I threw a Journey cassette away.

The publicity firm we used for W.A.S.P. also repped Journey.  The girl who wrote the bio had just graduated from USC and was proud of this.  She gave me "Frontiers".

I gave it a spin.  And then tossed it.  Because I didn’t want anybody to see it.

Our collections used to be representations of ourselves.  They were built over years, they evidenced our passion and interests.  Sure, at first Journey was a Santana splinter band.  But then they became schmaltzy, playing to a broad audience that I was not a member of.  I wanted nothing to do with them.

But I enjoyed hearing "Wheel In The Sky" on FM radio every Saturday night.  And "Lights".  I told myself it was all right to like these two tracks.  Every band cut a couple of good ones.  But "Separate Ways"?

So how I explain getting hooked on Steve Perry’s solo work, I’ll never know.  But I’d NEVER delete "Oh Sherrie" from my iTunes library.  This is RELIGIOUS music.  What with the big organ intro and Steve singing like the star of a choir…

"I should have been gone!"

And then he was.  Eventually Irving got Steve back with the rest of the boys, but claiming health problems, Steve begged off the tour.  And without a tour, the Kevin Shirley produced album never caught fire.  I didn’t love it.  But this was back when the tour was still an ad for the record, before the album became the ad for the TOUR!

Then a funny thing happened.  Journey went on to do boffo at the b.o. WITHOUT Steve Perry.  Huh?  Who didn’t get the memo?  Nobody wants to see Zeppelin without Robert Plant, why do they want to see this hackneyed eighties band without its one true star?

Then that guy lost his voice.  And was replaced by another.  And eventually, following Judas Priest’s lead, they signed up a soundalike, from the Philippines, if you can believe that.

That’s just how bad people want to hear Journey music.  That’s just how much they want to believe.

You see Journey fans have never stopped believin’.  And there’s a fuck of a lot of them.  Who were ignored, consigned to their own special backwater, until the finale of the "Sopranos".  When suddenly all was forgiven.  Seemed like suddenly EVERYBODY liked Journey.  Kids not even born in their heyday were hooked.  And as a result of ALL this, and a cheap price, the newly-constituted band even sold a package at Wal-Mart.  DECENTLY!

But it’s still not the real Journey.

And I thought I still didn’t care until I heard "Stone In Love" on XM two days ago.

I can’t like "Stone In Love" TOO!  That’s too many Journey tracks.  Could I be becoming a fan?

And  you know what a fan wants to do…  SEE THE BAND LIVE!

But I don’t want to see the ersatz Journey, but the real thing, the Steve Perry Journey!

Does Steve talk to Neal?  Is there still bad blood?  If Irving couldn’t broker a tour way back when, what are the odds now?

But now it’s different.  Because of the collective consciousness.  Because of the DEMAND!

That’s what we want.  A Journey STADIUM TOUR!

Face it, they’re the only band that can do it.  Sure, you pay a couple of hundred bucks to be up close.  But up in the rafters, er, the upper deck, tickets go for way under $100.  And no one complains about being far away, because with Journey it was never about the band, but the MUSIC!  People want to go to feel the music, they want to go to SING ALONG!

The time has finally come.  This is what America needs, to take its mind off the economic doldrums, to bring us together in a way no politician can, A JOURNEY STADIUM TOUR!

And you know it will sell every single ticket.

It will be 1982 all over again.  Is that such a bad thing?