vocals, Rick Fields on guitars and vocals, and a rhythm section consisting of Mike Wilson on bass and Dave Workman on drums and vocals. According to the band this album was closer to Prodigal’s live sound than their first LP. For this album, the band also created promotional music videos for “Scene of the Crime,” “Fast Forward,” and “Boxes” (which were featured on Trinity Broadcasting Network’s music video show Real Videos at the time of the album’s release). The video for the song, “Boxes” (written by Workman and directed by Boldman), won the very first Gospel Music Association (GMA) Dove Award for music videos (“Best Visual Song”). The music video for the song “Fast Forward” was named Video of the Year by the National Federation of Local Cable Programmers (later known as the Alliance for Community Media).
Electric Eye was included among CCM Magazine‘s Top 10 Albums of the Year, voted number nine on a list featuring ten albums released between November 1, 1983 and October 15, 1984. – Prodigal burst onto the contemporary Christian music scene with an impressive ’82 debut. This band takes rock ‘n’ roll as a means to communicate the gospel seriously, and the results are impressive. Smith-Newcomb described the LP in March: “Prodigal paints a portrait of life in the ’80s – the loneliness and unfulfillment running just below the surface in a society based on materialism and technology.”
We put a “stop-groove” at the end of Side Two that would “catch” the vinyl record and wouldn’t allow it to eject on an automatic turntable. If you picked up the needle and set it down again on the other side of the stop-groove, you’d hear a packet of computer code that could be deciphered by a Commodore 64, the most popular computer of that time. If you used a cassette drive, the Commodore would show you lyrics and graphics and some facts about the album. [Excerpt from an interview with Prodigal frontman Loyd Boldman, 2009]
Retroactive Records Promo, 2020
Never one’s to rest on the accomplishments of their epic 1982 self-titled release, Prodigal surpassed ridiculous expectations for their sophomore effort with 1984’s Electric Eye. The album received Best of the Year honors in 1984 by both Contemporary Christian Music magazine and Campus Life Magazine. The album also received national attention for a unique promotional idea: a computer program for a Commodore 64 was mastered into a “stop-groove” at the end of the vinyl record, the first time this had ever been done. The program, if copied to a cassette tape could be loaded via cassette drive into a C-64 computer to reveal a message from the band. The video for the song, «Boxes» won the very first Gospel Music Association Dove Award for music videos (“Best Visual Song”). The music video for the song «Fast Forward» was named Video of the Year. Yeah, Electric Eye was a big deal!
With their second album, the band shook the fragile foundations of Christian music. The content on Electric Eye is beautifully portrayed on the album cover. We have surrounded ourselves with so much to entertain us and consume our time that the difference between reality and artificial are not just blurred but rather the artificial begins to be more “real.” Note how the actual lightning through the window is faded and bland while the same lightning shown on the television set is vibrant and exciting. This is expressed in different ways on the album along with a host of other topics that are both poignant and eternal. «Scene of the Crime» is the first song on the album and starts with a police siren leading into an aggressive guitar and keyboard driven rock sound akin to Foreigner or Kansas. Lead singer Loyd Boldman’s bombastic baritone is both edgy and clean as needed with nods to Michael Been (The Call) for pure power. Humanity’s guilt is laid to bear within relationships and how we often leave others with wounds that never heal. But the murderous actions are not missed by the judge who sees all as this is pointed out. We can try to run from the pain and suffering we leave in our wake, but cannot escape a righteous judge. Boldman’s vocals at the end of the song place him amongst one the best unheralded rock voices in Christian music. You believe his words because you believe his passion and authenticity. It was songs like that that set Electric Eye apart in 1984, and why it was ranked #20 on a 2010 list of Greatest Christian Albums of All Time and #43 on CCM’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
The 2020 Retroactive Records Legends Remastered Series features the album remastered from the original analog master tape, plus it includes a brand new Commodore 64 code Easter egg created by Robin who runs the Youtube Channel “8-Bit Show And Tell” and Sam from P1XL Games, that gave viewers a chance to see the original Easter egg C-64 code cracked on video! Break out those Commodore 64’s….you get not one, but TWO C-64 codes! For fans of Kansas, Yes, Saga, Foreigner, Styx, Supertramp, Mr. Mister and brilliant, life changing rock and roll! Be sure to get the 2-CD set of this masterful album, or splurge for all three Prodigal CDs (and the Loyd Boldman 1988 solo CD Sleep Without Dreams) while you can!
> Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/electric-eye/1078835241)
LP tracklist:
Side One
A1. “Scene Of The Crime” – 4:44
A2. “Fast Forward” – 4:43
A3. “Masks” – 4:05
A4. “Just What I Need” – 3:08
A5. “Emerald City” – 3:23
Side Two
B1. “Electric Eye” – 5:00
B2. “Bobby” – 3:18
B3. “Shout It Out” – 3:25
B4. “Neon” – 5:15
B5. “Boxes” – 3:35
Note: Simultaneously released on cassette and 12-inch vinyl LP by Heartland Records. In 2014 the band released a 30th Anniversary Limited Edition 3CD Set featuring the Prodigal, Electric Eye, and Just Like Real Life albums on individual CDs. Each album was restored and remastered from the original analog master tapes by Gary Hedden. Remastered from the original stereo master tapes for a limited run re-issue on 12-inch vinyl LP by Retroactive Records and Silver Orb Media in December 2020. (This re-issue includes the Commodore 64 code hidden message, a hidden track on side 2. The re-issue includes more C-64 code on a hidden track on side 1 for extra nerdiness!)
Heartland Records also released a promo interview LP entitled The Electric Eye Radio Special (EERS 38650, 1984).
“Fast Forward” (MUSIC VIDEO)
Prodigal – 30 Anniversary Limited Edition 3 CD Set, Silver Orb Media, 2014.
Maybe those RIYL comparison posters are still around in some Christianny bookshops? Such-and-such band band with a evangenghetto label recording contract and Campus Life’s approval is Recommended If You Like so and so evil, heathen noisemakers having hits on Godforsaken secular radio. At least as often as as such comparisons were right, they were humorously, ridiculously off base.
But Prodigal managed the trick of being as good as, and quite possibly better, than their general market points of comparison. The spiritual gravitas of their most thoughtful lyrics smartly fit the dynamic bombast and instrumental bravura of the same kind of prog pop that the Cincinnati quartet’s fellow Midwesterners, such as Styx and Kansas, were laying down to accompany-per the latter combo’s Kerry Livgren and John Elefante notwithstanding-generally more ponderous and dippier ruminations.
That’s not to say Prodigal (possessing one of the best names for a Christian-comprised rock act ever?!) stayed aesthetically static during their 1982-85 recording tenure. Their eponymous debut sounds structured like a concept album, but including a couple of a capella interludes can lend that impression. Among harder rockers like «Fire With Fire» and the concluding tour de force of «Sidewinder», they interpolated some sly fusion jazz chording a la Ambrosia on a couple of cuts, including «Easy Street». Somehow a country-vibed go at what sounds like a straight man-to-woman love song, «Want You Back», does nothing to disrupt the album’s flow. If an overarching theme can be ascertained from the set, it’s one of deceived, lonely, preoccupied humanity coming to recognise their need for reconciliation with their Maker. Pretty closely paralleling the story of the wayward son in the parable of Jesus’ from which the guys got their collective moniker, yes?
Dw. Dunphy of Popdose.com in his succinct, piquant notes to the anthology, insists that the second Prodigal album Electric Eye found the band at the peak of their powers. They must have agreed, since its 1984 release date sets the anniversary date for which the collection’s named. Here, all but one of its ten songs clocks in under five minutes, and the jazziness and country influences are shed. Duly compensating are intermittent extra-musical sound effects, occasional electronic vocal processing, and a darker sense of humor. A lyrical undercurrent stressing the ways in which technology and societal pressures dampen humanity’s spiritual longing complements the first album. Were Daniel Amos not so smart alecky (and given to new wave at the time) or Mark Heard so seemingly inconsolably forlorn, one could imagine either indulging in the nuanced Wizard Of Oz analogy of «Emerald City» or the titular track’s scenario of doomed man cave self-satisfaction. Between the weightier textual explorations, they may have invented art rock ska with «Shout It Out»; if it’s not actual crowd interaction toward the tune’s end, it’s a more than reasonable facsimile.
The last album from 1985, Just Like Real Life, continues the previous album’s themes, but stressing the cost wrought to humanity by the inspidness of pop culture and materialism. Leftist crtics might read it as a a response to the downside of Reagan era prosperity, but from a more polished, brawnier aesthetic than either U.S. hardcore punk or the various expressions by UK pop and indie rock acts against the perceived heartlesness of Thatcher’s capitalistic ideals. The intertwining of politics and spirituality aside, Prodigal ends their tenure with their most commercial sound. Every song clocks in under four minutes, and danceable new wave elements pervade a majority of its 11 songs. The latter quality makes it comparable to Vector among contemporaneous Christian market peers and The Fixx in the rest of the world. Lyric references from the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau to Mickey Rooney’s serial monogamy witness to their wit and compassion, albeit with a heavier-handed touch than the equally dance-oriented Daniel Amos of the time was plumbing. But as with mid-’80s D.A. in their less parodist moments, Prodigal kept the Lord between the lines, making their body of work exemplary of implicitly Christian rock as pre-evangelistic and biblical worldview expression. Such music as Prodigal’s reiterates the likely shame it was that much of the CCM industry didn’t have the inroads to the general market that may have allowed the band to have become a precedent for the kind of crossover success Skillet and Lifehouse are having.
Apart from celebrating the three decades or so since the band was active, Limited Edition is fortuitously timed for another reason. The band’s singing keyboardist and songwriting vocalist, Loyd Boldman, died earlier this year, just as mastering of the set was being completed. Thusly, this package memorializes both an intelligently godly band and the man who led it with such gusto. Once this deluxe package sells out, a savvy classic rock reissue label (if there are such things?) would do well to keep Prodigal’s legacy in print, too. [Jamie Lee Rake, The Phantom Tollbooth, August 2014]
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