1984 Prophet “Right On Time” on Treasure.

Haha, this record is so fantastic! Not to mention a Bay Area legend! Ever wonder what Prince would sound like on a shoestring if he never got famous, rode mostly with super early and crude drum samples/loops and more or less gave up after one record? Plus, screw the purple stuff since in this alternate universe San Francisco was his Raspberry Beret instead of Minneapolis? Well, this is it. This is pure dance club proto-disco mod funk no-wave soul, and I love everything about it. Except probably the pressing, which sort of sux, but in the end really doesn’t even matter. Ron Edwards and Les Edwards, who may be brothers or mere coincidences, since there is literally no information about this record to be found, handle DX programming, keys, effects, and percussion respectively. Joel S. Goldsmith gets a credit as “spiritual advisor” and the liners advise that “The prophets are coming!” but that really raises more questions that it answers. “Right on Time” was recorded at Tim Rudolph Studios, which I’ve never heard of, and is probably like a buried Egyptian child-emporer beneath many layers of cement holding up the Apple Campus where it once possessed a mailing address in Cupertino.

​This music could only exist in a very specific time and place, which is to say: San Francisco with the dawn of DIY recording tech, the post-70’s recovery period, the Manhattan ESG/Konk/James Chance art scene, The Tom Tom Club/Talking Heads w/Bernie Worrell angle, black disco for black people going underground while white disco being remaindered with malice very firmly A Thing, and black disco soon to re-emerge as hip hop on the Sugar Hill horizon, plus cassettes and boomboxes and spinning on cardboard on street corners, like any other part of history everything in some inscrutable way being connected. Killer record Jam Packed with cultish leftfield boogie! Really, it should be reissued in pure Rick James gold toothed gold.