Los Angeles / give me Norfolk, Virginia / dial one oh four ten oh nine / tell the folks back home th...
Los Angeles / give me Norfolk, Virginia / dial one oh four ten oh nine / tell the folks back home this is the promised land calling / and the poor boy is on / the line
Member since:17.02.2004
Reviews:159
Members who trust:90
Ha ha ha!! Oh, man. Journey's Greatest Hits. Back to the 80's we go. Back to mushy AOR, back to crushing power ballads. Conjures up images of a band wearing leather pants, curly perms and throwing (sorry throwin') shapes on stage, as thousands of people in the crowd do that stupid dancey/shuffle thingy that only Americans know how to do. "Journey, wooo, man they rock!!!" Considering this band, all of the above is true.
Most people who've heard of the band will know they began as something of a freeform experimental jazz-rock outfit (as did their contemporaries Chicago) before morphing into a 1980's AOR corporate monster (as did their contemporaries Chicago) and having a drippy-looking singer with a high whiny voice (as did....OK you know who). There is one difference though....Journey came from San Francisco and Chicago came from, well, ummm, Chicago.
Laugh if you will, but this is just sheer good fun. Take it from me there is nothing better than getting up on a sunny Sunday morning and treating the neighbours to a blast of epic bombast like "Be Good To Yourself" or the OTT pomp of "Don't Stop Believin". Watch them wave merrily at you as you pretend that you, indeed DO have poodle hair and are fronting a million-selling American rock group, as you sing along to the impossibly huge break-up anthem "Seperate Ways (Worlds Apart)". They'll like it so much they'll soon be knocking on the door asking you if they can come in to listen too.
Grab that hairbrush and chant along to the big sing-song chorus of "Ask The Lonely". Take a breather as the band reprise the Huey Lewis-sounding "I'll Be Alright Without You", and drift along to "Who's Crying Now", the ballad from 1981 that my local FM station still insists on playing every day.
Amazingly enough, for a band built on bombastic FM rock they also throw in the touching "Lights", a song about San Francisco, and the lost-on-the-road-without-you tearjerker "Faithfully", complete with its awful screeching coda, though the sentiment is real enough.
I know, liking this sort of stuff should be illegal. This kind of music should have been put to rest by Nirvana and their cohorts, yeah? Well I'm afraid judging by the success of Motley Crue's recent tour, I reckon the time is right for poodle rock to make a comeback. Journey have a new album just out, too, called "Definitions". All we need now is for Cinderella to release their blockbusting Best Of and we'll be well away. New millenium? Tell ya mate, it never happened.
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Great sense of humour running all the way through there, Geoff........funny how all those bands seemed to sound the same then......hence the .....Reospeedforeigenerwagon....Band Title..........Roy
Soho_Black 14.09.2005 18:20
I've just landed a copy of this as well. It shouldn't be allowed, but I'm so glad it is!
JohnGroom 13.09.2005 21:13
Good Review. Good Band. Good Songs. Good Album. Good Choice. Rock On!
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