August 18, 2014
It's hard to believe it was ten years ago already, but 2004 was a crazy year; much of it was spent planning things. The Journey Past and Present Committee had to get things prepared for the Hollywood Walk of Fame JPP convention, my office was relocating and I was a key member of the move team, and my younger brother got married -- one of five weddings among my friends and family that year (including JPP Committee members Darla Ellis and Emerson Dong!) There were also a handful of babies born that year among my family and friends. Looking back at my calendar, it's filled with parties, trips, and planning meetings on top of the routine concerts, outings with friends and family, and every day tasks. The one upside to this crazy schedule I was maintaining was that as a result of all the hard work I put in to the office move, I received a bonus which was sufficient enough to cover the cost of going on a 7-day cruise with Journey, Styx, and REO Speedwagon. A well deserved reward I felt. Little did I know how vital that would become.
Remembering that time now, I recall friends and family wanting to do things with me and I would have to answer "well, I'm booked for the next three weekends, how does April 4 look to you?" I was so booked up, I had to teleconference in to a couple of interviews for a new intern we were hiring to help me and a couple of my co-workers with our workload!
The JPP planning is a vivid memory from that year. The planning had started in general in mid 2003 after the application was approved and the star on the Walk of Fame was announced, but we really didn't get serious until early 2004. Having successfully put together three previous events, each with increases in size and activities, we were a fairly well oiled machine by the time we got into gear for JPP2005. The only wrinkle in the whole thing was that, unlike the previous three events, this one wasn't going to be in San Francisco, but Los Angeles. That made for a few challenges we hadn't experienced before. With the majority of the organizing committee living in the San Francisco Bay Area, it was pretty easy to schedule things like checking out hotels and venues. When the event is 400 miles away, it's a little bit trickier and definitely more expensive! We needed to identify locations in LA that might be well suited for our gathering, which is easy enough to do remotely, but we still had to check them out.
Leslie, Cheryl, and I flew down to Anaheim for the NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) show in January 2004 and slotted time to make the hour-long drive up to Hollywood to check out the hotels and reception venue candidates. Our first trip was the Hollywood and Highland complex where we checked out the hotel and nightclub in the complex. These were our top candidates based on proximity to the Walk of Fame and each other -- saved on transportation issues for our attendees. Then it was off to check another couple of hotels before heading over to the House of Blues as a possibility for the reception. We really loved the venue, but it was too large for our then anticipated group of 100. We did say to each other "wouldn't it be cool if the guys played here?" Little did we know.
The band handled most of the logistics in dealing with past and current members and the Hollywood chamber of commerce for scheduling. We relied on the information from band management on scheduling dates and times. The original plan was to schedule the installation around the same time as the 2005 NAMM show and the band would work with the folks at NAMM about having a gig in conjunction with their annual trade show.
So we set about planning for January 2005, reserving blocks of hotel rooms, consulting with the night club, keeping our fellow fans and anticipated attendees posted. By the time we started booking things, we were expecting 125 or so attendees and had to figure out how to get them from the Hollywood Walk of Fame to wherever the band planned to perform in Anaheim. The logistics of bus rental wasn't a big deal -- we'd done that plenty of times for the events in San Francisco -- it was figuring out the timing. We expected the event to be on a week day, which meant getting 125 people from LA to Anaheim during rush hour. It was one of biggest concerns -- we didn't want to wind up accidentally leaving people behind and/or getting stuck in traffic and delaying the show.
Everything came to a head in November. By then our headcount had jumped to 145 people, but we still hadn't gotten a confirmed concert from the band. The event was scheduled for January and our attendees were anxious for news that there would indeed be a show. They were spending good money to attend an event that was open to the public -- with out the concert only our reception was a private event. The attendees knew the band would make an appearance at the reception, but the concert was the key item on everyone's agenda. We had also been expressly forbidden to tell them where the show was planned to be held. Right before Thanksgiving, everything blew up and we were informed that the NAMM show that we had anticipated had not actually been confirmed. A few days later, we got word from band management -- there would be no concert!
As you can imagine, this sent all of us in a tailspin. Fortunately, the day after Thanksgiving, Darla, Emerson, and I would be flying off to Miami for the Rock & Roll Holiday Escape cruise. Cat, who coordinated the fan club for Journey and was one of our key contact people, would also be on the cruise as would the band. Hopefully we could figure out what was going to happen. We put off telling the attendees until after the cruise and froze any further purchases needed for the event in case we were going to have to provide partial refunds. (Something, as the treasurer of the group, I was in a complete panic about.) Maybe we could come up with some miracle by chatting in person. We'd had potential disasters crop up for every other JPP that resulted in miracles that were better than whatever the original plan was.
Darla and I managed to find some time with Cat to see what we could expect and got some optimistic news that things could be fixed, but we would need to be on dry land and get a few more people involved before we could relax completely. One of the complications with meeting with Cat meant we would have to scuttle off away from other Journey fans on the ship -- some of whom were coming to Hollywood, including my roommate Janice. I hadn't met Janice prior to the cruise -- we had both wanted to go on the cruise but neither of us had a roommate to share the cabin. One of us (I can't remember who) posted on the Journey forum Back Talk that we were looking for a roommate for the cruise, and we paired up. I was sure Janice thought I was purposely trying to ditch her every time I would say "I've gotta meet Cat." Since she was coming to JPP, I had to keep my mouth shut about the crisis we were in. I felt hugely guilty, but promised myself I would explain it to her when I could talk about it. I may have mentioned something about "working out details" to her, but can't remember now.
When we got home from the cruise, we still didn't have a definitive answer and things fluctuated good and bad for several days. At one point it was looking so unlikely that we'd have a concert, I drafted an email to send to our attendees to let them know that what we'd hoped to have happen was probably not going to happen. With all of this around the holidays, my stress level was through the roof, despite the relaxing 7-day cruise I'd just been on to relieve the previous 11 months of stress! We were six weeks out from our event and pushing up hard against deadlines to have everything ready to go. The NorCal gang was heading up to Reno for a Journey show that weekend after we returned from the cruise. If we didn't know more by the end of the weekend, we'd have to let folks know.
It turned out, we didn't have to wait for the weekend -- a few days before the Reno show Cat sent us an email: "Show Confirmed!!!! House of Blues 9:00 p.m. JPP Attendees price $45." We had to wait until after Reno to let folks know, but a huge weight was lifted. Our biggest issues now were what to wear and how many guests the band would be inviting to the reception and whether or not we would have enough food for everyone. (There were lots of jokes about having trail mix and bologna sandwiches!)
Still, we had gotten through our biggest crisis and once the holidays were over, it was full steam ahead into January and one fantastic weekend in Hollywood!
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