The top-placed story at the Arts section of today's New York Times is a review of the new Journey album, and they like it. This is Journey 2.o, with that anonymous new guy singing, the guy who supposedly sounds just like Steve Perry, and the fact that I even know who Steve Perry is (or was; do we have any proof he still walks this mortal plain?), and can almost differentiate him from REO Speedwagon's Kevin Cronin, makes me sad. The fact that I know who Kevin Cronin is makes me near suicidal. (For what it's worth, I originally titled this whiny screed Can't Fight This Feeling, until I suddenly realized--or Wikipedia enlightened me--that was actually an REO song. The really sad, near suicidal part of all this is, though Journey and REO blend together in my mind, I can easily distinguish them from Styx.)
I was going to post a clip of Journey's eighties cheesefest Separate Ways, a perfectly stupid song that made for one of the dumbest music videos in music history, but the gremlins at Sony Music have stepped in and disabled embedding for every posting of that song at YouTube, and there were plenty of postings. So you'll just have to imagine the worst thing you've ever seen, accompanied by irritating keyboards and screechy vocals and...it still won't be as bad as the reality of Separate Ways.
Anyway, the point is: Journey, new album, enthusiastic review--the apocalypse will be arriving right on schedule.
