Members of the venerable Canadian rock group Prism aren’t strangers to the Estevan area.
Al Harlow, who is the lead vocalist and guitarist for the band, which has released such hits as Spaceship Superstar, Young and Restless and Don’t Let Him Know, will return to Estevan to perform at the Rockin’ the Games cabaret on June 18 at Affinity Place. Joining them will be another classic rock group, Harlequin.
Proceeds from the cabaret will be directed towards the 2016 Saskatchewan Summer Games in Estevan.
Harlow has fond memories of the Energy City.
“I know in the early days of Prism, we would do the cross-Canada tours, and … we must have done Estevan a half dozen times,” Harlow said in an interview with the Mercury.
There are some local fans who have been to many of the band’s performances, and there are local people they have interacted with on Facebook. But it has been a few years since the band’s last appearance here.
They’ve also become friends with Harlequin over the years. Both bands have been part of the Canadian music scene for a long time, and as Harlow notes, they used to compete for the Juno Awards. In 1981, Prism defeated Harlequin, as well as Rush, April Wine and Max Webster, for the Group of the Year Award.
The appearance at Rockin’ the Games is part of a busy summer schedule for Prism. They have a number of shows lined up, but they won’t be embarking on a lengthy tour.
“The tours these days, I think, for most all bands, are short hops,” said Harlow. “We’ll go out for a few days, come back, regroup and go out again. We’ll go all the way across Canada, really, this year. We’re playing a festival in Halifax.”
Many of their gigs are now at hockey arenas, casino showrooms and outdoor summer festivals.
“Our big joke at the end of September is to say ‘When was the last time we played indoors?’ All of the shows become outdoors right around July,” he said.
Prism received a boost in popularity in 2011 when Spaceship Superstar was chosen as the wake-up song for the crew members aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery. It was the final day that both crews of Discovery and the International Space Station were together before Discovery returned to Earth to wrap up its final mission.
“What a shock that the American crew of NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) would choose our song on the last official day of the Space Shuttle Discovery,” said Harlow. “We were honoured and it blew us away.”
It also created some new opportunities for Prism to play in the U.S.
Harlow doesn’t know how they received the honour. He believes NASA liked the song and thought it was appropriate. Prism’s members had no prior warning it would be happening, and they found out from a fan in Houston.
Prism has been around for 40 years now. They’re still writing new music and travelling to different venues, and Harlow believes the band has been able to remain popular for so long because they released songs that resonated with listeners.
“In that golden era or peak era, I think some of the songs just really stuck into the Canadian psyche. Now we’re being written up in the history books,” said Harlow. “We all have favourite bands and favourite songs, and as our generation ages, that doesn’t change. It just stays with it.”
Tickets are still available for the cabaret.
