B-Side Guys

Fire in the Radio recorded their debut Red Static Action in 2003 at Lebanon Valley College—ten songs played with youthful exuberance, live to tape with minimal overdubs. The band toured for a year, then scattered when members moved to different parts of the country. The album found limited circulation through college radio and press, even landing on an Abercrombie & Fitch Top 10 playlist. Years later, when blogger Willfully Obscure called it “the first and final word on Fire in the Radio,” the Philadelphia band decided maybe it shouldn’t be.

What Does “Prairie” Mean?

They reunited for a weekend in Washington D.C., looking for rehearsal space. Don Zientara at Inner Ear Studios offered to let them practice there, and while knocking rust off old songs, they wrote new ones. “Prairie” emerged from that session, recorded the same way they’d done it in 2003—live to tape, minimal overdubs. The track was previously unreleased until this reissue, serving as bonus material and proof the story wasn’t finished.

The lyrics cycle through memory traps: “You take me back to other lovers / You got me spending time / Down these holes again.” The repetition of “late last summer” and “black dress and your lipstick friends” suggests nostalgia as quicksand—you know you’re sinking but can’t stop staring at what was. The bridge shifts perspective: “All your friends say that all your friends are coming / I hold you back into the storm / I hold you back and then it’s worn.” Holding someone back into the storm isn’t protection, it’s complicity in their destruction.

Twenty years between recordings means “Prairie” exists in two timelines simultaneously—the band that broke up in 2003 and the one that reformed to prove they had more to say.

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For another look at nostalgia, check out Rikki Rakki’s “James River”