JOURNEY the early years

JOURNEY (C-)

Journey's first cd was sure different from what people think of Journey today. There was two guitarist Neal Schon and George Tickner (who was only on this one cd), there was no Steve "The Machine Gun" Smith on drums, it was Ansley Dunbar (for 4 cds). Also no Jonathan Cain who would help write the big sweeping ballads. Greg Rollie was on the keyboards and handling lead vocals, so that meant no Steve Perry. Journey was not the hit machine they would become known as.
On their first 3 cds without Perry they had this progressive, jazz type rock that at times worked pretty good for the band. On the first cd the hit and miss is very apparent.
Mystery Mountain and Of A Lifetime are two very good songs that show the good musicianship of the band. But of the seven songs on the release, only four of them have vocals. Kohoutek is the best of the instrumentals, the others are ok at best.
This is not a bad cd, but the jams on most of the songs at times seem a little too long. The production is not the best either, everything seems "low" in the mix . But like I said not bad.

Look Into The Future (C+)

The 2nd Journey cd is just a hair bit better than their first cd. They still have that progressive jazz rock feel to them. And like the first cd it's a lot of hit and miss. And again it is about 50% good/bad. Greg's vocals are better this time around, and Neal is the only guitarist too, that is how it should be anyway. Neal is the best axe men out their, in my opinion.
On A Saturday Night starts out the cd, and if anything was to be commercial off the pre-Perry cds, this is their best chance. One almost wants to sing along with this song. She Makes Me Feel Alright is another decent song as is Anyway. I'm Gonna Leave You is also a classic Journey song, that Perry fans have never heard of.
Production seems more level this time around, but still not much of an improvement over the last cd. Overall, you can walk away with some decent songs on this cd.

Next (D-)

Journey's 3rd cd Next, is my least favorite cd from the band. There is only one song that I like on this cd. That song is Nickle and Dime. And the reason I like Nickel and Dime is... Take a very close listen to it. Tom Sawyer mean anything to you? Rush took the idea of this song and made it into their best know song Tom Sawyer, from the MOVING PICTURES cd. Rest of the songs, no direction, no good vocals, no idea of what they should be doing.