Review by Brian McLean
When MTV was in its infancy in the fall of 1981, the music-based channel was attempting to establish itself in the cable TV market.
At the same time, San Francisco based band Journey was just starting to ride the waves of their Escape record, released the same week MTV first aired in August 1981.
The album would eventually become the band’s best selling record at 9x’s platinum, yielding several hit songs and a number one chart position thus propelling Journey from rock stars to super stardom status. Selling out two shows in each major city during the Escape tour was no problem at all. In fact, it was a common occurrence.
The new music TV channel and Journey joined forces for an event that was unheard of at the time. MTV would film Journey’s November 6, 1981 Houston, Texas date bringing the band to living room TV sets coast to coast.
The broadcast was a blessing for fans not allowed to see the band live.
Several weeks prior to the Houston date, Escape hit number one on the Billboard charts on September 12, 1981, the same day Journey opened for the Rolling Stones at JFK Stadium on the Tattoo You tour.
After the highly publicized and watched broadcast, the footage was tucked away into a vault where the film sat for over two decades.
Five songs from the Houston broadcast eventually made the light of day on the Journey Greatest Hits DVD released in November 2003, but that didn’t satisfy even the most basic Journey fan until now.
Twenty-four years later, the broadcast from that historic night in Houston has been released in it’s entirety in DVD format by Columbia Music Video / Legacy Music along with a bonus audio CD from the same show.
The 18 song set features eight of the ten Escape songs like “Open Arms,” “Who’s Cryin’ Now,” the first single, and “Don’t Stop Believing” as well as all the now classic Journey hits such as “Lights,” “Wheel in the Sky,” “Lovin’ Touchin’ Squeezin,” and “Anyway You Want It.”
Vocalist Steve Perry sporting his trademarked tuxedo tails and designer jeans is in fine form, vocally and physically, as he runs wireless around the backless stage.
Other members, guitarist Neal Schon, bassist Ross Vallory, and keyboardist Jonathan Cain, stay fairly stationary through the show except when Cain straps on a black Gibson Explorer and joins Schon as a second guitarist for several consecutive songs.
For Cain, the former Babys member, it was his first tour with Journey.
Standard for the arena rock days were spotlighted solos. Schon, Cain, and drummer Steve Smith treated the full house screaming arena to their talents.
The DVD is a fine example of what San Francisco produced musically and how the band was supported fan wise. There’s plenty of FM hits with nonstop crowd participation. This is when Journey was at the top of their game and an arena show was affordable.
There was even a quality-opening act. Supporting Journey on the tour was Loverboy for their Get Lucky album. Laugh now, but that was a top notch billing for the time.
Although Perry is no longer in the band, he was involved in the release of this DVD, overseeing the production duties of the disc with cooperation and the blessings of his former band mates.
The bonus audio CD from the show could work as an individually released live album putting the band’s 1981 double live Captured to shame. Unlike Captured, the bonus audio disc is one continuous recording with no breaks and silence between songs. The bonus disc is what a live album should be.
The CD has a bonus in itself, the song “The Party’s Over (Hopelessly in Love)" is included on the disc but not on the DVD even though it’s the same show.
The digi style packaging has the two-disc positioned evenly on the right and a 16 page slickly produced booklet that contains rare photographs of the band, tour memorabilia, and other surprises.
There are interviews with the Escape era members that contain interesting trivia like the story of how “Open Arms,” written by originally Cain during his Babys days and fine tuned by Perry, nearly didn’t make it on the album, hence, the last song of the record, yet one of the biggest hits from Escape.
Probably the biggest shocker at all is the graphic of the red ticket stub showing a whopping 11.75 ticket price that included a .65 parking fee. The amount was a mere price to pay for superstars.
The aging fans that were part of this era in music will be grateful for the vintage footage and the incredible job Perry did production wise. It will bring back a flood of memories visually and maybe even a goose bump or two once the show starts. It’s that emotionally watching the footage and hearing the audio.
Fans that were too young to remember this era should watch the DVD at least once to get a sampling of what AOR (Album Oriented Radio) music for an arena band was like. The sleeveless tight fitting t-shirts may make the younger fans snicker but the music will leave them in awe.
So many great things can be said about this release but the most important is, Thank you Mr. Perry.