Chuck Prophet: Night Surfer

“Loosely conceptual” album from San Francisco rocker.

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I only met Chuck Prophet once, in his 1980s days with Green On Red but I remember him keeping our table in fits of laughter as he regaled us with half an hour’s worth of road anecdotes.

His wit finds his way into his work, as titles like Countrified Inner City Technological Man and Laughing On The Inside attest. His rock’n’roll animal nature and diamond wit place him somewhere between Nick Lowe and The Rolling Stones. His lucid songwriting has justly earned him work on the soundtracks for a number of recent hit TV series.

The concept of this album is about following a path that is eventually going to lead 20 years down the line and wonder where it will take you; the protagonist on Wish Me Luck is full of unwise hubris, flinging open the windows crying ‘Look out, all you losers, here I come’. Yet Prophet himself has been ploughing a fine furrow for a few decades now and shows no sign of paying a price to the devil.

David Stubbs

David Stubbs is a music, film, TV and football journalist. He has written for The Guardian, NME, The Wire and Uncut, and has written books on Jimi Hendrix, Eminem, Electronic Music and the footballer Charlie Nicholas.