Journey Frontiers (1983): Track by Track

<v Speaker 1>Hello everybody, and welcome to the Surely You Can't Be
<v Speaker 1>Serious Podcast, discussing and debating the iconic and the forgotten
<v Speaker 1>of eighties and nineties.
<v Speaker 2>Pop culture with your co hosts James D. Graves and
<v Speaker 2>Jason Callipans. Welcome back, everybody.
<v Speaker 3>Here we are for our second part in the Synchronicity
<v Speaker 3>Versus Frontiers debate, and Jason.
<v Speaker 2>I've got a great idea for a video.
<v Speaker 3>You should play the air keyboards and I will play
<v Speaker 3>the air guitar, and we'll get somebody else to play
<v Speaker 3>the air drop.
<v Speaker 1>We think invisible instruments. Yes, that sounds incredible on a wharf,
<v Speaker 1>and have a lady walking around.
<v Speaker 2>Now now a minute a minute.
<v Speaker 3>That would be absolutely the worst video in the history
<v Speaker 3>of the world.
<v Speaker 2>We can't do that. I don't know what I was thinking.
<v Speaker 1>Let's hang out. We'll be out there in our jeans
<v Speaker 1>and tennis shoes. We'll get some lady off the street
<v Speaker 1>just to walk around.
<v Speaker 2>Awesome tank top.
<v Speaker 1>That you got it Target last night, and.
<v Speaker 3>I'll get my haircut right beforehand. Well, welcome back everybody.
<v Speaker 3>As you can see, we're already having fun with this one.
<v Speaker 2>Today.
<v Speaker 3>We're here to talk about Journey if you didn't catch
<v Speaker 3>our last episode, we talked about The Police and we're
<v Speaker 3>comparing the two albums that came out in nineteen eighty three.
<v Speaker 3>The Police had Synchronicity and Journey had Frontiers Synchronicity.
<v Speaker 1>That album was released in June of nineteen eighty three.
<v Speaker 1>Frontiers is actually released in February of nineteen eighty three.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, so today we will cover Frontiers and then finish
<v Speaker 3>up with our decision on which one we think is
<v Speaker 3>the best.
<v Speaker 1>I'm anxious to hear what you think I really am
<v Speaker 1>because most of the time I have kind of an
<v Speaker 1>inkling of where you are. I have no idea where
<v Speaker 1>you're on these two.
<v Speaker 3>So it is very, very difficult because these are two
<v Speaker 3>phenomenal albums. Like I said last episode, Police was the
<v Speaker 3>best band in the world, and this was their best
<v Speaker 3>album with the most hits and a Journey this one
<v Speaker 3>has a ton of hits. It's got my favorite of
<v Speaker 3>all Journey songs to kick things off, and so it's
<v Speaker 3>hard choice. I'll tell you when we get there. Okay,
<v Speaker 3>stay tuned, Okay, So let's jump in. You know, the
<v Speaker 3>only member of Journey that was an original member of
<v Speaker 3>Journey is Neil shown.
<v Speaker 2>You know Neil shown story.
<v Speaker 1>The only thing I really know about him is that
<v Speaker 1>he picked up the guitar at like age five, and
<v Speaker 1>he was born at Tinker Air Force Base, which is
<v Speaker 1>about twenty miles from where we're recording right now.
<v Speaker 3>So right right, yeah, I doubt he remembers Oklahoma, but
<v Speaker 3>we'll we'll claim him anyway, right.
<v Speaker 1>He is in the Oklahoma Hall of Fame, so we're claiming.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, yeah, Neil shwon.
<v Speaker 3>I'm sure he tells everyone he's from Oklahoma.
<v Speaker 1>This band was very nearly named Oklahoma City, but instead
<v Speaker 1>they settled on Journey.
<v Speaker 2>Well, they had some wild names to go through. But
<v Speaker 2>let's back it up a little bit.
<v Speaker 3>So Neil shown after Obviously the big important part about
<v Speaker 3>being born on Tinker Air Force Bace here in Oklahoma.
<v Speaker 3>He ends up in California, has a turntable in his room,
<v Speaker 3>listens to Jimmy hendrickson Cream every night, falls in love
<v Speaker 3>with the guitar. And I guess that's sleep hypnotism work,
<v Speaker 3>because at fifteen years old, he is an amazing guitar
<v Speaker 3>play already.
<v Speaker 1>He's a professional guitarist by age fifteen. You and I
<v Speaker 1>have talked. We both have fifteen year old boys in
<v Speaker 1>our house right now. The idea of him going out
<v Speaker 1>on the road and playing in a rock band.
<v Speaker 3>It's kind of weird how that fifteen thing keeps coming up.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, you had Eddie Murphy doing stand up when
<v Speaker 3>he was fifteen. You had Rick Allen who started playing
<v Speaker 3>with def Leppard at age fifteen, and then you have
<v Speaker 3>Neil Shoan who's playing the guitar at fifteen. It's crazy,
<v Speaker 3>but he got noticed. Of all people, he.
<v Speaker 2>Got noticed by Greg Rawley, who was the keyboardist and
<v Speaker 2>lead singer for the band Santana.
<v Speaker 1>I mean Santana. I mean that's a big time band.
<v Speaker 1>Huge joins them at age fifteen.
<v Speaker 3>I mean we're talking. They played at Woodstock. I mean
<v Speaker 3>this is this is not small potatoes here. I mean,
<v Speaker 3>these guys are an amazing band. And this guy, Greg
<v Speaker 3>Rawley was so impressed with Neil Show's ability at age fifteen,
<v Speaker 3>he would go and pick him up from high school
<v Speaker 3>in the morning, not after our school was done. Listen, dude,
<v Speaker 3>you don't need to bother with school because you.
<v Speaker 2>Were going to be a rock god. Okay, so come on.
<v Speaker 3>Herbie Herbert was manager for Santana at the time, and
<v Speaker 3>he heard Neil shown play and he was like, we
<v Speaker 3>need to have this guy come around a little bit
<v Speaker 3>because he was blown away, blown away by a fifteen
<v Speaker 3>year old.
<v Speaker 1>Neil Showan is a phenomenal guitar player, and I think
<v Speaker 1>he's vastly underappreciated. We talked in our Van Halen podcast
<v Speaker 1>about Eddie is a rock god, but when he wants to,
<v Speaker 1>he can make his guitar scene. And Neil is that
<v Speaker 1>type of guitar player. It always compliments the song. He
<v Speaker 1>never stands out there and says, look at me, watch
<v Speaker 1>me go crazy. His guitar always helps the song.
<v Speaker 3>It might be yeah, absolutely, And to say that means
<v Speaker 3>a lot because this time and history was it was
<v Speaker 3>all about the guitar solos, and so he definitely had
<v Speaker 3>that opportunity to be out there and being that guy.
<v Speaker 3>But I would say that it took some doing, but
<v Speaker 3>he appreciated what they were and where he needed to
<v Speaker 3>be in the scheme of things and didn't try to
<v Speaker 3>didn't try to take that spotlight over. So he joined Santana,
<v Speaker 3>and I mean, it's crazy you watch some of the
<v Speaker 3>old Santana videos that they have that are all psychedelic
<v Speaker 3>and weird technicolor DreamWorks things going on. And he's just
<v Speaker 3>a baby out there with his guitar playing with these
<v Speaker 3>guys who are veterans of the hard rock scene.
<v Speaker 2>But he's amazing.
<v Speaker 3>I mean he's a baby, but he's like, as they
<v Speaker 3>said in Bull Durham, the gods reached down and touched
<v Speaker 3>his hand and his arm became a lightning bolt.
<v Speaker 1>You know. So he doesn't stay with Santana.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, well, Herbie Herbert says, hey, guys, you know, we
<v Speaker 3>need to do something different. He and Greg Rawley they
<v Speaker 3>split off. This was kind of like part two of Santana.
<v Speaker 3>And obviously they're not going to be Santana because Carlos
<v Speaker 3>Santana and Santana you can't really take that from real.
<v Speaker 3>So they go out on their own and they start
<v Speaker 3>this band called Golden Gate something or other. I don't
<v Speaker 3>even rhythm section. We think, yeah, I think so that
<v Speaker 3>sounds good. It was not a good name. It was
<v Speaker 3>a horrible heat. Air Force Base would have been a
<v Speaker 3>better name, but yes, or Oklahoma City it was a
<v Speaker 3>better names. And so they're a band unlike the Journey
<v Speaker 3>that we know today. I mean, they are a band
<v Speaker 3>that is in the kind of fusion rock progressive rock scene,
<v Speaker 3>which is a lot of instrumental solos. That's the band
<v Speaker 3>that they were for a long time, and they developed
<v Speaker 3>a significant following.
<v Speaker 1>Is that kind of band they did, But they didn't
<v Speaker 1>have any hits.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, they were selling tickets, they weren't selling any records.
<v Speaker 3>The CBS was like, hey, guys, you want us to
<v Speaker 3>keep playing for your concerts, you better give.
<v Speaker 1>Us a hit something. We need something we can play
<v Speaker 1>on the radio.
<v Speaker 3>And Herbie Herbert realized, we need a singer. We need
<v Speaker 3>a singer who can sing well. And they went through
<v Speaker 3>a couple of guys that just didn't quite have it.
<v Speaker 3>And in the meantime, while all of this is going on,
<v Speaker 3>you got young Steve Perry who's been playing in rock bands,
<v Speaker 3>going through those same motions that early rock and rollers
<v Speaker 3>go through, and he actually gets in with the band
<v Speaker 3>called Alien Project. Looks like this band is going to
<v Speaker 3>be good. You know, they've they've got a decent song.
<v Speaker 3>They're just about to sign their record deal. And then
<v Speaker 3>the bass player gets killed in a car crash with
<v Speaker 3>a train, and when he dies, the band dies.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, Steve Perry at that time felt like, man,
<v Speaker 1>just when I'm on the cusp of my dreams coming
<v Speaker 1>true whatever it is, the universe is stacked against me. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>you feel like that was my chance and now it's dead.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, he went back home. I mean he was done.
<v Speaker 1>We're talking about Steve Perry, who arguably has the greatest
<v Speaker 1>singing voice of the nineteen eighties.
<v Speaker 3>Journey is arguably the definitive eighties band, at least the
<v Speaker 3>definitive early eighties band in my book. I mean, if
<v Speaker 3>you want to say what was the sound of nineteen
<v Speaker 3>eighty through nineteen eighty five for bands, I'm gonna go, well, Journey.
<v Speaker 3>Journey's pretty darn good example.
<v Speaker 1>You could do a lot worse than Journey, that's for sure.
<v Speaker 1>If they had this formula of pumping out hits that
<v Speaker 1>everybody liked. Bon Jovi was kind of that towards the
<v Speaker 1>latter half and just everybody sort of mainstream like these songs.
<v Speaker 3>But before they get there, Herbie Herbert is thinking, what
<v Speaker 3>do we gotta do to get a decent hit? We
<v Speaker 3>got to have a singer. And he's going through these
<v Speaker 3>demo tapes and he hears this tape and he's like, no,
<v Speaker 3>tell me that this is Steve Ferry? Because I just
<v Speaker 3>keep running into this guy, and sure enough it was
<v Speaker 3>Steve Ferry. And he's like, all right, where is he?
<v Speaker 3>And somebody's looking and they're like, looks like he's living
<v Speaker 3>back with his parents and working on a turkey ranch.
<v Speaker 2>He's like, no, really, what's he doing? Then Nope, that's
<v Speaker 2>what he's doing.
<v Speaker 3>He went back home, he had no money and he's
<v Speaker 3>working on a turkey ranch.
<v Speaker 1>And he was grateful to have that job. His step
<v Speaker 1>dad's like, hey, come back home, you can fix the
<v Speaker 1>turkey cages. I'll give you a paycheck. And he was like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>thank god.
<v Speaker 2>So when Herbie Herbert calls him up, he's like, nah,
<v Speaker 2>I don't think so.
<v Speaker 3>Well.
<v Speaker 2>I'm good, yeah, yeah, yeah, I got it. Now you know.
<v Speaker 1>I got a pay rent, I got an no where,
<v Speaker 1>I got a guy on the other line sowing some
<v Speaker 1>white walls.
<v Speaker 3>So Herbie Herbert says, I tell you what, I'll pick
<v Speaker 3>up your paycheck for a week. I mean, you know what,
<v Speaker 3>in the seventies was probably like thirty five bucks. Right,
<v Speaker 3>So he Herbie Herbert is making plans to fly him
<v Speaker 3>out there, and so he plays a demo of Steve
<v Speaker 3>singing for Greg and for Neil, and both of them
<v Speaker 3>are like, no hard pass, no, no, no, this guy's
<v Speaker 3>a crooner, right, we don't we want somebody who screams,
<v Speaker 3>and we want to play our.
<v Speaker 2>Music loud and we're going to rock.
<v Speaker 3>And Herbie Herbert says he's going to be the lead
<v Speaker 3>singer of this and that's the.
<v Speaker 1>End, and thankfully he did that. I mean, where would
<v Speaker 1>we be without Steve Perry. I mean this band would
<v Speaker 1>be in obscurity, right.
<v Speaker 3>So Steve gets flown out, he meets Neil. They actually
<v Speaker 3>kind of hit it off. Surprisingly, Neil's obviously against him
<v Speaker 3>at the beginning, but they get to know each other.
<v Speaker 3>They end up hanging out at a hotel room in
<v Speaker 3>Denver and Neil starts playing a little bit on his
<v Speaker 3>guitar and Steve starts singing some lyrics and they literally
<v Speaker 3>in five minutes write the song patiently, so.
<v Speaker 2>Nice.
<v Speaker 3>So it looks like it's going to be a good fit, right,
<v Speaker 3>Neil decides, Okay, I don't need to be the rock god.
<v Speaker 3>I don't need to be the guitar hero. I want
<v Speaker 3>to put my stuff in there, but I'm not going to.
<v Speaker 2>Overpower this guy. Because this guy's got chops.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, he's got a great voice, and the audience,
<v Speaker 3>you know, their diehard fans are like, what's going on
<v Speaker 3>a little bit, but a whole lot of people were like, hey,
<v Speaker 3>these guys sound good with this new lead singer. They're
<v Speaker 3>getting some more radio play, they were getting more tickets sold,
<v Speaker 3>and it looked like it was going to go. Well.
<v Speaker 1>It's funny because a band is kind of like a
<v Speaker 1>basketball team. You get one or two great players and
<v Speaker 1>all that a sudden you've got a great team. You
<v Speaker 1>get Neil Sean who is an amazing guitar, and you
<v Speaker 1>pair him up with a voice like Steve Perry's mean,
<v Speaker 1>I could play drums and they could pump out hits,
<v Speaker 1>you know what I mean.
<v Speaker 3>Right, So, both Neil and Greg Rawley both kind of
<v Speaker 3>pulled themselves back, you know, they said, Okay, this is
<v Speaker 3>a new direction that we're going and it seems to
<v Speaker 3>be working.
<v Speaker 2>That sounds good. We'll do that.
<v Speaker 1>Unfortunately, the drummer, Ainsley Dunbar didn't really feel.
<v Speaker 2>The same way.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, he was a hard rocking drummer and he
<v Speaker 3>wanted to bang his drums and as the band went on, Steve,
<v Speaker 3>you know, Steve was a kind of a reserved guy.
<v Speaker 3>He's not a cocky, in your face kind of guy.
<v Speaker 3>But when they start having more success with him singing,
<v Speaker 3>he starts to assert himself and say, listen, you know
<v Speaker 3>the drums are overpowering what's going on. You need to
<v Speaker 3>pull it back, And Ainsley Dunbar is like, no, I don't.
<v Speaker 3>I like drumming hard, and I'm going to drum hard.
<v Speaker 3>And eventually it just, you know, came down to an
<v Speaker 3>ultimatum and ains Dunbar didn't win that one.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, he's out for sure.
<v Speaker 3>So then they replace him with the drummer from montros
<v Speaker 3>throw Back, Steve Smith.
<v Speaker 2>Then they do a tour.
<v Speaker 3>Things are going well, actually having a whole lot of success, right,
<v Speaker 3>and some really great songs, and Greg Rawley comes to
<v Speaker 3>Herbie Herbert and says, I don't want to do this anymore. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>what you know, we're having the biggest success we've ever had.
<v Speaker 3>He's like, I know, and I don't understand it either,
<v Speaker 3>but I just don't want to be in this band anymore.
<v Speaker 3>And I'll just tell you what, I don't think that
<v Speaker 3>you're going to be with these guys very long anymore.
<v Speaker 2>Either.
<v Speaker 1>That's interesting. I mean getting off the train as it's
<v Speaker 1>leaving the station. It's always an interesting decision looking back,
<v Speaker 1>you know, well, I mean he was I mean they
<v Speaker 1>were on their way to the destination. I mean he
<v Speaker 1>was dead where they're making some big hits. But his
<v Speaker 1>departure ends up being a huge blessing because what happens
<v Speaker 1>is Jonathan Kane joins the band to replace him, and
<v Speaker 1>Jonathan Kane is responsible for so many of their hits.
<v Speaker 1>He really really adds that hit making formula to the band.
<v Speaker 3>He's got a very similar personality to Steve Perry. They're
<v Speaker 3>very much about the music. They're very kind of self conscious,
<v Speaker 3>but very good at what they do, and so they
<v Speaker 3>immediately form a comrade. And at one point, Cain starts
<v Speaker 3>playing this melody and I'll play it for you right now,
<v Speaker 3>and Steve Perry's like, hey, that's good.
<v Speaker 2>What is that? And He's like, oh, it's just something
<v Speaker 2>I've been messing around with. You know.
<v Speaker 3>I played it for John, but he wasn't really interested
<v Speaker 3>in it. So John is John Waite from the band
<v Speaker 3>Baby and Bad English as well later on. But yeah,
<v Speaker 3>so John Waite, here's this melody that ultimately ends up
<v Speaker 3>becoming Open Arms, and he was like, it's kind of
<v Speaker 3>sentimental rubbish.
<v Speaker 2>I'm not interested.
<v Speaker 1>That's ridiculous. I mean, he turns down one of the
<v Speaker 1>greatest power ballads of all time and then goes on
<v Speaker 1>to make Missing You, which is one of the biggest
<v Speaker 1>weenie songs of the eighties.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean talking about sentimental rubbish.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I know.
<v Speaker 3>But when Steve Perry hears this melody for Open Arms,
<v Speaker 3>he puts the lyrics to it, He's like, yeah, this
<v Speaker 3>is good, this is just I know it's going to
<v Speaker 3>be hit. And Jonathan Kaine's obviously in love with that idea,
<v Speaker 3>and Neil Sean's like, this sounds like Mary Poppins.
<v Speaker 2>What is his crap?
<v Speaker 3>And I'm like, okay, because I don't know what what
<v Speaker 3>am I supposed to do in this song? And they're like, Neil,
<v Speaker 3>just chillax man, It's just you don't have to be
<v Speaker 3>the guy in every song. He butted heads with him
<v Speaker 3>during the recording like he was mad. It was one
<v Speaker 3>of those standard Prima Donna tantrums. And then once they
<v Speaker 3>have it down, they played in concert later on and
<v Speaker 3>the crowd goes nuts, of course, and then Steve looks
<v Speaker 3>at Neil and Neil is just like in shock. He's like,
<v Speaker 3>what it had no anticipation of how they were going
<v Speaker 3>to react to this song.
<v Speaker 1>Thankfully, he said, you know what, I changed my mind.
<v Speaker 1>I think I can play this song and I think
<v Speaker 1>we can do more like it. Yeah, all right. So
<v Speaker 1>the song that we've just been talking about, Open Arms,
<v Speaker 1>was off their Escape album, which came out in nineteen
<v Speaker 1>eighty one, huge, huge power ballad. You've heard it a
<v Speaker 1>billion times. That album also contained a song you may
<v Speaker 1>have heard of it. It's called Don't Stop Me Think.
<v Speaker 2>Let me think about that? Pretty sure heard that one?
<v Speaker 2>Could you have a few bars?
<v Speaker 3>No?
<v Speaker 1>So I mean you have these two major, major songs
<v Speaker 1>right at the beginning of the eighties. So that brings
<v Speaker 1>us to nineteen eighty three. We're going to talk about friends.
<v Speaker 3>Right, And I got a question. I failed to look
<v Speaker 3>this up. I feel like it was not nineteen eighty three.
<v Speaker 3>I feel like it was nineteen eighty four. But do
<v Speaker 3>you know what year the Journey video game came out.
<v Speaker 1>It had to be eighty three. It had to be
<v Speaker 1>eighty three. I played that game in the arcade.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I played Actually in Fort Smith, Arkansas, they had
<v Speaker 3>that game in the arcade for a little while, and
<v Speaker 3>then it went away and it was devastating. And then
<v Speaker 3>the big new movie theater opened up, the AMC, and
<v Speaker 3>they had the game in the movie theater, and I
<v Speaker 3>found myself going to the movie theater just to play
<v Speaker 3>the game. I probably missed out on the beginning of
<v Speaker 3>a few movies because of that game.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, you walk around with Neil Sean and he's
<v Speaker 1>You're shooting out of the end of your guitar.
<v Speaker 2>Favorite song, favorite part of the game.
<v Speaker 1>I think would they play? They played. They played like
<v Speaker 1>separate Ways. Yeah, Neil Sean was the one doing separate
<v Speaker 1>ways and shooting things.
<v Speaker 2>With his guitar.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, nineteen eighty three.
<v Speaker 3>It was out of nineteen eighty three Bingo Bongo, And
<v Speaker 3>it has the logos. It has the same logo as
<v Speaker 3>the Frontiers.
<v Speaker 1>Yep, sure does.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, which to me is I mean, that's every time
<v Speaker 3>I think a Journey, I think of that logo. I
<v Speaker 3>don't think of the Beatle or anything else like that.
<v Speaker 3>It's always the large blue head which that game.
<v Speaker 2>You know.
<v Speaker 3>Our one of our listeners, Arlon Bullard, pointed out to
<v Speaker 3>me that that game and the Tron game are very similar, which, thinking.
<v Speaker 1>Back, they are, Yeah, definitely, very very similar.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, and so you even that big Head is kind
<v Speaker 3>of similar to the tron Giant Head and the Rainebow
<v Speaker 3>Spinny Thing, both awesome soundtracks on a video game. I
<v Speaker 3>mean I could just stand there and listen to people
<v Speaker 3>play the game.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, for sure, for sure. I gotta give a quick
<v Speaker 1>shout out to I tell you, I've got these two
<v Speaker 1>women that I go to church with who are eighties
<v Speaker 1>music freaks. One was Melissa Mingle and she helped me
<v Speaker 1>with Synchronicity. The other is Cindy Smith, and she was
<v Speaker 1>a big Journey fan. And I was asking her what
<v Speaker 1>she remembered about Frontiers.
<v Speaker 2>Uh huh.
<v Speaker 1>What she told me She was a freshman in high school.
<v Speaker 1>She got caught sneaking the car out at a friend's
<v Speaker 1>house and got grounded and could not attend the Frontiers
<v Speaker 1>concert in Oklahoma City. Oh devastating to her, And I
<v Speaker 1>thought that is a very eighties She said, her friend
<v Speaker 1>didn't get in trouble, still got to go. She couldn't
<v Speaker 1>go to concert.
<v Speaker 2>Oh that's rough, that's rough.
<v Speaker 1>All right. Frontiers was released February first, nineteen eighty three.
<v Speaker 1>Are you ready to dive in and talk about the tracks.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, let's do it all right.
<v Speaker 1>So the first song, the first track in the album,
<v Speaker 1>Separate Ways.
<v Speaker 2>I'm banging my head right now. So freaking good. Such
<v Speaker 2>a good song.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, I don't care about any other song on
<v Speaker 3>this album. This song seals the video for him fan
<v Speaker 3>freaking test two.
<v Speaker 1>It's a great song. It's a pump your fist sing along.
<v Speaker 1>Top down, turn it up, summertime, crank it out.
<v Speaker 3>You know, I've said it before. I was listening this
<v Speaker 3>when I've been running. This song gives me legs more
<v Speaker 3>than any Like if I'm if, I'm like even and
<v Speaker 3>I'm like I can't make it, I'm like okay.
<v Speaker 2>Siri plays several ways.
<v Speaker 1>Several ways, has this great i mean, pounding chorus, you know, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>the synthesizers and the guitar.
<v Speaker 3>This is one that I was like, Perry's vocals, My gosh,
<v Speaker 3>You've got this very interesting thing where you've got this
<v Speaker 3>melody playing the.
<v Speaker 1>And so it's the same melody, but then the chords change.
<v Speaker 3>So despite the fact that the chords are changing, the
<v Speaker 3>melody stays the same even over different chords.
<v Speaker 1>Sounds perfect.
<v Speaker 3>And then the bass keeps pumping this same bassline throughout
<v Speaker 3>the whole thing. It's a beautiful, beautiful mixture of musically
<v Speaker 3>that I you know, I just sound like Chris Farley R.
<v Speaker 2>I love it. It's really great.
<v Speaker 1>Okay. So this this song was actually written in nineteen
<v Speaker 1>eighty two while they were on the Escape tour. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>so that's kind of unusual for them.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, Jonathan Kine wrote this on a thirty dollars cassio keyboard.
<v Speaker 2>That's insane. I mean he had the same keyboard that
<v Speaker 2>like I had at my house.
<v Speaker 1>The thirty dollars one you get a radio shack, right.
<v Speaker 1>So this song reached number one on the Hot Rocks,
<v Speaker 1>number eight on the Hot one hundred, number one that week.
<v Speaker 1>Billy Jeane by Michael Jackson got one.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that guy's always in there spoiling people's fun.
<v Speaker 1>He's he blocked Paramania, he blocked Synchronicity, and he's blocking
<v Speaker 1>Journey right now.
<v Speaker 2>It was a good thing the police blocked him for
<v Speaker 2>at least a little bit.
<v Speaker 3>For a little bit before we take back over, right,
<v Speaker 3>So this one the basis for this song. While they
<v Speaker 3>were on tour, Neil Showen and Ross Valerie were both
<v Speaker 3>going through painful and expensive divorces, and Perry said to Caine,
<v Speaker 3>hey man, there's got to be a more soulful way
<v Speaker 3>to look at what's going on. And they worked up
<v Speaker 3>after Jonathan had put the music together on his thirty
<v Speaker 3>dollars cassio keyboard.
<v Speaker 2>Perry does the melody and the lyrics.
<v Speaker 3>And they're like, yeah, this is actually this is actually
<v Speaker 3>pretty decent. And so they show it to the band.
<v Speaker 3>They were, like you said, they were on tour while
<v Speaker 3>this was going on. They work on it during their
<v Speaker 3>sound check, you know, like before the concert starts, they're like, Okay,
<v Speaker 3>let's see if we can play this.
<v Speaker 2>They work on it for a little I mean, you
<v Speaker 2>have that long on stage.
<v Speaker 3>They work on it for a little bit, and they
<v Speaker 3>played it that night, played it that night, live, love
<v Speaker 3>it it. I mean, I think I think Steve Perry
<v Speaker 3>even had to like mumble through half the lyrics because
<v Speaker 3>he couldn't remember what he just read three hours before.
<v Speaker 2>But people went insane.
<v Speaker 1>Listen to what Neil Shan said about the song. He said,
<v Speaker 1>like many other songs from this band, motown mixed with
<v Speaker 1>R and B and blues. So that's what Separate Ways is.
<v Speaker 1>But it's got heavier guitar than an R and B.
<v Speaker 1>But he said, that's what I think makes it sound
<v Speaker 1>like Journey.
<v Speaker 2>And then they decided to make the video.
<v Speaker 1>Let's talk about the video.
<v Speaker 2>I have an idea.
<v Speaker 3>We let us have the band that some of the
<v Speaker 3>best musicians of all time play the air.
<v Speaker 1>Jonathan Kine is like, he looks like a bear or
<v Speaker 1>something so hard.
<v Speaker 2>I can't even imagine being the band.
<v Speaker 3>And the direct I mean, you get got to remember
<v Speaker 3>this is early early eighties, so you know, you get
<v Speaker 3>guys who the day before were directing like a bud
<v Speaker 3>Light commercial or something. I mean, those are the directors
<v Speaker 3>you have because because nobody's thinking, nobody's gone coming out
<v Speaker 3>of USC going, let's think I'll make us a music video.
<v Speaker 3>Because nobody cared. Nobody knew what that was. It was insignificant.
<v Speaker 3>And so you get this director who's like, Okay, you guys,
<v Speaker 3>let's put your instruments away. Okay, what are we gonna do?
<v Speaker 3>You're gonna play your instruments? Wait a minute, what, No,
<v Speaker 3>it's gonna be awesome.
<v Speaker 1>They're invisible, and then we'll flash them in and then
<v Speaker 1>all of a sudden you'll be playing them for real.
<v Speaker 1>Oh and then oh, hey, honey, you're you're one of
<v Speaker 1>the guy's girlfriends. Okay, I want you to walk across
<v Speaker 1>the screen, Just just walk across the screen. Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>Actually, when Steve Perry showed up and he had just
<v Speaker 3>cut his hair, like, I mean, he had his fresh
<v Speaker 3>mullet going on, and his girlfriend Sherry, who the song
<v Speaker 3>Oh Sherry is all about, who he dated all the time,
<v Speaker 3>and he was in Journey. She was livid about the
<v Speaker 3>fact that there's another girl in the video, and she's
<v Speaker 3>a good looking lady. But I mean, how do you
<v Speaker 3>come to the video. I mean, you're not like a
<v Speaker 3>world renowned actress or something. How do you come in
<v Speaker 3>and say I don't like this some other girls.
<v Speaker 2>In the video?
<v Speaker 1>It's crazy crazy.
<v Speaker 2>And then you see the video and I don't even think.
<v Speaker 3>I don't even think Steve Perry and the random, very
<v Speaker 3>very eighties looking girl, even.
<v Speaker 2>In the same scene one dime, it's like he was
<v Speaker 2>kissing her.
<v Speaker 1>My gosh, she just walked in front of him while
<v Speaker 1>he was singing.
<v Speaker 3>Screaming in somebody else's face as she walks in between him.
<v Speaker 3>So ross Valerie has the porn stash and porn glasses on.
<v Speaker 3>Yes he does, and Steve Smith is wearing a foosball switch.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, these guys, I just I'm looking at this
<v Speaker 3>video and I'm like, did you guys like fall in
<v Speaker 3>the mud and have to stop at Walmart on the
<v Speaker 3>way over to the video.
<v Speaker 1>It looks like it's just like they got the call.
<v Speaker 1>Hey guys, listen, be down the wharf in twenty minutes.
<v Speaker 1>I'm playing now, I'm meant the arcade. That's okay, just
<v Speaker 1>come on over. Yeah, where's it gonna be. It's gonna
<v Speaker 1>be at the wharf. Well, good news. There's a giant sign.
<v Speaker 1>This is wharf across the building. It's a big important
<v Speaker 1>part of the video. It's an industrialar area. Nobody bothers there.
<v Speaker 1>Don't worry, it's it's gorgeous. Listen.
<v Speaker 2>Talk song is a god awful video.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, let's talk about that, because we talked during the
<v Speaker 1>def Lebert His Stereo podcast a few weeks ago. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>Poor Some Sugar on Me had a terrible video along
<v Speaker 1>with this great, great song. Yes, and we questioned whether
<v Speaker 1>or not Poor Some Sugar on Me would be as
<v Speaker 1>remembered as it was as it is because of that
<v Speaker 1>crappy video.
<v Speaker 3>Right, Well here the difference well, but the difference here
<v Speaker 3>of five years is huge as far as music videos
<v Speaker 3>are concerned.
<v Speaker 1>Well, that's true, but this video has a great song
<v Speaker 1>and a horrible video.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, this this song is great because of the radio.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, it wasn't much longer before songs had to
<v Speaker 3>be great on MTV, before they were going to be
<v Speaker 3>great on the radio. But this was still when the
<v Speaker 3>radio waves ruled the day.
<v Speaker 1>Oh man, And this song is great. This song was great. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>second track of the album Center My Love. This was
<v Speaker 1>the fourth single released in September of nineteen eighty three.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, this one was written by Jonathan Kane.
<v Speaker 3>He had been listening to a lot of Beatles albums
<v Speaker 3>and he had this experience like he was on stage
<v Speaker 3>and he got called backstage and somebody said something about Virginia,
<v Speaker 3>and Virginia was like this girl he dated when he
<v Speaker 3>was a teenage and they said, you know, she still
<v Speaker 3>talks about you and your relationship and he said, you know,
<v Speaker 3>it was just one of those off handed comments that
<v Speaker 3>you make. And he said he looked at her and
<v Speaker 3>just said send her my love.
<v Speaker 2>Wait a minute, that's a song.
<v Speaker 3>That's a song we got to make that song, and
<v Speaker 3>my gosh, break out the cassio.
<v Speaker 1>This song has that wonderful eighties synth rock mix. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>it's just I mean, how many people learn to skate
<v Speaker 1>backwards to this song. It's just one of It's one
<v Speaker 1>of those roller skating ring specials.
<v Speaker 2>You know.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, write a couples back out to the center of
<v Speaker 1>the drink, turn it on, crank it.
<v Speaker 2>Up this one. He says.
<v Speaker 3>I went home and I called Steve Perry up and
<v Speaker 3>I said, I came up with this idea and I
<v Speaker 3>wrote it on the spot, and a lot of stuff
<v Speaker 3>was just on the spot, very spontaneous. We kind of
<v Speaker 3>wrote with an urgency because we didn't have a lot
<v Speaker 3>of time together and the road was hard enough. And
<v Speaker 3>when we did write, we wrote very intensely and all
<v Speaker 3>the lyrics were like within hours, which didn't mess around.
<v Speaker 3>And so once again they have this amazing song that
<v Speaker 3>they put together spur of the moment.
<v Speaker 2>Off handed comment. Beautiful song.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I love it. I love it. This reached number
<v Speaker 1>twenty three in the US charts. I'm surprised didn't get higher. Frankly,
<v Speaker 1>it's a great It's on the makeout mix of nineteen
<v Speaker 1>eighty three for people.
<v Speaker 2>Right, I'll give that tape back to you next week.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, we're adding to our makeout mix list here. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>the next song. This song is called Chain Reaction.
<v Speaker 2>This song I told you before.
<v Speaker 3>I'm listening to these songs running and as listening to
<v Speaker 3>this one, I feel good. But I'm like, I feel
<v Speaker 3>like I'm in a rocky montage moment right now, Like
<v Speaker 3>I'm rocky running along this song, and I'm pretty sure
<v Speaker 3>that it's gonna We're gonna do a fast cut to
<v Speaker 3>me getting punched in the stomach or something.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>I think this is kind of a fist pumping song.
<v Speaker 1>This would be great in concert. They released this it
<v Speaker 1>was a video but not a single. It was a
<v Speaker 1>hit on the Hot Rocks chart. It's featured in the
<v Speaker 1>Journey video game that we talked about a few minuts ago.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, but unfortunately, this one is a song that is dated,
<v Speaker 3>like dated.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>If I listen to this song now, it just says
<v Speaker 3>eighties to me. These other songs, I'm like, I don't
<v Speaker 3>care when this came out, It's still good now.
<v Speaker 2>This one, I'm like, this is stuck in the eighties, right.
<v Speaker 1>Here see. I like this song, okay, and I didn't
<v Speaker 1>have a relationship with it before we dove into this podcast,
<v Speaker 1>but I like it. It's catchy. Once again, anything Steve
<v Speaker 1>Perry sings automatically kind of has a head start with me. Yea,
<v Speaker 1>but I like it. Have you seen the video Di
<v Speaker 1>George the video for this?
<v Speaker 2>No, I haven't seen the video.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, so picture this. All the guys that you saw
<v Speaker 1>in the Separate Ways video are now in tuxedos. They
<v Speaker 1>look like they're at the senior prom though they don't
<v Speaker 1>look like James Bond. They look like my seventeen year old. Then, right,
<v Speaker 1>and there's this you know, it's this pumping sort of
<v Speaker 1>rocker chain reaction and Steve and Neil are sort of
<v Speaker 1>like yelling at each other and d'ur In the course
<v Speaker 1>of the video, Neil actually pushes Steve to the ground.
<v Speaker 2>It's weird.
<v Speaker 1>It's eighties.
<v Speaker 2>But does anybody have a tuxedo shirt on tuxedo tea?
<v Speaker 1>No, it's actual tuxedos. I like it. I like it
<v Speaker 1>all right. Next, the number four track on the album
<v Speaker 1>third single is called After the Fall. Now it's.
<v Speaker 2>What'd you say?
<v Speaker 1>Well, okay, this is another song written by Jonathan Kane
<v Speaker 1>and Steep Perry, peaked at number twenty three on the
<v Speaker 1>Hot one hundred. This song appeared in Risky Business. You
<v Speaker 1>might recognize the Risky Business.
<v Speaker 3>That's what I was gonna say. Yup, it appeared in
<v Speaker 3>the film Risky Business. Is the only fact that about
<v Speaker 3>this song.
<v Speaker 1>Did you see this video?
<v Speaker 2>Nope?
<v Speaker 1>All right, this video same guys from the Separate Ways video,
<v Speaker 1>the band, Yes, all dressed in khaki pants like Jake
<v Speaker 1>from the State Farm. Right now, they're all falling out
<v Speaker 1>of the sky past an open window. What they're falling like?
<v Speaker 1>You see this open window and they're like falling. They
<v Speaker 1>keep falling right after the fall, and you get told
<v Speaker 1>they're diving into a swimming pool or something, fully dressed
<v Speaker 1>in their khakis.
<v Speaker 2>Oh my word.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, that was the That's the other thing about directors
<v Speaker 3>of early eighties music videos. Let's treat this song as
<v Speaker 3>literally as we possibly can.
<v Speaker 1>But I like the song. It's catchy, that sort of
<v Speaker 1>power ballad.
<v Speaker 3>This one, like a lot of these songs, kind of
<v Speaker 3>falls into that category of it's the filler.
<v Speaker 2>To me, this is another this is a filler.
<v Speaker 1>It doesn't stand out. It doesn't belong in our greatest
<v Speaker 1>hits for sure.
<v Speaker 2>Okay.
<v Speaker 1>Now, then fifth song on the album. This song's called
<v Speaker 1>Faithfully where.
<v Speaker 3>You rom you go around and round.
<v Speaker 2>Love so beautiful, So so beautiful.
<v Speaker 3>We covered this one when this was one of the
<v Speaker 3>songs my band covered in high school. And just the way,
<v Speaker 3>the way the piano comes in and then then the
<v Speaker 3>guitar comes in leading over the piano is just if
<v Speaker 3>it doesn't pull out your heartstrings, you are a soulless creature.
<v Speaker 2>I don't. I have no pity for you.
<v Speaker 1>Every time I listen to this song, it blows me away.
<v Speaker 1>It crescendos, and when Steve Perry is singing that whoa
<v Speaker 1>you know, yeah, I want to pull over and light
<v Speaker 1>up my lighter and like wave to nobody. You just
<v Speaker 1>sway with the crowd.
<v Speaker 3>You know.
<v Speaker 1>It's so good that.
<v Speaker 3>This one was written completely by Jonathan Kane, and he says,
<v Speaker 3>God gave.
<v Speaker 2>Me that song.
<v Speaker 1>You heard this, This is interesting to me, he said.
<v Speaker 3>He's on a bus heading to Saratoga Springs and then
<v Speaker 3>he wakes up the next day and there's a napkin
<v Speaker 3>on his nightstand and he looks at the lyrics which
<v Speaker 3>are in his handwriting, but he doesn't even remember writing him.
<v Speaker 3>He just sees Highway run into the midnight sun and
<v Speaker 3>he says, I got this supernatural download. And that was
<v Speaker 3>the rest of the song. He wrote like frantically, trying
<v Speaker 3>to get it to it as quickly, put it down
<v Speaker 3>as quickly as it just seems to supernaturally come into
<v Speaker 3>his brain. And in thirty minutes he had written the
<v Speaker 3>entire song on that napkin, which he then took to
<v Speaker 3>his piano. This wasn't on this gassio.
<v Speaker 2>This one. He had his big grand piano and played
<v Speaker 2>it through and thought to himself, this is good.
<v Speaker 3>If somebody were to say, name a song by Journey
<v Speaker 3>that is divinely inspired, I wouldn't have any hesitation but
<v Speaker 3>to say Faithfully, Yeah, I'm.
<v Speaker 2>With you on that.
<v Speaker 1>Brian Adams opened for Journey on their nineteen eighty three
<v Speaker 1>Frontiers tour.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>During that time he wrote the song Heaven, which he
<v Speaker 1>believes was heavily influenced by Faithfully, and actually on that track,
<v Speaker 1>Journey drummer Steve Smith place.
<v Speaker 3>The guy who directed this video was found by Herbie Herbert,
<v Speaker 3>and it was a guy who shot NFL films like playing.
<v Speaker 2>Footage that you just see.
<v Speaker 3>So like, the guy who's shooting Walter Payton scoring touchdowns
<v Speaker 3>is now filming Steve Ferry shaving his mustache.
<v Speaker 1>Right exactly. That's cool. I thought this was super interesting.
<v Speaker 1>After recording the song purple Ring, Prince called Jonathan Kane
<v Speaker 1>worried that it might sound too similar to Faithfully and
<v Speaker 1>asked him to listen to it. Kane reassured Prince and
<v Speaker 1>told him the songs only shared the same four chords.
<v Speaker 1>I'm not a musician, but it's that just as interesting
<v Speaker 1>the video. It's like the first road video you actually get.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, throughout the eighties, I mean, bon Jovi does it,
<v Speaker 1>Guns of Roses does it, Genesis does it, Poison does it,
<v Speaker 1>Richard Marx, Motley Crue, I mean, everybody has this sort
<v Speaker 1>of here we are out on the road making a video.
<v Speaker 1>It kind of became a staple for the eighties.
<v Speaker 3>I got to say that that bon Jovi's Wanted Dead
<v Speaker 3>or Alive is my favorite of this.
<v Speaker 1>I'll take I'll take Motley Crue Home Sweet Home.
<v Speaker 3>So Journey hated making videos and I can talk because
<v Speaker 3>not good. They don't look like they like being there.
<v Speaker 3>For the most part, but they couldn't ignore how much
<v Speaker 3>of an impact MTV was having. And MTV loved them
<v Speaker 3>because they were a huge favorite with the audience, and
<v Speaker 3>as we've mentioned before, they were really trying to promote
<v Speaker 3>that rock format which was just coming back into style.
<v Speaker 2>Again.
<v Speaker 1>Here's the deal. When with Steve Perry's voice, and I
<v Speaker 1>know I keep harping on this, but his voice is
<v Speaker 1>made for arena rock. So when you show this song
<v Speaker 1>being played to tens of thousands of people and you
<v Speaker 1>get the feel of being at the concert, I mean
<v Speaker 1>the video really I think helped launch the song. It's
<v Speaker 1>just they go together well, and I like the video.
<v Speaker 1>I love the song. If they'd have made this in
<v Speaker 1>tuxedos in a sound stage, it would not have worked
<v Speaker 1>as well.
<v Speaker 3>Right the road videos are they're classic, they're good to
<v Speaker 3>and it kind of it sounds like this one was
<v Speaker 3>the one that kind of set the stage for that.
<v Speaker 2>You know.
<v Speaker 3>We talked about Jonathan Kane being a devout Christian he
<v Speaker 3>had actually wanted to be a priest, went to the
<v Speaker 3>Lady of the Angels School in Chicago, Philly about this.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah no, and he actually there was a huge fire
<v Speaker 3>there that killed ninety five people. He survived that, but
<v Speaker 3>he stepped away from his faith for a while. And
<v Speaker 3>then when he was going through turmoil with Journey and
<v Speaker 3>going through two failed marriages, he had this epiphany on
<v Speaker 3>the road to Florida and he found himself calling out
<v Speaker 3>to God and he joined this church down in Florida.
<v Speaker 3>In twenty fifteen, he married the pastor there, Paula White,
<v Speaker 3>and twenty sixteen he released an album of worship music
<v Speaker 3>called What God Wants to Hear.
<v Speaker 2>It's a cool story.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, well, and he said, he said, looking back on faithfully,
<v Speaker 3>he started to see it in a different light. And
<v Speaker 3>if you replace the words oh girl with oh God,
<v Speaker 3>you've got a Christian.
<v Speaker 2>Song, all right.
<v Speaker 1>So interestingly enough, Jonathan Kane wrote this song about his
<v Speaker 1>then wife Tony Kane, this beautiful ballad professing his love
<v Speaker 1>to her, I will stand by you faithfully. They divorced
<v Speaker 1>like shortly after the song was released.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah it's terrible, which is terrible.
<v Speaker 1>And then he's kind of go up there on stage
<v Speaker 1>and play this wonderful song that everybody loves about a
<v Speaker 1>woman that is dumping you. You know, I feel bad
<v Speaker 1>for him, And what a terrible thing to happen, all right.
<v Speaker 1>So that ends side one. Pushedop in your tape player,
<v Speaker 1>kick out your tape, flip it over. First song on
<v Speaker 1>side two is called Edge of the Blade. Edge of
<v Speaker 1>the Blade. To me, this is like the biggest rocker
<v Speaker 1>on the album. I would call this heavy for them.
<v Speaker 1>Neil Shown's guitar playing on full display on instrum.
<v Speaker 2>They're introing side too with a big heavy fist pumping.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, this is rocking out and it's an isn't angry song.
<v Speaker 2>This isn't angry, elf.
<v Speaker 1>He's not using his love song voice on this.
<v Speaker 3>And I can't tell you know, it almost seems to
<v Speaker 3>me like he's singing to some record ezech or somebody
<v Speaker 3>who's making money off of it. Doesn't seem like he's
<v Speaker 3>singing to a girl too. You know, the contracts and
<v Speaker 3>lawyers and the champagne downtown. You're caught up in the
<v Speaker 3>power and you better see which side of the blade
<v Speaker 3>you're holding. I don't know, man, that's to me, he's
<v Speaker 3>he's kind of angry at somebody who's taken advantage of
<v Speaker 3>their fame or something.
<v Speaker 1>This is a head bomber. I really like Nil Shawn's
<v Speaker 1>guitar on this one, he's demonstrating what he can really
<v Speaker 1>do with the guitar. All right. So the second song
<v Speaker 1>on side too is a song called Troubled Child. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>to me, this track sounds like it needs to be
<v Speaker 1>played on Miami Vice after Crockett get Somebody Killed.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I was thinking. I was thinking.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, so if Chain Reaction is like the working out montage,
<v Speaker 3>this is the song that plays.
<v Speaker 2>Whenever Rocky is doubting himself.
<v Speaker 3>You know, at some point he's throwing his helmet, his
<v Speaker 3>motorcycle helmet at.
<v Speaker 2>The statue of itself.
<v Speaker 1>That's the song.
<v Speaker 3>This is the song that should be playing it is.
<v Speaker 3>I think that'd be a great idea if we could
<v Speaker 3>just like re engineer all of the music in the
<v Speaker 3>old movies and just throw in completely different so totally
<v Speaker 3>could Yeah, yeah, that'd be fantastic.
<v Speaker 2>I want to.
<v Speaker 3>So I'm gonna put this on. Two songs off of
<v Speaker 3>Frontiers are gonna go onto rock Okay, that sounds like
<v Speaker 3>playing this one is. Yes, it's sad and it's sweet,
<v Speaker 3>and I knew it complete when I wore a younger
<v Speaker 3>man's clothes. But to me, it does again, it doesn't
<v Speaker 3>sound quite like Journey. It sounds like a group's trying
<v Speaker 3>to sound like Journey.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, it's got a darker tone, but the chorus is great,
<v Speaker 1>and I think the vocals are great. It is very dated, Okay,
<v Speaker 1>it's the sense and the tone sounds. I mean, like
<v Speaker 1>I said, it belongs in Rocky three or Miami Vice.
<v Speaker 2>It's probably that sound on the tape that you.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know, man, if you skip past this one,
<v Speaker 1>I'm worried about the next two on this side.
<v Speaker 3>Yes, yeah, So the next track that we have on
<v Speaker 3>the album is back Talk.
<v Speaker 1>Backtalk, heavy drums. I think this sounds similar to Jon
<v Speaker 1>Jet's bad reputation.
<v Speaker 3>So this is the song that I play when I
<v Speaker 3>get home from work every day, not for me, but
<v Speaker 3>for my kid.
<v Speaker 1>Right, no, right, I work all day, Megan A.
<v Speaker 3>Liven, No one needs your kind of attitude, your sharp tongue.
<v Speaker 3>This is this is another angry song. We got a
<v Speaker 3>couple of angry ELF songs on this one. And this
<v Speaker 3>is a guy who's he's had his day and he
<v Speaker 3>doesn't want any of the nonsense that he's getting. He
<v Speaker 3>walks through the door tonight.
<v Speaker 1>All right. I'm not a fan of this song. This
<v Speaker 1>is just silliness. I mean Neil Showan's guitar solo, I
<v Speaker 1>mean it's pretty good on this song. The drums are
<v Speaker 1>a little bit heavier, you know, Steve Smith gets a
<v Speaker 1>chance to show off a little bit. But for me,
<v Speaker 1>this is a stinker.
<v Speaker 3>I really wish I mean the drums. For me, the
<v Speaker 3>drums on this one. I'm thinking to myself, these could
<v Speaker 3>be good drums if we had a better recording, like
<v Speaker 3>if munt Lang were there and had the perfect sampling
<v Speaker 3>of drums or something. I don't know, but that he's
<v Speaker 3>hitting them hard. But the recording on this is just
<v Speaker 3>not good for the sound of the drums.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, I don't want to bash it. It just
<v Speaker 1>lacks heart, but I do want to make mention. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>Trouble Child is the one we listened to previously. This
<v Speaker 1>is the one that belongs to Miamy Vice in my opinion.
<v Speaker 1>Then we have Backtalk, which we degree, you know, not
<v Speaker 1>that great, right Doggy? Are those because those were last
<v Speaker 1>second additions to Frontiers, Okay, and the songs that they
<v Speaker 1>replaced I want to talk about here. Once we get
<v Speaker 1>to the end of this tape.
<v Speaker 2>It sounds good. Yeah, let's do that all right.
<v Speaker 1>So the fourth track on side too is a song
<v Speaker 1>called Frontiers.
<v Speaker 2>We Thank You.
<v Speaker 3>This is I mean this, This song really had the potential,
<v Speaker 3>I think to be a big hit for a Journey.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, it's got that, it's got that solid lead,
<v Speaker 3>it's got Steve doing his great voice. The only problem
<v Speaker 3>I think is that I had no idea what he's
<v Speaker 3>talking about. I can't understand what he's saying.
<v Speaker 1>It's funny that you say that to me. This is
<v Speaker 1>my least favorite song on the entire album. There's no
<v Speaker 1>real course, there's nothing to see with on this one.
<v Speaker 1>It gives the album a good title, but it's my
<v Speaker 1>least favorite track on the entire album.
<v Speaker 2>This is your least favorite track on the four album? Yeah?
<v Speaker 2>You like this less than Edge of the Blade and
<v Speaker 2>less than back Talk? Yes? Wow?
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, Now we're on different pages on this one, my friend,
<v Speaker 3>we're on the same page as far as there's a
<v Speaker 3>problem because you don't have anything to sing along with her.
<v Speaker 3>And that is the difference that this that that makes
<v Speaker 3>this song not a big hit. Had you had a
<v Speaker 3>something that is understandable and sing alongable.
<v Speaker 2>The rest of this song is great. The melody is great.
<v Speaker 2>The instruments are great.
<v Speaker 1>That's why I listen to the journey. I want to
<v Speaker 1>sing along with Steve Perry, you know.
<v Speaker 2>I guess.
<v Speaker 3>But but I mean, even if I get yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>I'd pick listening to this song one hundred thousand times
<v Speaker 3>over either one of those last two.
<v Speaker 1>Okay. So that brings us to the last song on
<v Speaker 1>the tape, song called Rubicon. Rubicon, in my opinion, is
<v Speaker 1>the best song on side two, and it's not even close.
<v Speaker 3>Well okay, I don't dislike the song. I mean, it's
<v Speaker 3>it's all right. I guess Side two is just not
<v Speaker 3>really a very good side. Honestly, this song's okay. I
<v Speaker 3>can't say that it blows me away. I like the
<v Speaker 3>guitar as it comes in. The melody for the verse
<v Speaker 3>is kind of humdrum for me. The chorus is solid,
<v Speaker 3>and it's got this junglesque kind of feel.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know why I said that word.
<v Speaker 3>It's just got this. It's got this. It has an
<v Speaker 3>eye of the tiger. Not the song, but just kind
<v Speaker 3>of the added feel about it.
<v Speaker 2>I guess. But this, to me again, it's one that
<v Speaker 2>doesn't stand the test of time.
<v Speaker 3>It's still going to be one of those ones that
<v Speaker 3>I go, Okay, this is a generic eighty song.
<v Speaker 2>You know, we're just picking generic eighty songs.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, okay. In my opinion, I think this could have
<v Speaker 1>been a successful single. I think it's every bit as
<v Speaker 1>good as After the Fall. For instance, crossing the rubicon
<v Speaker 1>means to make an irreversible decisions, kind of like burning
<v Speaker 1>the ships.
<v Speaker 2>I like it.
<v Speaker 1>This song is good. This is a foot tapper for me.
<v Speaker 1>Put a cool video with it. I think it's every
<v Speaker 1>bit as good as After the Fall.
<v Speaker 3>So you mentioned that the two songs that we find
<v Speaker 3>the least favorite on the album were last minute throw ins,
<v Speaker 3>and they actually ended up replacing something else.
<v Speaker 2>Right.
<v Speaker 1>Troubled Child and Backtalk were last minute editions. This, to me,
<v Speaker 1>is the most interesting story regarding this album. This was
<v Speaker 1>a huge success. I mean, this sold six million albums
<v Speaker 1>in the US right charted as high as number two
<v Speaker 1>on Billboard. But they put in two crappy songs and
<v Speaker 1>took out two potentially I mean, huge songs they removed
<v Speaker 1>at the last second. They took out a song called
<v Speaker 1>only the Young Yes, and they took out a song
<v Speaker 1>called Ask the Lonely. Both of these were top ten
<v Speaker 1>hits down the road?
<v Speaker 2>That right, And maybe who knows, maybe that was their thought.
<v Speaker 3>Maybe they were like, there's too many good songs on
<v Speaker 3>this one when I don't know what we're going to
<v Speaker 3>have a hit on the next album, Let's save these.
<v Speaker 2>To be hits.
<v Speaker 1>You think, I think that that is a legitimate theory. Yes,
<v Speaker 1>we know, we've got faithfully, we've got separate ways, we've
<v Speaker 1>got chain reaction. Why would we try to make thriller
<v Speaker 1>when we can stretch this thing out and make more money.
<v Speaker 1>I think that's a legitimate idea. But only the young
<v Speaker 1>you may recognize it's it's on the soundtrack for Vision Quest. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>I had the soundtrack for Vision Quest. I love this song.
<v Speaker 1>It is a fantastic song.
<v Speaker 3>So at some point, the band gets this letter from
<v Speaker 3>a mother who's frantic in her letter and she explains
<v Speaker 3>that her little boy, Kenny, loves the band. He loves
<v Speaker 3>loves the band. All he wants to do all day
<v Speaker 3>is listen to the band, and he's dying. He is
<v Speaker 3>dying of cystic fibrosis, which is a terrible lung condition
<v Speaker 3>makes it difficult to breathe, but like hearing Journey play
<v Speaker 3>gives him light in his life, and she writes the
<v Speaker 3>band to say, he doesn't have much longer and it
<v Speaker 3>would mean the world to him if you guys would
<v Speaker 3>come to see him.
<v Speaker 2>And so they read this letter and they said let's go.
<v Speaker 2>Let's go right now.
<v Speaker 3>And so they go and he's I mean, he's in
<v Speaker 3>his hospital bed and they come in and his eyes
<v Speaker 3>light up and his breathing improves, and he feels, you know,
<v Speaker 3>he's just he's ecstatic at being able to meet these
<v Speaker 3>guys who were his heroes, and it's like the pain
<v Speaker 3>goes away for a little while. And then as it happens,
<v Speaker 3>they happen to have a tape with only the young
<v Speaker 3>on the tape, and no one else other than the
<v Speaker 3>band has heard this song yet, right, nobody's heard it.
<v Speaker 3>They haven't released it. It didn't come out on Frontier. It's right,
<v Speaker 3>It's Vision Quest isn't out yet. This is gonna be
<v Speaker 3>this is an up and coming and so they're like,
<v Speaker 3>would you like to hear the song that we that
<v Speaker 3>were gonna release next, you know, on our next album.
<v Speaker 3>He's like, oh, that'd be great, and they put the
<v Speaker 3>headphones on him, and the way that Jonathan Kane describes it.
<v Speaker 3>It's like it looks like he has gone to heaven,
<v Speaker 3>and twenty four hours later he went to heaven for real.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>It was a momentous and life changing moment for every
<v Speaker 3>member of the band.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I mean Jonathan kan when they asked him about this,
<v Speaker 1>I mean, he breaks down and not just not just
<v Speaker 1>wipes tears, but is broken over this event. It's incredibly touching.
<v Speaker 1>But the song has an interesting history. They actually sold
<v Speaker 1>it to the band's Scandal, which it was on their
<v Speaker 1>Warrior album in nineteen eighty four, which, Yeah, and has
<v Speaker 1>Patty Smythe who I think has a one of the
<v Speaker 1>best female rock voices of the eighties. Check it out
<v Speaker 1>all right, So Only the Young would become a top
<v Speaker 1>ten hit in nineteen eighty five. The other song that
<v Speaker 1>was left off is a song called Ask the Lonely.
<v Speaker 1>This song was left off of Frontiers and placed on
<v Speaker 1>the Twist of Fate soundtrack. Twist of Fate was a
<v Speaker 1>movie that starred John Travolta and Olivia Newton.
<v Speaker 2>John remember that.
<v Speaker 3>One, Oh did you say grease?
<v Speaker 2>Because I thought you said something else?
<v Speaker 1>The song is grease Lighting. No, I'm just kidding, but
<v Speaker 1>this would become a hit from that soundtrack as well.
<v Speaker 1>So so you have two vastly better songs. Asked the
<v Speaker 1>Lonely and only the Young left off of Frontiers and
<v Speaker 1>replaced with Troubled Child, which believe the.
<v Speaker 2>Term they're stinkers. These are stinkers.
<v Speaker 1>They're stinkers. But for the sake of this argument, we've
<v Speaker 1>got to leave only the young and ask the lonely off. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>they don't count.
<v Speaker 3>Nope, we're talking about the albums that came out in
<v Speaker 3>nineteen eighty three and not the re issues that came
<v Speaker 3>out in two thousand and six.
<v Speaker 2>We got to compare apples to apples here, right.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, all right, so are we ready to get down
<v Speaker 1>to it.
<v Speaker 2>Let's do this.
<v Speaker 3>It is nut cutting time, if you will, think about
<v Speaker 3>Stuart Copeland's shorts, and that's what time.
<v Speaker 2>I can remember coming over to your house for a
<v Speaker 2>run one day, and I had the shorts that were
<v Speaker 2>like a little the shorts that really usually wore, and
<v Speaker 2>your wife went, we call those nutcutters.
<v Speaker 3>Here, we got to decide, you know, looking at these two,
<v Speaker 3>I'll go ahead, I'll go out there, all right, So
<v Speaker 3>let's just let's let's start with Frontiers. We've just to
<v Speaker 3>do a quick track listing. We've got Separate Ways, Center
<v Speaker 3>My Love, Chain, Reaction After the Fall, Faithfully, Edge of
<v Speaker 3>the Blade, Troubled Child, Back Talk, Frontiers, and Rubicon. To me,
<v Speaker 3>I'm really only excited about the songs that have lasting
<v Speaker 3>value on this which are Separate Ways, Send Her My Love,
<v Speaker 3>and Faithfully. I mean, the other songs are all right,
<v Speaker 3>and I'm okay to listen to them, but it's not
<v Speaker 3>like I turn them up when the radio would play
<v Speaker 3>them if the radio still played them, which it doesn't.
<v Speaker 3>So really three, I'm looking at three songs here, Separate Ways,
<v Speaker 3>Center My Love, Faithfully, whereas I enjoy the other songs
<v Speaker 3>and don't enjoy a couple of them at all. Only
<v Speaker 3>three songs doesn't make this a strong enough album for me. Now,
<v Speaker 3>I will say Separate Ways is the best song by
<v Speaker 3>the definitive early eighties rock band, and so that has
<v Speaker 3>a lot of clout with it. I mean that weighs
<v Speaker 3>heavy on the scales for me, But overall, when I
<v Speaker 3>then look at synchronicity, I mean, you have got several
<v Speaker 3>so it's kind of like it's kind of like, you know,
<v Speaker 3>Separate Ways weighs heavy as almost as much as Mother
<v Speaker 3>ways against on.
<v Speaker 2>Right right.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, So then on Synchronicity, you have Synchronicity one, Walking
<v Speaker 3>in Your Footsteps, OMG, Mother, Missus Grindenko, Synchronicity two, Every
<v Speaker 3>Breath You Take, King of Pain, Wrapped Around your Finger,
<v Speaker 3>Ta in the Sahara, and Murder by Numbers. Okay, So
<v Speaker 3>one of those songs is definitive for the band, and
<v Speaker 3>that is Every Breath You Take, and it's the most
<v Speaker 3>played song on the radio. In addition to that, you've
<v Speaker 3>got King of Pain, You've got Wrapped around your Finger,
<v Speaker 3>and you've got Synchronicity two. All of those are mind
<v Speaker 3>blowing hits. And I really enjoy Synchronicity one, and I
<v Speaker 3>really really enjoy Murder by Numbers.
<v Speaker 2>And I dig Tea in the Sahara. I won't skip
<v Speaker 2>past Tea in the Sahara. Walking in Your.
<v Speaker 3>Footsteps is one of those acquired tastes OMG and Mother.
<v Speaker 3>I'm gonna fast forward through them probably every time, Miss Grindinko.
<v Speaker 2>It just depends on the mood of the'm in. But overall,
<v Speaker 2>Synchronicity is a better album.
<v Speaker 3>It's got more, It's got again, a monstrous hit. You
<v Speaker 3>got monstrous hit. On Frontiers, but it's not enough to
<v Speaker 3>save the totality of the album in my opinion, what
<v Speaker 3>are your thoughts?
<v Speaker 1>Sadly you've stolen my thunder. But here's the deal.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, Now, can I say this?
<v Speaker 3>Can I say that when we started this out, well,
<v Speaker 3>the way this conversation began, you were going year by
<v Speaker 3>year and you're like, here are the bands that I
<v Speaker 3>didn't like, and when you hit eighty three you put
<v Speaker 3>the Police and I went what And that's how this
<v Speaker 3>that's how this podcast became a thank so go ahead,
<v Speaker 3>go ahead.
<v Speaker 1>And talk about that.
<v Speaker 2>Okay.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, So when we started this podcast the first time,
<v Speaker 1>and like we said, we had not had a prior
<v Speaker 1>relationship really with either of these two albums, I would
<v Speaker 1>call myself a journey greatest Hits type of guy. Right,
<v Speaker 1>give me the greatest hits album. I'll listen to Awesome.
<v Speaker 1>I had it, I owned it, Police, I the Police.
<v Speaker 1>I had never really had an album by them, Okay.
<v Speaker 1>I was familiar with their hits, but never really fell
<v Speaker 1>in love with them. They seemed a more mature band
<v Speaker 1>that was somebody my mom or my uncle might listen to. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>So when we started this, I listened to the first
<v Speaker 1>four songs of Synchronicity, I texted you and I'm like,
<v Speaker 1>this is a landslide for Journey.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah you did, Yeah I.
<v Speaker 1>Did, and I fully I thought, Man, what are we
<v Speaker 1>even wasting our time thinking about debates on this? But
<v Speaker 1>I listened to Synchronosity too. Then every breath you take,
<v Speaker 1>king of pain wrapped around your finger. You know, I'm
<v Speaker 1>not big on tin the Sahara, but Murder by Numbers
<v Speaker 1>is fun and interesting and sophisticated. Those are mammoth songs.
<v Speaker 1>And when I look at Frontiers, if you have only
<v Speaker 1>the young and you have asked the lonely in there
<v Speaker 1>instead of backtalk, we've got a discussion. But I'm with you.
<v Speaker 1>Separate Ways and Faithfully are mind blowing songs. Chain Reaction
<v Speaker 1>I think is good. I even like Trouble Child a
<v Speaker 1>little bit. I like Rubicon a little bit, but everything
<v Speaker 1>else is just kind of filler. So very surprisingly, I
<v Speaker 1>am going to say Synchronicity is the better album.
<v Speaker 2>Holy cow, I'm doing my little happy dance right now. Yes,
<v Speaker 2>I'm my mind is blown. I'm just like, what what what?
<v Speaker 1>I'm surprised to hear myself say that.
<v Speaker 3>I really I can't believe it, Like I, I, this
<v Speaker 3>must this must have been how you felt when I
<v Speaker 3>picked Pyromania over Hysteriaiz, even though you still pick Hysteria
<v Speaker 3>over Pyromania. It just the idea that the taking the
<v Speaker 3>time with well with these albums that you've you went from.
<v Speaker 2>I don't like these guys too. They have the better
<v Speaker 2>album than the guys that I loved at the time.
<v Speaker 2>That's that's amazing. That's that's awesome, man, that's great.
<v Speaker 1>I think I texted you about a week ago and
<v Speaker 1>I said, Synchronicity's got it.
<v Speaker 2>Sucks in me.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I guess I missed that one because yeah, you
<v Speaker 3>texted me today and you're like, do you know which
<v Speaker 3>one you're picking?
<v Speaker 2>And I'm like, yeah, of course I do. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>and and you had me convinced.
<v Speaker 3>You sent me that Landslide text and I called or
<v Speaker 3>texted back and I said, I don't know.
<v Speaker 2>After listening to the first four songs.
<v Speaker 3>I don't know that I can argue for Synchronicity, but
<v Speaker 3>once you hit Synchronicity two, it's a clear winner. And
<v Speaker 3>then again I went back just it just takes it
<v Speaker 3>a little bit of time with some of those other
<v Speaker 3>songs and you're like, no, these are actually good too.
<v Speaker 2>Synchronicity one is a really good song.
<v Speaker 1>One of the things that kind of helped me make
<v Speaker 1>my final decision is today I was listening to Frontiers
<v Speaker 1>in my car and I wanted to switch to Synchronousity.
<v Speaker 2>Nice, so nice.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, how can you really argue with that? I mean,
<v Speaker 1>that's that's what my heart wanted to do.
<v Speaker 2>You know, yeah, wow, Well that's fantastic.
<v Speaker 3>I can't I cannot wait to hear what you are listeners,
<v Speaker 3>think about the decisions and your opinions on it.
<v Speaker 2>Where do you put it?
<v Speaker 3>Does Frontiers hold up for you? Do you think we're
<v Speaker 3>crazy on picking the police? Please check with us on Facebook,
<v Speaker 3>tweet us on Twitter. You can reach us at Shirley
<v Speaker 3>Podcast on both of those formats or email lists so
<v Speaker 3>you can email us at shirleypodcast at gmail dot com.
<v Speaker 2>But we'd love to hear what you think as well.
<v Speaker 1>I have had a fantastic time getting to know these
<v Speaker 1>albums and I'm having a blast doing this. I hope
<v Speaker 1>you guys are having fun listening to us. Send us
<v Speaker 1>some suggestions that you think would be good matchups. We'd
<v Speaker 1>love to have that yeah.
<v Speaker 3>Absolutely, we've gotten We've had quite a few folks sending
<v Speaker 3>ideas and some of them, some of them were like, yep,
<v Speaker 3>that's right, that's what we need to do.
<v Speaker 1>Yep, yep. D appreciate you, man.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, youtuoe man, it's been great. I'll look forward to
<v Speaker 2>the next one.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, we'll talk to you later.
<v Speaker 2>All music, images and movie clips are used for the
<v Speaker 2>purposes of commentary and education in conjunction with the fair
<v Speaker 2>Use agreement under the US copyright law.