Retroactive Records to Re-issue all Three Prodigal Albums Along with Loyd Boldman Solo Album

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The Encyclopedia of Contemporary Christian Music says, “Prodigal was in tune with the sounds and spirit of the early ‘80’s…while writing songs that expanded the boundaries of the worship and evangelism fare that typified contemporary Christian music at the time.” Prodigal’s self-titled debut album was named Album of the Year in 1982 by Group magazine (along with Amy Grant’s Age to Age and Petra’s More Power to Ya).

Electric Eye, the group’s second album, received Best of the Year honors in 1984 by both Contemporary Christian Music magazine (CCM) 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 graphics, lyrics and a message from the band. 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 (now the Alliance for Community Media).

The Christian Music Archive said of the band’s third album, Just Like Real Life, “This is an excellent album by one of the early new wave/rock hybrid bands of the early to mid-eighties, using equal parts keyboards and rock guitar. Sadly the band didn’t get the recognition they so richly deserved, as this was a cut above most Christian albums of the time with instantly memorable songs and lyrics so intelligently written as to be in a class of their own. If they had been a secular band, they would have been early MTV stars. An essential album.”

RETROACTIVE RECORDS is thrilled to announce that in the first half of 2018 we will be providing CD reissues of all three PRODIGAL albums, plus the cassette only 1988 Loyd Boldman (Prodigal vocalist)  album!  This will be the very first time the Prodigal albums will be released individually on CD as jewel case releases with up to 12 page inserts and valuable bonus tracks on all three releases.  While the three Prodigal releases fit firmly in the progressive rock genre along the lines of Kansas with the melodic rock sensibilities of Yes and Genesis, the Loyd Boldman release is high quality progressive rock in the vein of Tonio K, Robert Vaughn, Vector, and Steve Scott!  Be checking your e-mail for the announcement of pre-orders at Boone’s Overstock very soon!