I threw a Journey cassette away.<\/p>\n
The publicity firm we used for W.A.S.P. also repped Journey.\u00c2\u00a0 The girl who wrote the bio had just graduated from USC and was proud of this.\u00c2\u00a0 She gave me "Frontiers".<\/p>\n
I gave it a spin.\u00c2\u00a0 And then tossed it.\u00c2\u00a0 Because I didn’t want anybody to see it.<\/p>\n
Our collections used to be representations of ourselves.\u00c2\u00a0 They were built over years, they evidenced our passion and interests.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, at first Journey was a Santana splinter band.\u00c2\u00a0 But then they became schmaltzy, playing to a broad audience that I was not a member of.\u00c2\u00a0 I wanted nothing to do with them.<\/p>\n
But I enjoyed hearing "Wheel In The Sky" on FM radio every Saturday night.\u00c2\u00a0 And "Lights".\u00c2\u00a0 I told myself it was all right to like these two tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 Every band cut a couple of good ones.\u00c2\u00a0 But "Separate Ways"?<\/p>\n
So how I explain getting hooked on Steve Perry’s solo work, I’ll never know.\u00c2\u00a0 But I’d NEVER delete "Oh Sherrie" from my iTunes library.\u00c2\u00a0 This is RELIGIOUS music.\u00c2\u00a0 What with the big organ intro and Steve singing like the star of a choir…<\/p>\n
"I should have been gone!"<\/p>\n
And then he was.\u00c2\u00a0 Eventually Irving got Steve back with the rest of the boys, but claiming health problems, Steve begged off the tour.\u00c2\u00a0 And without a tour, the Kevin Shirley produced album never caught fire.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t love it.\u00c2\u00a0 But this was back when the tour was still an ad for the record, before the album became the ad for the TOUR!<\/p>\n
Then a funny thing happened.\u00c2\u00a0 Journey went on to do boffo at the b.o. WITHOUT Steve Perry.\u00c2\u00a0 Huh?\u00c2\u00a0 Who didn’t get the memo?\u00c2\u00a0 Nobody wants to see Zeppelin without Robert Plant, why do they want to see this hackneyed eighties band without its one true star?<\/p>\n
Then that guy lost his voice.\u00c2\u00a0 And was replaced by another.\u00c2\u00a0 And eventually, following Judas Priest’s lead, they signed up a soundalike, from the Philippines, if you can believe that.<\/p>\n
That’s just how bad people want to hear Journey music.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s just how much they want to believe.<\/p>\n
You see Journey fans have never stopped believin’.\u00c2\u00a0 And there’s a fuck of a lot of them.\u00c2\u00a0 Who were ignored, consigned to their own special backwater, until the finale of the "Sopranos".\u00c2\u00a0 When suddenly all was forgiven.\u00c2\u00a0 Seemed like suddenly EVERYBODY liked Journey.\u00c2\u00a0 Kids not even born in their heyday were hooked.\u00c2\u00a0 And as a result of ALL this, and a cheap price, the newly-constituted band even sold a package at Wal-Mart.\u00c2\u00a0 DECENTLY!<\/p>\n
But it’s still not the real Journey.<\/p>\n
And I thought I still didn’t care until I heard "Stone In Love" on XM two days ago.<\/p>\n
I can’t like "Stone In Love" TOO!\u00c2\u00a0 That’s too many Journey tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 Could I be becoming a fan?<\/p>\n
And\u00c2\u00a0 you know what a fan wants to do…\u00c2\u00a0 SEE THE BAND LIVE!<\/p>\n
But I don’t want to see the ersatz Journey, but the real thing, the Steve Perry Journey!<\/p>\n
Does Steve talk to Neal?\u00c2\u00a0 Is there still bad blood?\u00c2\u00a0 If Irving couldn’t broker a tour way back when, what are the odds now?<\/p>\n
But now it’s different.\u00c2\u00a0 Because of the collective consciousness.\u00c2\u00a0 Because of the DEMAND!<\/p>\n
That’s what we want.\u00c2\u00a0 A Journey STADIUM TOUR!<\/p>\n
Face it, they’re the only band that can do it.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, you pay a couple of hundred bucks to be up close.\u00c2\u00a0 But up in the rafters, er, the upper deck, tickets go for way under $100.\u00c2\u00a0 And no one complains about being far away, because with Journey it was never about the band, but the MUSIC!\u00c2\u00a0 People want to go to feel the music, they want to go to SING ALONG!<\/p>\n
The time has finally come.\u00c2\u00a0 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!<\/p>\n
And you know it will sell every single ticket.<\/p>\n
It will be 1982 all over again.\u00c2\u00a0 Is that such a bad thing?<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I threw a Journey cassette away. The publicity firm we used for W.A.S.P. also repped Journey.\u00c2\u00a0 The girl who wrote the bio had just graduated from USC and was proud of this.\u00c2\u00a0 She gave me "Frontiers". I gave it a spin.\u00c2\u00a0 And then tossed it.\u00c2\u00a0 Because I didn’t want anybody to see it. Our collections […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-shows","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-mW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}