Across the street from me lives a man whose living is made as part of a Journey cover band. And when I say living - I mean this is what he does, no day job, no million dollar inheritance. The running joke we all make is the big van that is parked in his driveway 24/7 save for when the band has gigs. To try and visualize this, just think "Winnebago meets Mystery Machine."
But wait, this is unfair, he's a nice guy and his son-in-law has done a great job in working on my house.
Oddly enough this morning, I had digital music channel 60000 on and heard the song "Don't Stop Believin'" by none other than...you guessed it....Journey. Kind of made me laugh and immediately think of my neighbor.
But hang on, it wasn't Journey. The voice sounded like a cross between Bob Dylan and Mark "Sultans of Swing" Knoffler.
Now put these two voices together and try to imagine them even attempting to match the vocals of Steve Perry. OK, you haven't even heard the song and your ears are already melting.
But yeah, my feeling exactly.
I just had to know who sang this 10th grade biology lab experiment gone horribly awry. The TV went on and up came the artist's name.....BADLY DRAWN BOY. It was just too appropriate. They could have probably just listed the artist as BADLY (fill in the blanks)" and I have also thought it just too appropriate.
I've said it before a thousand times on this blog, if you're going to cover a song, make it your friggin' own! Remake it, don't re-sing it! And for the love of G-d, don't even get into the same ballpark as Journey - you will lose and you will lose hard.
I'm not the hugest Journey fan but does anyone disagree that Steve Perry's vocals can easily bring down The Great Wall? If you're not ready to bring down the Great Wall, or even Pink Floyd's The Wall (while you're at it, don't go there either), then either change the song completely or no trespassing.
If you trespass, then I'm afraid we're going to have to go our separate ways. (Oh man, did I just actually write that?)
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2 comments:
Chief,
Go to CNN.com at this link for a story on McCain's campaign stop play list:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/21/greene.column/index.html
Hilly
Chief,
Why no posts in so long? Haven't you been listening to any music for the last 5 months? How about VH-1? They voted "Welcome to the Jungle" best hard rock song of all time. What say you? I still say it should've been "Stairway," for the mix of acoustic rock and heavy ending, plus general overplayedness.
Hilly
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