25 Years of New Frontiers!

Wow, it’s been a few weeks since my last blog entry! Needless to say traffic around here isn’t what it used to be, but it’s been a lot less stressful to say the least! In the time I’ve had away from the keyboard, Frontiers has performed our first show since Quinn’s birth in August, and it was great to get out there and knock the dust off this band in front of another sold out crowd in Atlanta! With shows booked through 2008 at Andrews Upstairs, culminating in our New Years Eve 2008 show next December 31st, I think we can almost officially call Atlanta our new adopted home town. “Atlanta based tribute band ‘Frontiers’” sounds better than “Roanoke, Virginia based,” anyway. Well…I guess as much as Buckhead qualifies as “Atlanta,” that is…

So 2008 brings about the 25th anniversary of Journey’s hit record “Frontiers.” Amazing how time flies. 25 years ago, at 12 years old, I had no idea who Journey or Steve Perry was. I do recall videos for the record’s hit singles “Separate Ways” and “Faithfully,” however. While “Separate Ways” was a perfect example of what an 80s rock video shouldn’t be (air keyboards, loading docks, scowling models with Simon LeBon haircuts), “Faithfully” did an amazing job of showing what life on the road with a rock and roll band was all about. From Jonathan Cain’s longing pre-show stares at his wife’s pic taped to a dressing room mirror, to Steve Perry’s moustache riding in a separate limousine, to the rush of seeing 80,000 people waving lighters and singing along to the refrain of one of rock’s greatest power ballads, that video really did define for me what life on the road as a rock and roll superstar must have been like.

Released in February 1983, the record was an interesting take for a band flexing some newfound directions. Decidedly more progressive in sound and darker than it’s predecessors, “Frontiers” was a muscular disc with an oddly angular 80’s stamp. At the dawn of the era of personal computing (the film “WarGames” came out the same year), the record seemed to exude a faint aura of paranoia about the changing role of technology in our lives. The title track’s signature syncopated off-time rhythm (drummer Steve Smith shared writing credits) and technospeak lyrics predated Cameron’s “Terminator” by one year, but seemed to forwarn of the dangers of embracing the harsh digital age.

It was a bold step forward from the commercially accessible “Escape” disc, and it would have been interesting to see what direction the band may have followed had Perry not commanded the reins following his immensely successful solo recording, “Street Talk,” one year later. Armed with a newfound measure of control and direction, Perry would eventually dismantle the band’s most successful lineup (along with Cain and Schon) during the “Raised On Radio” sessions several years later. For that reason, “Frontiers” is perhaps the most significant Journey record in the catalog. For many die hard fans (and apparently Herbie Herbert, the band’s manager at the time), it represented the end of the line for the Journey mystique – “Raised On Radio,” “Trial By Fire,” and the subsequent incarnations of the band thereafter never managed to regain Journey’s stature as Arena Kings.

25 years later, “Frontiers” remains an immensly strong record, full of signature fist pumping hooks, but wrapped around a huskier Perry, a darkly cynical lyrical chain, and a more muscular tone fromSchon. For me, a child of the 80s, the record recalls the Red Dawn/WarGames paranoia of the time, and a wary hope for the role that technology would eventually take in our lives. 25 years later, and Journey will still be on the road – boys of summer still, yet maybe not the kings of the road that could sell out multiple nights atRFK stadium. Their 4th incarnation (5th, counting Jeff Scott Soto’s brief tenue in 2006-2007) of a band that apparently remains on the edge of new frontiers, plucking a new singer from YouTube and showing how much of a common role technology has become in our lives.

If you haven’t heard “Frontiers” in it’s entirety lately, give it a spin. And yes, the remastered 2007 disc sounds amazing, but the inclusion of bonus tracks “Ask The Lonely” and “Only The Young” aren’t a completely accurate reflection on that record’s darker themes, and the time capsule-nostalgia that 25 years of perspective can provide.

~ by bullmuse on December 17, 2007.