Lighthouse - Skip Prokop

Obituaries for folks in the entertainment world that have come to the end of the road.

Lighthouse - Skip Prokop

Postby PMC » Sat Sep 02, 2017 8:06 am

One Fine Morning, and Sunny Days... the music lives on.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/ ... -1.4269872
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Re: Lighthouse - Skip Prokop

Postby jon » Sat Sep 02, 2017 1:40 pm

From the CBC article by Adam Carter:
Lighthouse was Canada's answer to Chicago, with the 13-piece rock/jazz ensemble releasing hits like Sunny Days and One Fine Morning.

Although I cannot, off the top of my head, name any other group except Blood, Sweat and Tears, at the end of the 1960s, there was a significant trend towards what was seen at the time as a modernization of the Big Band Era approach to popular music.

Adam may or may not have meant to imply that Lighthouse was a "knock-off" of the group Chicago, but it always appeared to me that Lighthouse was just part of a popular trend of the era.
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Re: Lighthouse - Skip Prokop

Postby Richard Skelly » Sun Sep 03, 2017 4:55 am

Chicago, Blood Sweat and Tears and Lighthouse all emerged around the same time. There was something in the air...perhaps pushback from accomplished musicians tired of seeing too many psychedelic doodlers making big dough with less than stellar chops.

To a casual observer, Lighthouse came out of nowhere with One Fine Morning and Hats Off To The Stranger. Released on GRT in Canada, the singles got picked up in the US and went Top 40. But Lighthouse had been refining its sound from around 1969 while contracted to RCA. Thus, Skip and the boys were peers of Chicago and BS&T and certainly not knock offs.

While Lighthouse relied on the powerful vocals of Bob McBride for their main fame, it was Skip whose singing on Sunny Days and Pretty Lady provided their latter day success. Bob struggled with addiction and missed the Sunny Days session. Skip, who wrote most of the band's lyrics, came to the vocal rescue. I'm pretty sure I hear Bob's harmonies on both Sunny Days and Pretty Lady, but he soon left the group. (Bob had some subsequent solo success, took part in one or two Lighthouse reunions but died many years ago. It's nice to think he'd be one of the first to greet Skip on the other side.

Sympathies to the Prokop family and Lighthouse alumni and crew.
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Re: Lighthouse - Skip Prokop

Postby jon » Sun Sep 03, 2017 8:28 am

Although I loved their early material, especially "One Fine Morning", the first song I ever heard of theirs has always been my favourite: "If There Ever Was a Time".

I never heard it on the air except on SFU's campus station, CKSF, as it was known in those days. All of us there played it when it first came out.

I did not realize until very recently that CKLG-AM played it and charted it. CKLG-FM did not, and it never made it on the RPM national chart.

I picked up a promo copy when I was Librarian at UBC Radio when it was CYVR. Tough to find the song on CD, but Wounded Bird Records re-released their first album, simply called Lighthouse, in 2012. "If There Ever Was a Time" is included twice, both the album version and the single version. Both are stereo, just like my promo 45.
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Re: Lighthouse - Skip Prokop

Postby jon » Thu Sep 07, 2017 8:12 am

Hadn't realized that Skip was also a broadcaster. This from this morning's Broadcast Dialogue:

Skip Prokop, 74, on Aug. 30 of congestive heart failure. Best known as the drummer for 1970s Canadian rock band Lighthouse, Prokop was also a salesman and radio host at CFNY-FM Toronto in the 1980s. Prokop hosted “Between a Rock and a Hard Place,” a Sunday night Christian rock show required under FM regulations of the day, which allocated for specialty programming outside the format. Prokop went on to found audio production house Skip Prokop Music and Japicta Publishing.
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