overlap

The subject of Journey has come up before, more than once, and this week it's been brought to my attention that I could be in a box office queue for tickets to see them making another trip to the UK this summer. I emphasise could. A cynic might suggest that the sole attraction of touring the UK at a time when one unit of local currency gets two US$ rather than the 1.2 or 1.3 it might have done some years back is pretty self-evident. With any band that's in its fourth decade, some change of personnel is more or less inevitable, people change and it's pretty normal for nobody to stay in any job for that length of time so that's no big deal. However, when a band's creative identity is based around certain members in particular, it is also inevitable that things may change when one of those leaves. Marillion with Fish and with Hogarth are two entirely different bands, and both have plenty of merit. But if they'd tried to replace Fish with a Fish impressionist, I reckon it's a safe bet they wouldn't still be the creative force they are today. Since Steve Perry stopped being the singer in Journey, Journey have had a problem in the lead singer department. If you count Gregg Rolie's very early work, they have had six lead singers and even in the context of thirty-something years that doesn't sound too horrific. But somehow the prospect of seeing a Journey band with its third different lead singer inside just over twenty four months doesn't have me racing towards the box office at top speed just yet.

Labels: gigs, Journey, sell-out