My brother's a big Journey freak and owns all their albums, so I've been real slow about creating my own collection. The band was originally formed by two ex-members of Santana, guitarist Neil Schon and keyboardist Greg Rollie. Neal Schon's also done a couple albums with Jan Hammer, and also did a project with Sammy Hagar called Hagar, Schon, Aaronson & Schrieve. Jonathan Cain (formerly of the Babys) has performed on Hagar's Three Lock Box album, and, during Journey's prolonged 90's hiatus, formed the band Bad English with Neal Schon and fellow ex-Baby John Waite.

"Departure"

1. "Any Way You Want It" (3:21)
2. "Walks Like a Lady" (3:16)
3. "Someday Soon" (3:32)
4. "People and Places" (5:04)
5. "Precious Time" (4:50)
6. "Where Were You" (3:00)
7. "I'm Cryin'" (3:42)
8. "Line of Fire" (3:05)
9. "Departure"--instrumental (0:39)
10. "Good Morning Girl" (1:44)
11. "Stay Awhile" (2:48)
12. "Homemade Love" (2:52)

Lotta kewl hits on this album, though I tend to prefer the Captured live versions of "Where Were You", "Line of Fire" and "Stay Awhile" to the studio versions, for some reason. Plus, "Any Way You Want It" gets on my nerves after all these years. But the lesser-known tracks do not disappoint, with my favorites being the acoustically-driven "Precious Time" and the down-n-dirty "Homemade Love". This is the remastered version of the album.

"Captured" (live album)

1. "Majestic"--instrumental (0:41)
2. "Where Were You" (3:21)
3. "Just the Same Way" (3:36)
4. "Line of Fire" (3:18)
5. "Lights" (3:30)
6. "Stay Awhile" (2:17)
7. "Too Late" (3:41)
8. "Dixie Highway" (6:53)
9. "Feeling That Way" (3:14)
10. "Anytime" (4:25)
11. "Do You Recall" (3:21)
12. "Walks Like a Lady" (7:06)
13. "La Do Da" (7:02)
14. "Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin'" (5:09)
15. "Wheel in the Sky" (5:01)
16. "Any Way You Want It" (3:40)
17. "The Party's Over (Hopelessly in Love)"--studio track (3:42)

Without any doubt, this is the greatest live arena rock album, EVER. Or maybe I'm prejudiced, since it's one of the first live albums I owned, and listened to it over and over in high school. Still, it's pretty damn good -- in particular the first three songs (plus the "Majestic" intro) which form the perfect concert starter. Indeed, just about every song here sounds superior to the original studio recordings, with the obvious exception of "Wheel in the Sky" (which just can't be improved on, sorry.) My favorite part is when Steve Perry, in his inimitable Felix the Cat voice, announces that the show's being recorded that night: "You see that microphone right over here?" [quickly runs to the other side of the stage] "You see that microphone right over there? DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS??" Heh, I guess you have to hear it to understand. :)

Two unreleased tracks appear on this album: "Dixie Highway", and "The Party's Over" (which turned out to be their last studio recording with Gregg Rollie) -- while both appear on the bloated Time 3 box set (see below), this is one live album that should NOT be passed over.

"Escape"

1. "Don't Stop Believin'" (4:10)
2. "Stone in Love" (4:25)
3. "Who's Crying Now" (5:00)
4. "Keep on Runnin'" (3:39)
5. "Still They Ride" (3:49)
6. "Escape" (5:16)
7. "Lay it Down" (4:12)
8. "Dead or Alive" (3:20)
9. "Mother, Father" (5:27)
10. "Open Arms" (3:17)

First time I bought this CD, I couldn't get it to play, and upon further inspection discovered that some nimrod had used some sort of abrasive solvent on the damn thing, dissolving away the entire digital surface! In fact when you held the disk up to the light it was completely see-through! I went to return it and at first the record store guy gave me a hard time (of course), suggesting it was my player's fault, but changed his tune when he put the disk in the store player and said, "Hmm, it says 'No disc in player.'" Fucking shmuck...

...Oh yes, gotta talk about the music too. :) Well, being one of the first records I ever owned (actually it was my brother's, but for a long time our collections were basically intermixed) it's quite a memory-inducer. "Don't Stop Believin'" is a fantastic starter with that piano-only beginning; some serious rocking takes place in "Stone in Love", "Keep on Runnin'" and "Lay it Down"; and "Mother, Father" even manages to wring some emotion. "Dead or Alive" I didn't like at first, but the powerhouse rhythm and gangster theme makes it one of my favorite tunes now. "Escape", in particular, demands to be played full volume while tearing down the open highway. And finally, my friend summed up "Open Arms" with a most colorful description: "The ultimate song to fuck to!"

"Frontiers"

1. "Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)" (5:25)
2. "Send Her My Love" (3:55)
3. "Chain Reaction" (4:22)
4. "After the Fall" (5:01)
5. "Faithfully" (4:29)
6. "Edge of the Blade" (4:32)
7. "Troubled Child" (4:29)
8. "Back Talk" (3:18)
9. "Frontiers" (4:11)
10. "Rubicon" (4:21)

A respectable followup to Escape, marred by three drippy, syrupy ballads: "Send Her My Love", "Faithfully" and "After the Fall" (all of which became radio hits, unsurprisingly) as well as that stupid "Back Talk". The rest of this CD simply ROCKS. "Separate Ways", their first hit off this album, is a fantastic rocker, and in fact my brother once edited a 25-minute version of that song (wish I still had the tape, that thing was classic) -- the video was typical 80's cheese, but for some reason it wound up on MTv's all-time list of "BAD MUSIC VIDEOS" -- why???? Oh well. The next rocker, "Chain Reaction", was especially desirable because of a skip in my brother's crappy vinyl copy that could NOT be fixed (you know, press down on the stylus and "guide" the needle through the grooves...works on a number of LPs, but not this one.) "Edge of the Blade" is borderline heavy metal, most certainly Journey's heaviest number ever. "Troubled Child" is basically a revision of "Mother, Father", but sounds cool nonetheless. And then come the last 2 songs, "Frontiers" & "Rubicon", simply anthemic in their scope.

"Time 3" (3CD box set)

Alright, the story behind this 3CD set is a bit convoluted. My brother bought the original box set, but the 3rd CD wound up getting stolen after he lent it to a friend. So, my intention was to buy this set for myself, and burn a copy of CD#3 for D-Dog. Well...as it happened, I ran across this "remastered" version in the used bins for $27.99 (I say "remastered" because it comes in a big fat 2CD case modified to hold 3 cds, no box, and the liner notes make reference to their crappy 90's album "Trial by Fire") -- couldn't afford to buy it, but I wrote email to my brother about it, and to make a long story short, he went IMMEDIATELY to the store after work! And since it was close to my birthday, I convinced him to give me the extra 2 cds he still had, and burned a copy of disc #3 for myself.

Okay...now the music. Well, like most box sets, this one's comprised of 80% previously released material -- and of the 11 unreleased tracks, 2 are live versions and thus don't count..."Only the Young" was originally released on the Vision Quest soundtrack, and "Ask the Lonely" is from their greatest hits CD, as well as the soundtrack for some obscure movie staring Olivia Newton-John or somebody. "Little Girl" is from a Japanese film soundtrack, but I think that was finally released domestically so we can delete that as well. That leaves us with not 11, but SIX songs totally exclusive to this collection....

Of all of these, by far the highlight is "Only Solutions", from the Tron soundtrack, which was NEVER released on CD (and in fact there was a 2nd Journey song on that LP, but I never bothered to tape it and for some reason they didn't bother including it here.) "Cookie Duster" is an unreleased live jam from the EARLY Journey days; "For You" features Robert Fleischman, who tried out for the vocal spot before Steve Perry came along. "Velvet Curtain" is basically an early snippet of "Feeling that Way" (I like how it's listed in the liner notes as "credits unknown"), followed immediately by the studio version of F.T.W. "Good Times" is a Sam Cooke song the band decided to cover for some reason. "Natural Thing" and "La Raza del Sol" are b-sides to singles from Escape...but one thing I don't understand, why is "Raza" listed as an "alternate version"?? (Damn cool song, btw.) "Liberty" and "All That Really Matters" are outtakes from Frontiers; "With a Tear" and "Into Your Arms" are instrumental, "unfinished" outtakes from Raised on Radio, and to be honest they're both pretty damn good. (Hmm, that's obviousy more than six songs, somehow I did my arithmetic wrong but I'm too lazy & tired to fix it right now...)

Okay, now let's get to the previously released tracks. Precious few selections from the pre-Perry days, although at least they included my two favorite instrumentals, "Nickel & Dime" and "Kohoutek". The selections from Infinity/Evolution/Departure are a mixed bag, looks like they chose the more obscure songs from those albums...and did a good job, I think. The live tracks from Captured piss me off...why oh why didn't they use the STUDIO version of "Wheel in the Sky" instead??? The live version just plain sucks...although, to give credit where credit is due, the other choices were dead on -- the "Lights/Stay Awhile" medley, the "Walks Like a Lady" jam, and the exclusive tracks "Dixie Highway" and "Party's Over".

Now for the real pisser...SEVEN selections from their crappy '86 album Raised on Radio (two of which are live), and they completely ommitted the title track, which was the ONLY worthwhile song on that album!! (Well, "Be Good to Yourself" is also okay.) Dammit, if ONLY they had included that song, I would have no reason to buy that putrid album!! But now it looks as if I'll have no choice...

"Arrival/Trial by Fire" (2CDR)

My brother came over one day to help figure out why my CD burner wasn't working properly; coincidentally, he had just bought these two recent Journey CDs (the last one with Steve Perry, and the first one with "Steve Perry With A Perm"), so they got used for test-copying. (They also were the last two discs my old CD burner ever copied, as it died a horrible and painful death shortly thereafter.)

One of these days, I'll have to give these discs a good listen to see if they're actually worth buying in the original format...

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