Journey was a perfectly cool prog-jam band before he came along and turned them into a sissy-chick band, so this new album won't be anything I'll be checking out...
Journey was already headed into AOR territory before Perry joined. Just sayin'...
Just for the record, yes, you can add your name to the byline), if you add something to an existing song. My understanding If you re-work the lyrics, or write an extra verse, or make some other significant contribution, you're entitled to a percentage of the publishing revenue.
That's actually how a lot of songwriting "collaborations", i.e. someone's written an existing song, and it falls in the hands of someone else, who reworks it somehow. I think Gene Simmons has said that's how he took a song written by Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance and turned it into War Machine. I also think that's how Peter Wolf managed to get his name in the byline of We Built This City, by adding to whatever was already present on the demo that Bernie Taupin and Martin Page had produced.
If you take a public domain song and write new words, or add words to something like a Bach or Beethoven piece, you can claim all the publishing.
And I'm sick of the anti-Steve Perry nonsense. "Oh, he ruined Journey". Well, maybe he did, but not the way most people think. Every album Journey made up through and including Frontiers were damn good records.
I don't think a "sissy" band would make songs like Chain Reaction, Winds Of March, or People And Places. And despite being incredibly overplayed on the radio, songs like Don't Stop Believin', Separate Ways (Worlds Apart), and Any Way You Want It are really catchy, melodic songs, which is nothing to sneeze at. Even the ballads, like Faithfully and After The Fall tended to be really really good songs.
Prog bands profess to not care about things like hooks or melodies or whatever, but I wonder how many could even dream of writing a song like Any Way You Want It. I reckon it's harder to write a song like that than it is to come up with some theoretically unplayable thing in 11/8, with lyrics about the Shastric Scriptures or invasive plant species or whatever.
But the wheels came off the bus on Raised On Radio. I haven't listened to that album in ages, but i Remember it being a total dog. I think the only song I've heard recently is Be Good To Yourself, which was used as closing credits music in some movie I was watching recently (actually, I was a movie that was just ending as I turned on one of the premium channels to watch what was coming on next, but anyway...), and I have to admit it was better than I remembered it being. But I'm not sure I really want to revisit that particular record.
Supposedly, Randy Jackson (who was at the time playing bass in Journey, in between his gigs with Jean Luc Ponty and his subsequent career as an American Idol judge) once claimed Perry was the most soulful white singer he'd ever worked with.
I recently read Johnathan Cain’s new autobiography. He has nothing but praise for Perry as a vocalist, front man and songwriter. According to Cain, Perry also was very involved in arrangements of the bands songs as well.
I am interested in this new album. Not sure that it is something that I will purchase, but will check out what comes out from it.
Does he talk about how Perry reputedly hijacked the band post-Frontiers, and steered them down the road that led to Raised On Radio?! I remember in the Behind The Music thing, Perry's like "Oh, I never really felt like a member of the band, I always felt like an outsider", and I can't remember which band member it was who responded by saying, "He was the one making all the decisions?! What does he mean, he didn't feel like a member of the band?!".
https://itunes.apple.com/jp/album/no...420679596&l=en
Sample here^^^ Thoughts?
The whole song is on streaming now. It’s not bad, a little age on the voice, but he’s still recognizably THAT GUY and suddenly the Howard Hughes of big ass, soaring arena rock balladeering is BACK. I couldn’t get into Sting’s last record at all even though it was billed as his return to rock because his voice is so different. I didn’t have that issue with Perry on this song.
"It was a cruel song, but fair."-Roger Waters
Love the bridge. That bit at the end where he puts on the fedora for a couple of seconds and tosses it kinda gets me. I’m giving it 3 out of 5 Sherrys.
"It was a cruel song, but fair."-Roger Waters
I'm no Journey fan, but, I do find it funny how people blame Steve Perry for what they became, as though the other members had no role in it.
"The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"
An entire planet, full of faux Steve Perry clones and soundalikes, has been holding its collective breath waiting for this monumental moment, and now comes the real thing to help save music in a jaded, desolate world!
Hurtleturtled Out of Heaven - an electronic music composition, on CD and vinyl
https://michaelpdawson.bandcamp.com
http://www.waysidemusic.com/Music-Pr...MCD-spc-7.aspx
There is a deluxe version available that is longer:
TRACK LISTING:
1. No Erasin’
2. We’re Still Here
3. Most Of All
4. No More Cryin’
5. In The Rain
6. Sun Shines Gray
7. You Belong To Me
8. Easy To Love
9. I Need You
10. We Fly
11. October in New York (Deluxe edition only)
12. Angel Eyes (Deluxe edition only)
13. Call On Me (Deluxe edition only)
14. Could We Be Somethin’ Again (Deluxe edition only)
15. Blue Jays Fly (Deluxe edition only)
That song is okay. The lyrics are pretty clunky at times "no erasin'" and the "back seat of your car" stuff. But, Steve sounds pretty good. A bit raspy at times and certainly staying in a safe vocal range. It's really good to see him back in action. I'm curious to hear more of the album. "You Better Wait" from his last album was an awesome song.
Chad
I don't think there were ever many AOR lyrics worth a damn- and I say that as someone who has a certain amount of time for the earlier AOR acts like Journey, Boston, Foreigner, Toto etc. So it's not exactly a shock. (Yeah obviously someone is going to come back with Jon Anderson lyrics...spare me.) The lyrics were usually pretty cliched stuff.
The bands which weren't quite so lyrically cliche-laden, had varying degrees of 'progressive' elements about them- Styx, Kansas, Magnum etc.
^Oh I would definitely agree with you there. But I don't know that it was ever a genre with great lyrics anyway.
The standard as done by Patti Page and then re-worked as a doo-wop song by The Duprees is the first one I think of. I believe Bob Dylan also did it, decades later!
Bookmarks