MR

I remember the band playing this once in Virgina, but I never heard the demo before. As with Soul Sirkus, the song features the welcome return of interplay between Neal and JSS. A somewhat too obvious throwback to the chemistry between Perry and Neal, but it’s a nice touch. With the exception of “Beyond the Clouds”, there was very little of this in the Augeri era. There is an inherent musicality in JSS’s style that serves the music. Just based on this, you can tell nobody in the band was instructing Jeff on what vocal melodies to sing. His vocal here reminds me of Perry in the FTLOSM era. What’s slightly missing in range is made up for with soul and technique. Lyrically, Jon Cain’s ode to early American settlers, is reminiscent of similar ham-fisted songs like Liberty and Faith in the Heartland. But the real star here is JSS and the promise of what could have been.

Thoughts?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr_8fxKjSIg

Yes, heard this a lot at the time and glad to see it surface again. Definitely was a sign of the possibility of things to come with JSS - a sort of sprawling epic-like ballad in the spirit of "Still They Ride." I wish we'd gotten a version of this song post-demo because the drum machine really makes it sound amateur. Wish they'd sprinkle it in live during the softer parts of the set.

I was largely disappointed in it. Not that it's a bad song. But the one and only reason that I wanted JSS as Journey's singer was that I had hopes that they would Rock more with him in the band. WOF is not a Rocker, and it's the only new song that I got to hear with JSS in the band.

As it turns out, Journey would wind up Rocking the way that I wanted them to with their Eclipse album.

The_Noble_Cause wrote:I remember the band playing this once in Virgina, but I never heard the demo before. As with Soul Sirkus, the song features the welcome return of interplay between Neal and JSS. A somewhat too obvious throwback to the chemistry between Perry and Neal, but it’s a nice touch. With the exception of “Beyond the Clouds”, there was very little of this in the Augeri era. There is an inherent musicality in JSS’s style that serves the music. Just based on this, you can tell nobody in the band was instructing Jeff on what vocal melodies to sing. His vocal here reminds me of Perry in the FTLOSM era. What’s slightly missing in range is made up for with soul and technique. Lyrically, Jon Cain’s ode to early American settlers, is reminiscent of similar ham-fisted songs like Liberty and Faith in the Heartland. But the real star here is JSS and the promise of what could have been.

Thoughts?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr_8fxKjSIg

Well, it's a good song but I like some of the songs from WET a LOT more than this. JSS sounds a lot better in WET than he does here, too. He seems to struggle a bit on even the limited high notes here...not so on WET.

Monker wrote:Well, it's a good song but I like some of the songs from WET a LOT more than this. JSS sounds a lot better in WET than he does here, too. He seems to struggle a bit on even the limited high notes here...not so on WET.

Again, its just a demo.

It's an average song at best. I get the comparison to Beyond the Clouds, but BTC is a far stronger tune. One of the best of the Augeri era for my money.

Ehwmatt wrote:It's an average song at best. I get the comparison to Beyond the Clouds, but BTC is a far stronger tune. One of the best of the Augeri era for my money.

Wasn't really comparing the two. BTC is one of the few Augeri Journey songs where SA and Neal trade off, like Perry used to do (and JSS does here). That's the only observation I was making.

It was good, wish it had been better produced to see how it really sounded.

Ugh! , absolute crap.

Certainly wasn't the best song, but would have liked to have heard it as a mastered, finished, polished, version. All this talk about JSS and Journey really makes me sad that we never got to hear an album with Jeff on vocals. Not taking away anything from Arnel, but how great W.E.T. was makes me think what could have been with JSS leading Journey. I know this is something that has been rehashed over, and over again ad nauseum, but I think it would have been great.

I suspect the band was so grateful to be free of Augeri's voice issues and relieved to have a strong, healthy frontman finishing the tour, they became intoxicated with the idea of JSS joining permanently. Neal, I'm sure, thought he'd move them musically into a harder sound - something closer to Eclipse. So he was all for it. Jon was probably the naysayer in the end. This song, if I remember, was written specifically for some corporate gig the band was doing ... a low point for them, I'm sure.

FamilyMan wrote:This song, if I remember, was written specifically for some corporate gig the band was doing ... a low point for them, I'm sure.

As mentioned in my post, they played it in Virginia. If i recall correctly, it was at Michaela's winery before she became Mrs. Schon. As for corporate gigs...Journey (like many bands) has done them. The pay is great. Nothing to be ashamed of.

The_Noble_Cause wrote:

FamilyMan wrote:This song, if I remember, was written specifically for some corporate gig the band was doing ... a low point for them, I'm sure.

As mentioned in my post, they played it in Virginia. If i recall correctly, it was at Michaela's winery before she became Mrs. Schon. As for corporate gigs...Journey (like many bands) has done them. The pay is great. Nothing to be ashamed of.

I thought it was written for the America's Cup, or some other boat race.

Well, I was close. LOL:
http://www.washingtonian.com/blogs/afte ... nament.php

Monker wrote:Well, I was close. LOL:
http://www.washingtonian.com/blogs/afte ... nament.php

Journey Rocks the Polo Tournament

Journey played the recent America’s Cup of Polo. Check out our description of the, um, interesting scene below.

By Lauren Masterson | May 15, 2007

... Soto and his mates played the classics—demanding audience participation on “Any Way You Want It” and dedicating “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” to the students of Virginia Tech—as well as new material, including one song that they debuted called “Winds of Freedom” about the settlers of Jamestown. It went something like this: “400 years agooo, they got on their ships to escape tyrannnnny …” ...

In 2007, Tareq and Michaele Salahi (1) taped a public service announcement with the band Journey to promote their first America's Polo Cup. Then later Journey (2) taped their own, public service announcement, without the Salahis.

(1) One Month Before The Salahis Crashed The White House

https://youtu.be/6SdGIbP_0Ps

Uploaded on Dec 6, 2009

On October 26, 2009, I was brought in by a pr firm to testify at a court case as a rock and roll memorabilia expert--it was against the Salahi's in a claim against the firm who accidentally lost raw footage of them with the band Journey (shown here). The Salahis claimed that this lost footage was worth a fortune on the rock collectable market, and that they shouldn't have to pay the $20,000 they owed the firm. In fact, they claim the firm owed them money. Confused yet? I sure was.

Sadly the judge didn't rule in favor of either party. And I didn't tell anyone about this, because it was too hard to explain, much less fathom. Imagine my surprise on Thanksgiving morning when I saw the Salahis plastered all over the front page.


(2) Journey Without The Salahis

https://youtu.be/9cHy1-sVL7g

Uploaded on Dec 6, 2009

I wanted to show that Journey made an additional public service annoucement without the Salahis putting themselves into the mix.



Few vids from that day...

Lights (Live) performed by Journey
https://youtu.be/INfvgeOuecU

As performed at America's Cup of Polo at Movern Park in Leesburg, VA. May 12. 2007.

"Ask the Lonely" (Live) - Journey
https://youtu.be/c3qGELvnG-w

Don't Stop Believing
https://youtu.be/oqJFj2JDuZo

Anyway You Want It
https://youtu.be/txWixVWNRvY

Faithfully
https://youtu.be/RP9EH9Si2Ew

I wonder, after all these years, what a Journey-led JSS album would have sounded like. Would it have been in the same vein as W.E.T? Would the J-boys give Soto the freedom?

W.E.T is one of my favorite all-time albums in the melodic genre. That was so badass. JSS has monster vocals and finesse to go along with pin-point control and all around presence. A few songs from W.E.T came on my iPOD the other day. I really did forget how much I loved that album. I mean, from the first track to the last, every single song I loved almost equally. One of the most well-rounded CD's I've ever listened to.

Ditto to Yulog

I had hoped that in the "what if..." sense things worked out with Jeff, that it would sound something like this --

https://youtu.be/HNoeAmHXpGE

PianoMan1986 wrote:I had hoped that in the "what if..." sense things worked out with Jeff, that it would sound something like this --

https://youtu.be/HNoeAmHXpGE

Good tune, but doesn't sound anything like Journey.

'Believe in Me' is definitely the closest thing to a Journey-esq JSS sound we will get. Still, I think it benefited Soto more to do albums like W.E.T because the vocals doesn't match up with the legacy sound. It was just too late in Journey's career, IMO, to go with a different voice when Soto took over and I can see why Journey searched and eventually wound up with Arnel. In the end it worked for both parties.

Now, 1998 is a different story. That was the time for Journey to go in the Van Halen/Hagar switch at lead vocal. If JSS was available to them then and they made the call, that would have been amazing and the perfect time to do it.

FamilyMan wrote:

PianoMan1986 wrote:I had hoped that in the "what if..." sense things worked out with Jeff, that it would sound something like this --

https://youtu.be/HNoeAmHXpGE

Good tune, but doesn't sound anything like Journey.

It's all subjective, but I still find it interesting (maybe even a little amusing) to listen that guitar intro. and then switch over to "Never Walk Away".

Also very Journeyesque with JSS was Soul Sirkus's Coming Home......https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qo4fLyhMkY4

Side note: I don't remember the reason that they had Donati redo the drum parts on the 2.0 version of World Play (or the reason for doing a 2.0 version in the first place). Anyone recall the reasoning?

SF-Dano wrote:Side note: I don't remember the reason that they had Donati redo the drum parts on the 2.0 version of World Play (or the reason for doing a 2.0 version in the first place). Anyone recall the reasoning?

I guess they figured that since Donati was taking over the drumming duties in the band that he should kind of make the drumming his own on the album?

As for releasing a second version of the album, they wanted to add a few new songs to it, Neal wanted to add a few guitar parts to a few of the existing songs, and of course there's also the matter of making more money getting some people to double-dip on buying the album twice.