This review is posted as part of the La Na Na W/O. You’ll have to read all the way to the end to find out why.

My sister went to college in 1978 and brought home Infinity on her winter break. I was hooked from that moment on. Heck, Emergency wasn’t airing regularly any more and my life was obviously short one dark haired object of fascination (I was 9, it wasn’t much more than fascination.)

Infinity is a turning point album in many respects. Journey’s previous albums were veering more into Art than Rock and they were less than successful. According to the bands long time manager, Herbie Herbert "Number one: songwriting and composing. You guys are a bunch of zeros. Number two: performing and entertaining onstage. Forget it! You don’t wanna move a muscle. A few facial expressions and Neal in his little velvet suit. That was it. Number three: you can’t sing. Neal couldn’t say his name without his voice cracking. And when Gregg opened his mouth, it was scary. Gregg Rolie, singer of such hits as Black Magic Woman, at that late date, had destroyed his voice."1 According to Ainsley Dunbar the label felt the same way, "After 3 albums we were told ‘get a singer, get some hit songs, or off the label.’"2

Steve Perry is an accomplished songwriter. He’s credited for writing 8 of the 11 songs on this album. He has one of the most distinctive and inspiring voices in rock that has been copied with fair success by only 3 singers, through others have tried. He’s also a hyperactive maniac on stage. And to think, just a year earlier the bass player in his previous band, Alien Project, had been killed in a car accident and he’d been forced to move back in with his mom due to bleeding gums from malnutrition. He became the focal point that moved Journey from High Art to Commercial Success.

This album also marked the end of Ainsely Dunbar’s tenure as drummer. Fabulous drummer, but terrible band mate, Dunbar sued the band for loss of income because they expected him to show up for their gigs instead of playing freelance even through he could earn more money as a freelancer. Or whatever musicians call it when they play live as studio musicians. (And no, I don’t have a published reference for that story, or rather, I do, but I can’t find it.)

To ice the cake as it were, they pulled in super successful Roy Thomas Baker to produce. Baker at the time was best known for his work with Queen. He's best remembered to Journey as the guy who got them kicked out of His Master’s Wheels studio. Apparently there was a drunken celebration over a successful guitar solo (?!?) during which a fire extinguisher was sprayed all over the studio. The damage wasn’t too bad, but the band was forced to relocate to Cherokee Studios in LA. (Oo, I’m having an interconnectedness of all things moment! Cherokee was the studio the London Quireboys and Company of Wolves each recorded their one album, both of which I recently reviewed. Cool.)

Infinity is a textbook example of the transition in Rock from Folk to Stadium. Why? Because it was phenomenally successful and everybody tried to copy it immediately. "Wheel In the Sky" harkens back to poetic Folk Rock. "Sent a letter on a long summer day / Made of silver, not of clay / I’ve been runnin’ down this dusty road." Ok, it’s sophomoric, but it’s better than anything Jewel can do. And so much better than the original "Wheels In My Head."

"Feeling That Way" proves why every little singer wants to grow up to be Steve Perry. The first stanza is sung by Gregg Rolie. It’s fine, he isn’t hard to listen to, he didn’t totally ruin his voice in Santana. But then Steve Perry kicks in at the chorus and to this day it sends chills down my back. It’s the vocal equivalent of being hit by a steam roller. And funny how it runs straight into "Anytime" where they pull the same stunt. There’s a musical bridge between the songs that sounds very odd on the radio because I find myself listening intently to the end of "Feeling That Way" for the beginning of "Anytime."

"Lights" is the better known ballad off Infinity. Popular legend had it being written at the news conference where the band announced that they had a new singer. The problem with this is that if Journey had held a news conference in 1977, nobody would have come. Besides, Perry had written most of the song (originally intended to be about LA) before he joined. Personally, I’m more fond of "Patiently." It’s not really a love song as such but an ‘I believe in you’ song. Very sweet, very positive, very mellow.

I could rabbit on for several pages about the expertise, the musicianship, the singing on the rest of the album, but I really must be on to the purpose of the write off.

The award for Best Use Of "La La La" To Avoid Writing Lyrics goes to:

"La Do Da"

This song has 2 stanzas and a chorus that consists of "La, do, dah, do, da / La, do, dah, do, da, do, dah." No lie. And it makes perfect sense. To explain I will resort to Victorian poet Matthew Arnold, the poem "The Buried Life." "Hardly had the skill to utter one of all / The nameless feelings that course through our breast / But they course forever unexpressed / And long we try in vain to speak and act / Our hidden self, and what we say and do / Is eloquent, is well – but ‘tis not true!" Or in the words of Joseph Campbell "We can’t talk about the best things because we don’t have the words to express them." And from the song "Something about you baby / Really knocks me off my feet." Whoever this chick is, she has that certain je ne sais quoi that is apparently best described by Perry and Schon as La Do Da.

Over all, the album is wonderful. If you have any fondness for Kansas, Heart, Styx, etc you really should have it by now, because none of those guys would have sounded like they do without Infinity. Besides, I think it’s part of Columbia’s Super Savers so you should be able to pick it up brand new for a song.

Our host for this W/O is the impeccable Vormacian and other participants are: deaser26, dequebec, Social14, Lisa_J, adjensen, lambchops, pageclot, kcfoxy, kuuleimomi, Robinmichele, sumo_rhino, Roov, mike.holmes, BlackBear, KingpinLJC

1 Journey, Robyn Flans, Cherry Lane Books, 1984

2 Times 3 (boxed set), Journey, 1992


Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: Getting ready to go out