Styx vs. Journey vs. REO Speedwagon vs. The World

In the first three or four years of the nineteen eighties the top forty was full of rock music by bands such as Styx, Foreigner, Toto, Journey, Survivor, Asia, and REO Speedwagon. Not to mention The Go Gos, The Pretenders, John Cougar, Steve Miller Band, Rick Springfield, Survivor, Joan Jett, and Loverboy. Now don't get ahead of yourself, I'm not going to argue that this was some kind of golden age but I do think it was Top 40 Rock's last stand. Especially one handful of groups that that are often lumped together (Journeyrstyxreospeedwagon) deserve to be given some thought (or don't but you can't stop me!)

These oft derided bands shared some things in common like : virtuoso playing, bold powerful singers, ambitious song writing and arranging, slick and extravagant production. Or as it's often remembered wanker guitarists, cheesey vocals, and overblown and over produced songs. Below I will argue that the former is more accurate and, making every effort not to sound like an old grouch, I will try to place them in context vis a vis the current less than stellar state of commercial rock.

I've recently come across articles and radio shows featuring self satisfied hipsters deriding, mocking, dismissing, and giggling at the eighties. Especially in the media, and not only music media, things get lazily repeated and recycled and repeated until they become a created truth that goes unquestioned.(e.g.Sgt. Pepper's is the greatest album ever) That the eighties were terrible music-wise and fashion-wise is one of these. Sure, once in a while someone will write something to say" See there was some non-crap..." I found this top 100 list on Pitchfork that should have been titled "A Hipsters Guide to the Obvious"

This isn't a defense of the eighties, though. There's a bigger problem here and that is the inability to remove music from the cultural context in which it was created and listen to it as a song, pure and simple. I'm sure there were a lot of reasons to dislike REO Speedwagon at the time they were charting. I'm sure they were seen as the uncool flip side of the new wave of bands emerging out of the punk explosion. No doubt, Toto didn't compare favourably with The Clash. Journey weren't exactly out to question the very notions of a rock song but and the same time they didn't earn the "authenticity" tag that Bruce Springsteen did. But they didn't want to or need to. They wanted to make something shiny, big, and awesome. They wanted to make something everyone would love. You can't have the extreme without the mainstream so they fulfilled a function and took their responsibility seriously. They weren't young punk kids either. They were seasoned musicians that had been kicking around the music biz, with varying degrees of success, throughout the seventies. Moreover, who cares! Twenty five years later it surely doesn't matter who was cooler, who wore what, who said what. Is "Too Much Time (On my Hands)" a great song? Yes, it is.

I don't mean great in a "guilty pleasure" way either. "Guilty pleasure" has to be the most inane,weakest, most intellectually cowardly concept ever! Don't get me started! (too late). How could anyone possibly be ashamed of something they like. Are you that insecure? Are you that afraid to stand by your opinions? Are you just too intellectually flaccid to be able to justify your tastes? Why do I like something? Because it's good and I don't like things that are not good. If everything I like is good then why would I feel embarrassed to like it? I have thought about why I like what I like ( and don't like what I don't like) and I can explain why if pressed to do so. (You know hard it can be to pry an opinion out of me).If you can't then what have you been using your brain for all this time? If you feel "guilty" for liking a Phil Collins song your an ass. 

In this time where we often know a musicians "story" before we've even heard their music, where critics biographize and psycho-analyze because it's easier than actually writing about music, combing through lyrics to find a tenuous connection to some bio blurb from a press release, it is often difficult to separate an artist from their art. Now, I have been guilty of this a million times, hating some band because of something completely extraneous to the music they've produced. I hate something they said, what they wear, what the represent, how they are promoted, (and the hardest to overcome) I hate their fans. But I've grown up and I realize that I love music and not musicians. Do I want to know what Lilly Allen has to say about life, love and politics? No, not really. But she made a good album and I'm interested in that.

A while back, I found myself at a bar for some reason, with a bunch of British guys. I guess it was around the time that The Arctic Monkeys first album came out. I mentioned that I thought the Hard-Fi album was actually better. They looked at me like I'd just shit on the table and offered them some. I mentioned this to another British friend later and he said that the perception of Hard-Fi was that they were posers and wanna-be's and who knows what else.I guess the singer had said or done something that rubbed people the wrong way. Being completely unaware of the media buzz on either band I had come to an honest judgement based solely on my ears and brain. They may really prefer The Arctic Monkey's, that's perfectly fine, but they seemed to have rejected and embraced the two bands based on something other than the music entirely.

Getting back to Styx, REO Speedwagon and Journey, and why I decided to write about them, they encompass everything top 40 Rock should be and is no longer. Their songs were big, with REO Speedwagon leaning towards the soft side, Styx leaning towards the pomp and conceptual pretensions, while Journey went straight down the middle. REO Speedwagon played with the sweet love song with a rock edge and wrote some great melodies with a great combination of familiarity and complexity. They sometimes suffered from some overdone, fussy production that brushed over everything with a wash of tinny digital reverb but on their best songs like " Take It On the Run" and "Can't Fight this Feeling" they sound slick and confident. Styx go for the knock out every time out and when it comes together it's fantastic, like on "Babe" or " Too Much Time (on my hands)", but can be embarrassing like on the excessive "Suite Madame Blue". Thanks to their unadulterated and unashamed ambition, even the failures are endearing and command a certain respect. The ability and willingness too reach too far and risk looking pompous and foolish has been lost in modern Rock, it seems. Would any top 40 Rock band ever release a song like Mr.Roboto today? If they could make an amusing video that hinted they were probably just kidding about the whole thing then maybe, yes. Styx were not kidding.Finally, Journey, of the three, have stood the test of time the best. Solid songwriting, in any era, lyrics with a narrative sense and broad appeal, all topped off by the breath-taking, thrilling, all-time quality voice of Steve Perry. "Anyway You Want It" is a fist pumping, scissor kicking, lip sync into the mirror anthem. " Don't Stop Believing" is an anthem that out Springsteens Springsteen in it's small town, blue collar appeal while at the same time soaring wit a huge chorus and immediately unforgettable melody. The low key "Faithfully" is Perry at his vocal peak.

Listening to these bands now it's hard to imagine music with this combination of songwriting ambition, musical chops, supreme confidence and complete unselfconciousness  ever being made again. None of this is too say that this is the best music ever, far from it. They kept a foot in the elaborate overwrought prog-rock of the seventies while working in the synth sounds and beats of the more innovative early eighties bands. This may have been a cynical compromise to make their mark on the charts but 25 or more years removed it sounds like the next step for Rock and unfortunately the last step. Music blew apart in the late eighties where "alternative" bands started to go double platinum. U2, former outsiders, became the biggest band in the world. Eddie Vedder's overblown Rock hiding behind fake humility and anti rock star posing made it impossible for another Steve Perry to ever emerge. Give these bands a listen and think about what a unique time in Rock they represent. And I dare you not to have fun.