Prism - Beat Street


The story of Beat Street is mildly confusing to me. As far as i understand it, Henry Small showed up to make his 2nd Prism album (Ron Tabak got fired somewhere in the past), only to find out that the rest of the band had already quit. Their producer owned the name Prism, so they just made a Henry Small solo album with session musicians. So, bizarro Pink Floyd. 

Call me crazy, but standing on the corner at night with an electric guitar slung across your back seems like a great way to get mugged. Then again, we're in Canada. Maybe they don't have muggings up there. I don't know. 

Critics say "hey, wait a minute, this isn't wacky synthy arena rock." Again, i don't know, i haven't heard it yet. What i do know is that i'm not good at picking out random records. There's probably a good reason why i imagineered the Compiler up. Welp, time for Darth Bottle to get what's coming to him. 

Huh? Nightmare doesn't suck. The title track is pop, but then we're right back to rockin'. Side a does have a decidedly Foriegner feel to it, but considering no original member of Prism is on this album, who cares? We just lump it in with all the other bands who turned into completely different bands. I seem to recall half of Pink Floyd's discography not being Pink Floyd albums, and we won't even go near the Geoff Tate/Queensrych quagmire. 

Yeah, i can totally see it. The whole band quit, so Small and Carter said screw it, let's make a murkily paranoid Foreigner album. This is great. If you were expecting prog you'd be totally disappointed with the straight pop hooks, but even if you tried to hear it from a sell out perspective you couldn't call this bad. Every track could be a legit radio single, just not all on the same station. I'm fine with Prism being two completely different bands. 

I picked out one more album i know doesn't suck, but we should leave picking handfuls of random albums to the professionals like C-3PO. I've learned my lesson. The Empire assembled for a reason, and i keep waking up, so time to stop being so picky and just go with it. We'll assume i'll wake up again tomorrow, and worry about it then...

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