Lake: Time Bomb

Do you remember Lake’s “Time Bomb” –  today’s bubbling under hit from 1978?  I certainly do, even though it only had a brief run on radio. I even purchased their self-titled debut album that included “Time Bomb” as well as several other great tunes.

While not totally progressive and not totally pop, this primarily German band with a Scottish lead singer straddled the genre fence. James Hopkins-Harrison was the Scot with the high pitched vocals.

“Time Bomb” was the band’s only song to chart in America – and it had a poor showing in the US as it only made it to #83. The album fared worse by charting at #92. The band cut several albums for Columbia and were later moved to a CBS subsidiary label, Caribou Records.

Wracked with personnel changes and a lousy US tour schedule, Lake was doomed to never have the success here as they did on the European continent. With their progressive/pop sound, they toured America with three unlikely candidates: Lynyrd Skynyrd, Black Oak Arkansas, and Neil Young. Well, that was certainly a kiss of death wasn’t it? They would have been better teamed with Styx or Kansas, but alas that did not happen.

The band originally called it quits in 1986 and this failure put Hopkins-Harrison in a depressive state that was inadequately tempered by heavy drug use that led to his demise in 1991. The band later reformed in 2005. Their most recent album was released in February 2014. See if you remember Lake’s “Time Bomb.”