Old Enough to Forget

When Escape came out in the summer of 1981 Journey went from being big to HUGE. I first heard the band back in the summer of '78 when I was stuck in a forestry camp for the summer and one of the other kids had a copy of Infinity among his collection of summer tunes. I loved "Wheel in the Sky" even though the opening riff seemed to be an unabashed rip off of "Layla" and nobody seemed to mind or care.  The band would follow up a year later with Evolution and then in 1980 Departure contained "Any Way You Want It" which was also featured in Caddyshack. That to me was pure ear candy. How could the bad ever top this? Escape would be the band's seventh album in as many years and would be the band's crowning achievement. Everything seemed to be in place for Journey, REO Speedwagon the year before had seemingly paved the way with their Hi Infidelity album and people were ready for what Journey was about to bring to the table. No, I'm not sleeping...

I'm kind of surprised I didn't write about In Another Land earlier. I suspect this may be longer than it needs to be (likely a lot longer), sorry in advance but you should stick around anyway - it may be worth it. In terms of watershed albums this is right near the top of the most influential albums I have ever heard. The album was released in 1976 and a number of the older kids knew about him, but I was pretty clueless about Christian music. I was at a youth conference in '77 or '78 (things get fuzzy ) and the cool kids (who were likely four or five years older) were talking about an upcoming concert he was going to have in Vancouver, likely the Queen Elizabeth theatre but honestly the details are sketchy. The fact I remember anything at all is kind of amazing.  It was the youth group dances in the late '70s and early '80s where I first got a taste of his music. The big dance songs were "Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music" and "The Roc...