"An Incredible Journey for Bands New Frontman"

[perryfaithful]

Seems the original thread with this article got a bit sidetracked and therefore locked.
Try this Again! I thought the article was worth having around for a few days, not everyone gets here daily!
As "up to date" as we have it seems.


http://www.marinij.com/lifestyles/ci_7826224

I heard through the grapevine a few weeks ago that the members of Journey were in the Plant Studio in Sausalito recording a new album with a new lead singer.
My source told me the erstwhile superstars were also re-recording their classic '80s hits, trying to make them sound as close as they can to the originals, which had been sung in Journey's heyday by the golden-voiced Steve Perry, the estranged frontman who exited the band in the mid-'90s, not on the best of terms.

Since Perry split, it's been a revolving door for Journey vocalists. The previous one, Jeff Scott Soto, was reportedly fired last summer after a brief stint. He'd taken over from Steve Augeri, who dropped out in 2006 with voice problems after about eight years with the band.

Those anthemic Journey power ballads, sung by Perry in his operatic tenor, have been known to shred vocal chords, and it takes an extraordinary talent to be able to sing them. Finding a lead singer for this band is not something you look for on craigslist.

All of this would hardly matter if Journey were a mere '80s nostalgia act. But the once-mighty stadium rockers have suddenly become au courant, thanks to some mobsters from New Jersey.

When "the Sopranos" final episode made pop

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culture history in June, ending with Journey's "Don't Stop Believing," the band found itself back in the national consciousness, positioned for a comeback.
Needless to say, this was not a good time to be without a lead singer.

Rumors had been rife among Journey fans that Perry would return to the fold (he'd shown an intense interest in how "Don't Stop Believing" would be used in "the Sopranos" swan song), but he adamantly denied the reunion speculation, insisting on Fanasylum.com that he had "no such plans whatsoever."

Then, in early December, a short time after I'd heard that Journey was holed up in the recording studio, the band announced on its official Web site, journeyband.com, that it had hired Arnel Pineda, "the Steve Perry of the Philippines," as its new lead singer.

Journey has a history of rags-to-riches frontmen. Perry was plucked from a construction job in a Central Valley farm town, for example, and Augeri was working in a Gap store when he got the call. Now we have Pineda's Internet-age Cinderella story.

Even he hasn't wrapped his head completely around it.

"Who in their right mind would believe they would call someone like me, in the Philippines?" the boyish, 40-year-old told me when I reached him in his Mill Valley hotel room last week. "This is Journey. They are superstars in the music business."

I caught up with Pineda hours before he was to get on a plane for the long flight back to his home in Quezon City. He had been in Marin for seven weeks, singing nearly every day, learning an album's worth of new songs and reworking the old hits, which the band facetiously calls "the dirty dozen."

When I spoke to him, he was hoarse from a cold he said he hadn't been able to shake, insisting it hadn't affected his singing voice.

And what a remarkable voice.

"He's got the legacy sound and then some," said Journey keyboardist Jonathan Cain, speaking from his home in Novato. "He's blessed with tons of emotion and soul, stuff you can't teach. He's a find."

Journey guitarist Neal Schon, who wants the band to get back to what it used to sound like in the Steve Perry era, gets the credit for finding Pineda.

"I was frustrated about not having a singer," he said. "So I went on YouTube for a couple of days and just sat on it for hours. I was starting to think I was never going to find anybody."

But his tenacity paid off when he stumbled on a video of Pineda singing Journey's hit "Faithfully" with a Filipino cover band called the Zoo.

"After watching the videos over and over again, I had to walk away from the computer and let what I'd heard sink in because it sounded too good to be true," he said. "I thought, 'He can't be that good.'"

Schon fired off an e-mail to Pineda, but the singer dismissed it out of hand, thinking it was a prank.

"My friend Noel picked up the e-mail and told me it was from Neal Schon," he recalled. "I told him it was a hoax. How could you believe such a thing?

"But my friend persuaded me. He said, 'What would it hurt to give it a shot? Send him one e-mail back. Ask him if he really is Neal Schon.' Since he's my friend, I said, 'OK, OK.' I sent a short e-mail and left my cell phone number. I challenged him to a chat. If he was really Neal Schon, I would know."

Ten minutes later, Schon called.

"I told him, 'I don't think you're Neal,'" Pineda recalled, amused. "He was laughing his ass off. It took two minutes for him to convince me."

After getting him a work visa, the band flew Pineda to Marin in August for an audition. It didn't take long for Pineda to prove that he really is as good as Schon had hoped. "Right off they told me I had the gig," he said.

Two months later, he returned to record 11 new songs he had never sung with the band before.

"I only learned them when I arrived here," he said. "They didn't give me an advance tape, so it was even harder. There was a lot of pressure. Sometimes I didn't sleep. There were days I only slept two or three hours and I still had to learn the songs and record them."

Since English is Pineda's second language - his first is Tagalog - he worked on phrasing and diction with an accent reduction coach.

When he was hired over a singer from a Journey cover band, he also had to learn to deal with an undercurrent of racism among some Journey fans.

"When there were rumors about me joining Journey, there was a lot of that," Pineda told me. "One of the worst things I read on a fan messageboard said that Journey is an all-American band and it should stay like that. But I don't care. I just say, 'Hey, grow up.'"

In this era of globalization, having a nonAmerican fronting a classic American band like Journey is an invigorating development that gives the band a new look and the possibility of expanding its fan base among Filipinos and Asians.

"We've become a world band," Cain said. "We're international now. We're not about one color. I kind of like the whole idea of having a singer like him. It's exotic."

Pineda will be back in Marin by in late January or early February for two weeks of rehearsals before a concert in Santiago, Chile, and a couple of shows in Vegas in March that will be filmed for a live DVD. This summer, the band tours the U.S. and then heads to Europe. The new album is due in the spring.

From Pineda's perspective, he's not trying to be Steve Perry, one of his idols, but he's trying to sound as much like him as he can.

"We have to make sure the hard-core fans will be satisfied listening to the songs," he said. "They're so used to Steve Perry's voice, so we have to be really close to how Steve Perry has done it. That's the hardest part.

"Anytime Steve Perry wants to walk in, I would be glad to step out," Pineda added. "It's his right. It's his band. I'm just here to celebrate the legacy of Journey."

Paul Liberatore can be reached at liberatore@marinij.com

[jrnyjetster]

So whad'ya think perryfaithful....will YOU give the NEW Journey a listen?

[AR]

Save us.

[donnaplease]

Didn't read the article in the other thread (too much other stuff going on ), but now that I've had a chance to read it, I say...BULLSHIT!!!

They are just making things worse for themselves by still talking about this shit. I love it how the 'arnelians' tell everyone to "just move on" but they like to keep referencing the racial BS.

I think it's funny that the writer said something about how ridiculous it is to try to find a singer on Craig's List but yet YouTube is okay. It's pretty much one in the same, IMO. Pitiful and sad. Just like Journey.

[perryfaithful]

:?: So whad'ya think perryfaithful....will YOU give the NEW Journey a listen?

Think Not...

You?

[marco17]

The part of the article when he talks about Perry is very similar to what SA was saying when he joined the band. The only difference was the main story was him coming from the Gap instead of another country. Their PR people need to switch things up a little bit.

[larryfromnextdoor]

doesnt sound like they let Arnel write one single lyric..

new singer= 0 input

[ScarabGator]

doesnt sound like they let Arnel write one single lyric..

new singer= 0 input

Maybe Arnel did write some stuff but Journey is waiting to use it at a later time? Im sure with the length of down time they had Cain and Schon has plenty of good stuff to fill the new CD with.

[larryfromnextdoor]

doesnt sound like they let Arnel write one single lyric..

new singer= 0 input

Maybe Arnel did write some stuff but Journey is waiting to use it at a later time? Im sure with the length of down time they had Cain and Schon has plenty of good stuff to fill the new CD with.

gosh dang your being very positive today,.. do not change the mood of this board with that ..

i bet your right .. tons of songs in the can.. just the best were picked.. Vegas will be interesting..

[ScarabGator]

doesnt sound like they let Arnel write one single lyric..

new singer= 0 input

Maybe Arnel did write some stuff but Journey is waiting to use it at a later time? Im sure with the length of down time they had Cain and Schon has plenty of good stuff to fill the new CD with.

gosh dang your being very positive today,.. do not change the mood of this board with that ..

i bet your right .. tons of songs in the can.. just the best were picked.. Vegas will be interesting..

I cant wait for this DVD, and I cant wait for Journey to play in all the states surrounding where I live because I plan to see them in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama if they play it. Sure glad I payed the creit card down to near nothing and didnt break it out at Christmas!!! Also cant wait to see Frontiers in March back in Atlanta again. I plan on 2008 being a "Journey" year!!!

[donnaplease]

The part of the article when he talks about Perry is very similar to what SA was saying when he joined the band. The only difference was the main story was him coming from the Gap instead of another country. Their PR people need to switch things up a little bit.

"Journey has a history of rags-to-riches frontmen. Perry was plucked from a construction job in a Central Valley farm town, for example, and Augeri was working in a Gap store when he got the call."

Journey wasn't JOURNEY, the supergroup, before Steve Perry joined either. They act like people really gave a shit about them before SP joined. If SP was a 'rags to riches' frontman, which even he admits he was, it was because he worked his ass off with his god-given talent and a lot of shrewd business tactics from Herbie Herbert.


Edit to add:

I just found this in perryfaithful's sig. I think it says it all...

"In Journey, all the hit songs we had were based around Steve Perry's vocals."

Neal Schon

[donnaplease]

I cant wait for this DVD, and I cant wait for Journey to play in all the states surrounding where I live because I plan to see them in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama if they play it. Sure glad I payed the creit card down to near nothing and didnt break it out at Christmas!!! Also cant wait to see Frontiers in March back in Atlanta again. I plan on 2008 being a "Journey" year!!!

Gator, this is 100% truth...

I was listening to a classic rock station at work the other day, when a commercial from the station came on, asking people to go to their website to vote for which bands they want to have play at the future... get this... Rockingham County Fair. And guess who's name was offered? Yep, JOURNEY!

I kinda laughed at people here who said that Journey would be playing the country fair circuit. When I heard this commercial, I didn't know whether to laugh or be sick to my stomach. It's despicable.

I hope your dreams for this band come true, for your sake, not theirs. I'll just see Frontiers with my friends, and who knows, maybe we'll meet up some day!

[Lula]

I may not agree with the lack of basic human courtesy the Journey camp exhibits or the business decisions they seem to make, but I don't begrudge them for going on and making a living. Takes way too much energy to be negative and life is too precious to harbor ill feelings. Be it Vegas or county fairs- good luck.

[Rockindeano]

Seems the original thread with this article got a bit sidetracked and therefore locked.
Try this Again! I thought the article was worth having around for a few days, not everyone gets here daily!
As "up to date" as we have it seems.

This is definitely not an attempt to re derail another of your threads, but listen up.

That "other" thread was a fucking embarrassment and now I am receiving shit, unfairly from both sides. I don't need that shit.
The people know who they are. Pisses me off.

Now, go ahead and talk about whatever it is PF wants you talk about.

[Rockindeano]

I cant wait for this DVD, and I cant wait for Journey to play in all the states surrounding where I live because I plan to see them in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama if they play it. Sure glad I payed the creit card down to near nothing and didnt break it out at Christmas!!! Also cant wait to see Frontiers in March back in Atlanta again. I plan on 2008 being a "Journey" year!!!

I don't know exactly what it is, but you rub me the wrong way. Maybe it's your relentless cheerleading, your relentless fawning over Neal Schon and Tim fucking Tebow, and the fact you say you went to University of Florida. Let me ask you this Hot Rod. I went to college, AR went to college, and others here as well. I would never say I payed down my credit card, and I am positive AR would never do it either. It's clear as clear can be. You either didn't go to college or U of F is a shitty school. No One with a brain would say "payed down my credit card." That isn't a typo.

Come clean.

[ScarabGator]

I cant wait for this DVD, and I cant wait for Journey to play in all the states surrounding where I live because I plan to see them in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama if they play it. Sure glad I payed the creit card down to near nothing and didnt break it out at Christmas!!! Also cant wait to see Frontiers in March back in Atlanta again. I plan on 2008 being a "Journey" year!!!

Gator, this is 100% truth...

I was listening to a classic rock station at work the other day, when a commercial from the station came on, asking people to go to their website to vote for which bands they want to have play at the future... get this... Rockingham County Fair. And guess who's name was offered? Yep, JOURNEY!

I kinda laughed at people here who said that Journey would be playing the country fair circuit. When I heard this commercial, I didn't know whether to laugh or be sick to my stomach. It's despicable.

I hope your dreams for this band come true, for your sake, not theirs. I'll just see Frontiers with my friends, and who knows, maybe we'll meet up some day!

That'd be great to meet ya!!!If you ever make it to the Atlanta shows I will definetly be there!!! I think Journey will still be playing the Fair circuit to an extent because at this point I believe they will take any chance they can to get attention back on them, and you know the old saying "you have to crawl before you can walk" however if they hook up with the proper tour package of bands then they will get larger venues as well. Last year you didnt see the Journey/Def Lep tour playing fairs.

[donnaplease]

Seems the original thread with this article got a bit sidetracked and therefore locked.
Try this Again! I thought the article was worth having around for a few days, not everyone gets here daily!
As "up to date" as we have it seems.

This is definitely not an attempt to re derail another of your threads, but listen up.

That "other" thread was a fucking embarrassment and now I am receiving shit, unfairly from both sides. I don't need that shit.
The people know who they are. Pisses me off.

Now, go ahead and talk about whatever it is PF wants you talk about.

No one should give you shit about that, on either side of the argument. For the most part you stayed out of it totally, only stating that Lynn is a very nice person and friend of yours. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

I bet you feel like the esteemed Steve Perry sometimes. Can't win no matter what you do! (See, I brought it back on topic... )

[Lula]

I bet you feel like the esteemed Steve Perry sometimes. Can't win no matter what you do! (See, I brought it back on topic... )

Donna, please!

[NealIsGod]

I bet you feel like the esteemed Steve Perry sometimes. Can't win no matter what you do! (See, I brought it back on topic... )

Damn Loons.

[Rockindeano]

Please. So you liken me to Steve Perry of MR, donna? Yeah

I am a bit different than Espee. Have you ever heard SP tell Gator to go munch on his own shit stained choad?

[AR]

Any male that pays to see the little American Idol wanna be parrot is a fag.

[tammy]

Well, Dean your "undercooked poptart" made me laugh out loud & it's doing it again.

Back to topic: Something that is being brought up is the fact that all the new songs were pre-written. That just doesn't sound like a "BAND" anymore. And, they seem to be already running the new singer ragged...what's the big rush for a new CD anyway?

[AR]

[ohsherrie]

Have you ever heard SP tell Gator to go munch on his own shit stained choad?

No, but you still shouldn't have been given any shit for anything you said in the other thread, any more than Steve should be given shit for anything he did. You were very tactful in that thread and Steve made the decisions he felt were right.

Neal and Jon haven't done anything right since he left so I see no reason to believe what they're doing now is anything to look forward to. I certainly won't be listening to it let alone buying it or any tickets.

[donnaplease]

Please. So you liken me to Steve Perry of MR, donna? Yeah

I am a bit different than Espee. Have you ever heard SP tell Gator to go munch on his own shit stained choad?

Perhaps that could be included in his annual message to his fans.

[donnaplease]

I bet you feel like the esteemed Steve Perry sometimes. Can't win no matter what you do! (See, I brought it back on topic... )

Donna, please!

What???

Is it that far off to liken RockinDeano of MR fame to Steve Perry of Journey fame?

OK, maybe it is. WTF was I thinking?

[texafana]

Whatever your personal feelings about the band members, this HAS to be an incredible ride for Arnel. He has to be almost in shock about it. I seriously doubt he has ever played to more than a few hundred, maybe 1-2000 people at a time. Now in a few months he may be singing in front of 5k-10k people or more. He 100% has the vocal chops to accomplish this. He's 40 years old, which makes me happy they didn't get some young buck who's "bleeped" havn't dropped yet. lol..

And as far as the guys out there touring, you would be surprised how little the band makes off the recordings or radio play. Playing gigs is any band's chance of making real money. Touring is not easy, it's alot of hard work, etc. I say tour all they want to.

[ScarabGator]

I cant wait for this DVD, and I cant wait for Journey to play in all the states surrounding where I live because I plan to see them in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama if they play it. Sure glad I payed the creit card down to near nothing and didnt break it out at Christmas!!! Also cant wait to see Frontiers in March back in Atlanta again. I plan on 2008 being a "Journey" year!!!

I don't know exactly what it is, but you rub me the wrong way. Maybe it's your relentless cheerleading, your relentless fawning over Neal Schon and Tim fucking Tebow, and the fact you say you went to University of Florida. Let me ask you this Hot Rod. I went to college, AR went to college, and others here as well. I would never say I payed down my credit card, and I am positive AR would never do it either. It's clear as clear can be. You either didn't go to college or U of F is a shitty school. No One with a brain would say "payed down my credit card." That isn't a typo.

Come clean.

I dont know what it is either but you like to fuck with me and it seems like you are hell bent on exposing me as something more than what I am. I dont ram my college days down anyones throat on here, in fact Ive only mentioned it once, so whats the big deal? Anyone can go to college if they want to, its not like I won the Nobel Peace Prize. I went on some of dad's money and some of my own student loans(which were very tough to pay off) and worked my ass off at KMart to buy groceries. Now if that sounds glamorous to you then fuck it. But I did finish and if you wanna have your doubts then have your fucking doubts. Only you would look more into the "payed down my credit cards" than what it is, just me goofing off. So you or AR would never say that, it doesnt matter. There are lots of things you say that I wouldnt. Doesnt make you any better than me. I dont call your alma mater a "shitty school" and I dont know why you would refer to mine that way unless you are jealous to high hell and back because UF is a much better school with much more to offer than your school. Maybe you are a closet UF fan and wish you could have gone there? I dont know what it is but put your hard on back in your pants because unfortunatley I dont roll that way.

[stevew2]

This will be good

[dcvader]

I cant wait for this DVD, and I cant wait for Journey to play in all the states surrounding where I live because I plan to see them in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama if they play it. Sure glad I payed the creit card down to near nothing and didnt break it out at Christmas!!! Also cant wait to see Frontiers in March back in Atlanta again. I plan on 2008 being a "Journey" year!!!

I'll just see Frontiers with my friends,

See you on the 5th and 11th!