The Road to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

I actually meant to write and publish this post six months ago when we hit upon the 20th Anniversary of the release of Trial by Fire, but as happens in life, I got busy with other things and forgot completely about it. With Journey's induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame now just days away, I thought it would be good to go back and revisit how that album kicked off a long strange trip down the highways and byways of Journeyland. No, this isn't about Journey's road to the Hall of Fame, it's about mine.

We actually start in late 1995 when I saw a blurb in the San Francisco Chronicle that Steve Perry, Jonathan Cain, and Neal Schon were talking about a Journey reunion. This was around the same time Steve Perry was out on tour supporting his solo album For the Love of Strange Medicine and I thought "well, that'd be cool if it happens" and then pretty much forgot about it. It had been 10 years since Journey was last together and I really didn't expect much to come of it. Come September, 1996 and I'm at work going through the day's mail. There was a new issue of Forbes magazine in the batch and one of my tasks was to review all the magazines for my boss and look for articles relevant to our research or, in the case of Forbes, our fundraising efforts. This particular issue had a photo of Kiss on the cover and a headline along the lines of "Rock Reunions" which caught my eye, so instead of just skimming through the issue as I normally would, I flipped through to the article on Kiss and read it on my lunch break. Most of the article was about Kiss's reunion with Ace Frehley and Peter Kriss, but made mention of a couple other reunions including a mention that Journey had reunited and there was a new album coming out in October. What?! Wait, what did I miss?! I spun in my chair, fired up Yahoo! to do an internet search (oh 1996!) on Journey. I immediately found three sites I devoured -- the first was the official Sony Music Journey site which was promoting the upcoming album release and had a series of message boards for fans to connect and chat about Journey. The next two were the great Journey Tribute Page run by Steve Lake (while it hasn't been updated in years, it still exists!) and the late great Journey Fans Network run by Jaspirina Mahyat (thanks Internet Archive.) Back in the days before official websites and social media these sites were where fans would go to get the latest and greatest info on Journey and connect with other fans. There were also the IRC chats, the Journey Digest mailing list, and the old tried and true newsgroups. Not having my own internet connection at home in 1996 (I don't think I even had a computer at home then, though it's close to when I got a laptop for work, so I might have) I couldn't participate in the chats and was wary of the newsgroup and mailing lists, especially since I only had my work email address at the time. So I devoured what I could from what I'd found and kept an eye on the message boards at the Sony site pretty regularly.

While I can't remember now exactly what was going on at work in October, 1996, I do remember that I was extremely stressed out and frustrated, in large part due to a senior manager who was making my life miserable despite the fact I didn't report to her. I had circled October 22 on my calendar -- the date Trial by Fire was due to be released. Since that was a Tuesday and back in a time when you couldn't order a new CD on Amazon and have it show up on your doorstep the day of release (forget downloading it!), I had planned to run to Tower Records some time that week. Sure, it meant maybe waiting a couple of days, but after 10 years, what's a few days? Silly me. Again, I don't remember exactly what happened that day, but I do remember leaving work and saying "I need that new Journey album RIGHT NOW!" I drove straight to Tower Records from the office then straight home where I immediately popped it in the stereo (not having a CD player in my 1991 Tercel.) Ahhhhh.... this is JUST what I needed.

In the weeks leading up to the release of Trial by Fire, I had actually been listening to a lot more Journey than I had in a while. In part this was due to being stressed out, which always and forever means pulling out Escape, and in part due to my upcoming 10-year high school reunion which meant pulling out Raised on Radio which came out right before graduation. Listening to Trial by Fire for the first time was special. Having that new CD after 10 years made me realize just how much I had missed listening to Journey. While I still had my LPs (from Captured to Raised on Radio) and the Greatest Hits CD and Time3 box set, I didn't listen to them regularly. Sure, pretty much every mix tape I made for my car had at least one Journey song on it, but I didn't sit and listen to Journey as often as I had in high school. I had started listening a bit more after Steve Perry's For the Love of Strange Medicine was released, but it really took Trial by Fire to reignite the passion I'd had for Journey 10 years earlier. I wrote a letter to my cousin Denise as I listened to Trial by Fire for the first time, giving my long-standing Journey compadre a blow by blow account of each song as I heard it for the first time. As I came to "Don't Be Down on Me Baby", I wrote "God, you don't hear stuff like this anymore. I forgot how much I missed Journey. I'm blissing out here." Then, after "It's Just the Rain" it was "God Steve Perry's got an amazing voice! I REALLY have to see this tour! I don't care what it costs!"

Listening to more Journey prior to the release of Trial by Fire was also partly due to connecting with other fans and talking about the love of this music that had meant so much to me since I was in junior high school. This was a new and amazing thing to me. Most of my close friends were, at best, casual/closet Journey fans. Other than my cousin Denise, I rarely talked to someone who loved Journey as much as I did. Now, I had found this whole group of people from all over the world who loved my favorite band as much as I did! Naturally, with the new album out, everyone was really excited and talking about their favorite tracks and oh when oh when will they announce the tour? Transcripts and links to interviews and press were passed around. And oh Steve, Jon, and Neal are going to be interviewed on my local classic rock station! We can't wait for more! Woo hoo! There was so much joy and buzzing excitement.

Well, time passed and as all Journey fans know by now, the Trial by Fire tour never materialized and it looked like Journey would be fading away into the sunset once again. The uncertainty and the rumors fed the on-line trolls as such things are wont to do, and it got to the point where Sony Music decided to shut down the message boards they had set up. Since there had been several different message boards on the Sony site, they were shut down slowly which allowed fans to set up their own message boards. One fellow, who went by the strange name "Skylord" had set up a message board. He was a fairly known entity in the Journey community at the time as he ran the IRC chat. So I migrated over there a bit and when the Sony boards were finally closed, that was my primary hang out. I was still leery of the mailing lists having heard that the Journey Digest was full of people arguing all the time and especially this one dude "Monker" who was particularly annoying and another dude "Meanie" who pretty much lived up to his handle. Not having a personal email address was also a factor -- I couldn't have all this Journey stuff coming to my work address if people were being rude and obnoxious. Somewhere in this time frame (mid-1997 or so), Jaspirina of the Journey Fans Network set up the Steve Perry Mailing List as a bit of a haven from the Journey Digest. That's when I decided I'd see what that group was like and signed up with my work address. Oh what a fateful decision!

The Perry List was seldom on topic (boy is that a huge understatement!), and every afternoon around 3:00 my inbox would start getting flooded with messages from the crew of Atlanta ladies who, now being off work, had hopped on line to chat. It wasn't so much that we didn't want to talk about Journey and Steve Perry, but that in mid- to late-1997 there just wasn't a whole lot to discuss beyond rumors and speculation and those subjects ran their course pretty quickly. So a community of mostly female Journey fans, along with a few brave male fans, grew into a community of friends who shared the ups and downs and ins and outs of daily life. It was kind of a weird way to make new friends, but it was fun, and several different groups would get together in the real world as there were clusters of fans in some areas.

By early 1998, it was clear there would be no more Steve Perry and Journey, but my oh my were there rumors about the band soldiering on without him. What?! That's impossible! No way no how, no no no no NO!

With rumors abounding, Jonathan Cain released a new solo instrumental CD For a Lifetime, which I promptly picked up. Shortly after it was released, I learned Jonathan had done an in store appearance at the Virgin Megastore in San Francisco about an hour after it ended. Dammit, missed opportunity number 9,648. A week or so later, I got a call from a good friend who alerted me to an ad she saw in that day's San Francisco Chronicle that Neal Schon would be performing with a band called Strictly Roots at the Maritime Hall in San Francisco. I talked her in to going to the show with me and made plans to get tickets. Back at work on Monday, ready to tell my friends on the Perry List about the show I came in to see a thread of messages with the subject line "Petaluma". I read through them all and discovered that Jonathan Cain would be performing a benefit show for his church the same weekend as Neal's show with Strictly Roots. Well, this was going to fun and make up for the unsettled state of Journey. Boy did it. Besides being a weekend with one of my most prized live music experiences, I had the opportunity to meet fellow Perry Listers "RknRlMom" and "The Great Demented One" (better known as Debbie S. & Liz.) Jonathan's show was the first time I got to meet other internet Journey fans in person, but it most certainly wouldn't be the last.

Not long after my first live Journey-related experience, it was officially announced that Steve Augeri and Deen Castronovo would be replacing Steve Perry and Steve Smith. My gut reaction -- forget it! No Steve Perry, no Journey. Oh silly me! I soon discovered my love for Journey transcended loyalty to any one member. Journey announced they would be performing a free show in San Rafael and all anyone needed to do to get tickets was to email road manager Rindell Ivers. The show was the day after I was to fly to Paris for a 3 week vacation. I wanted to throw myself on the floor and kick and scream like a two year old. That was the fateful straw that got me to finally subscribe to the Journey Digest so I could hear reports from those who attended the show. Those reports (along with a bootleg recording of the show) pushed me down a path I never expected.

Waiting out the summer between the free show in San Rafael and the official start of the first full blown Journey tour since 1986, I got to connect and meet with more Journey fans. First through the Journey Digest where folks mostly in the mid-western part of the US were catching Journey at one-off gigs at state fairs and the like and passing along reports of those shows. Then in person through a fan convention that was organized by folks mostly from the AOL forums but who also had some overlap on the Journey Digest. It was the first of several "what the heck, could be fun" decisions I would make over the coming months. I knew Debbie S. would be going and it would be fun to play tourist in my hometown of San Francisco. It was an interesting weekend that felt a bit cliquish to me, but I got to meet a few more Nor Cal Journey fans which would prove fruitful in the coming months as, holy smokes, I had people to go to a Journey concert with! Yay Kevin, Scott, and Janet! I did meet a few of the folks from the AOL group who made an effort to chat and visit with the broader group of fans at the show, so there was Carol from Buffalo and someone going by "Journeycat." The strangest highlight of the weekend though was meeting Neal Schon's mom and stepfather. Really? I'm meeting Neal's PARENTS? Too weird!

So fall rolls around and the "Vacation's Over" Tour was announced, and I find I have certifiably lost my mind. The tour is opening in Detroit a week after my 30th birthday, on a holiday weekend no less, and a group of folks on the Journey Digest decide to meet up for the first official show of the tour. Remember my comment about seeing the Trial by Fire Tour no matter the cost? Yeah, that kind of went in to over drive that fall. Buying a ticket for a concert in Detroit and flying most of the way across the country to meet a room full of complete strangers for dinner before a concert was WAY WAY out of the scale of normal behavior for me. I hate going into a room of complete strangers and make small talk for several hours. Only Deadheads travel around the country for concerts and I certainly am not a burned out hippie in a Volkswagon bus! I was so certain that what I was doing was insane, I was extremely cautious at work when talking about my plans for Columbus Day Weekend 1998 and made sure to schedule myself on a red-eye to Detroit so I wouldn't have to take any vacation time. I'm not some weirdo! At my birthday dinner the weekend before, several family members asked me multiple times what I was doing the following weekend. There were many strange looks and comments along the lines of "who are these people you're meeting? how do you know them?" Of course my thinking at the time was this is the first Journey tour in over 10 years, no way I'm gonna miss the first show, but this is just a one time thing. Oh my, how quaint!

I flew off to Detroit and met up with probably about 30 people from the Journey Digest before the show. I didn't mix and mingle much -- still the introvert doing something WAY out of her comfort zone -- but I did meet a few people including Journey Digest owner Dan Stacy and frequent commenter Moni. That happy circumstance led to getting an extra after show pass for the meet and greet in Grand Rapids. I've just seen Journey in concert for the second time in my life (the first being the night before in Detroit) and I got to meet the whole band?! This is not my life. I remember getting back to my hotel after all was said and done and being too wired to sleep. It was after midnight, but being in the eastern time zone it was still early enough to call my good friend Mary back home and tell her all about it. Mary's a casual fan of Journey (at best) but she's a big music fan in general and understood my lunacy. That she wasn't home when I called so all I could do was leave a message that said "Oh my god I met the whole band!" is one of my funnier memories of that memorable weekend.

I would hit six more shows that tour -- the entire California swing plus New Year's Eve in Reno. That show in Reno is still the biggest night out I've ever done on New Year's Eve. I usually have a quiet evening in with family and friends if I do anything at all, so to be in Reno at a concert and literally standing on my seat as midnight struck and then more or less sneaking back stage is way way over the top for me.

1999 rolled in and things really got moving. Several of the NorCal contingent of the Perry List managed to finally to meet up for lunch which led to semi-regular "grown up slumber parties" with Carla, Darla, and Ana Marie. Steve Smith was also doing a bunch of different local shows and so there would be nights out at a jazz club in North Beach including a couple where some out of town Perry Listers came in to hang with the rest of the crew. I still think Toni was nuts for driving all the way from Utah!

That summer, Journey went out on tour with Foreigner and there I was winging my way off again to a big fan gathering in Chicago. Moni and Dan Stacy had organized Journeyfest for the folks on the Digest. This included a night at a bar north of Chicago where Kevin Chalfant performed. By this time, I'd gotten familiar with the names of folks on the Journey Digest and had become a frequent poster so I wasn't my usual introverted self and actually mixed and chatted with a bunch of people and even volunteered to help check people in for soundcheck -- another perk the Journeyfest organizers had pulled off for us. That's how I got to meet Leslie F. who would go on to become one of my partners in crime for Journey Past & Present. The year ended with a benefit show in San Francisco and the soon-to-be usual preshow dinner rounded out the NorCal crew with finally meeting another Perry Lister in person as Cheryl was one of the new faces at the restaurant that night.

2000 was a pretty quiet year as fans waited in eager anticipation for Journey's new album, but one highlight was when a group from the Perry List decided to get together for a weekend in LA. It was a fun, if somewhat odd, weekend and a lot of us got to put faces to the names of people we'd gotten to know over the course of the previous few years. Deb A. flew in from New York, Leslie W. was there from Kansas City, Dale from Tampa, and so many more. The weirdness came with some discord among the organizing committee that the NorCal gang got roped in to due to some misinformation we were given. Fortunately, the fall out from that weekend resulted in something that would become so much bigger and beyond what most previous fan gatherings had been -- Journey Past and Present.

Somewhere in the 1999-2000 time frame I became much more involved in the on line Journey community. Jaspirina gave up running the Perry List in mid-1999, so a group of list members decided to take on the task and start a new list and I got invited to be one of the list moderators. By late 2000, Journey Digest list owner Dan Stacy invited me to be a moderator for the Digest and a contributing author to the JourneyDigest.com website. Meanwhile, Skylord's forum had gotten him an opportunity to run Journey's official website and his message board became the official message board for the band -- Back Talk -- and many more people joined the community. Somehow, in my 30s, I had become much more extroverted than I had ever been even if it was mostly in the virtual world of internet message boards and mailing lists.

Journey's first album with Steve Augeri, Arrival, would be released in Japan in late 2000 leading to all kinds of craziness with Napster that led to a revised version being released in the US (and globally) in early 2001. By this point, I had given in and realized I had become one of "those people" and planned to spend my vacation seeing Journey on the first week of their Arrival Tour regardless of where it may be. This led to two things -- me spending a week driving through New Mexico and Texas (NEVER AGAIN) and in my new role as a JourneyDigest.com contributor, promising to post the set lists to the Journey Digest for everyone to see. The Rockin' Road Report was born.

I traveled a lot in the summer of 2001. A good friend from high school had moved to the wilds of West Virginia and was feeling so isolated she sent me a list of Journey shows within driving distance of where she lived to entice me to visit. Feeling guilty that I had to be so bribed, I set off for West Virginia and a show in Pittsburgh. I also booked myself for every single show in California while ALSO helping to organize the first Journey Past & Present event in San Francisco. My assignment was working with the attendees because I was the one who'd traveled the most and had met most of the people we invited to this first little event. There were only about 15 of us, but we managed to pack a lot in to one weekend. We took some people down to Hanford, the central valley town where Steve Perry grew up on one day, toured The Plant studios in Sausalito the next, and managed to fit in two Journey concerts in Mountain View and Sacramento. That was the last simple JPP.

Things went so well with our first JPP event, that we decided to expand it in 2002 when we had about 40 people tour Fantasy Studios in Berkeley then trek up to Clear Lake for a luncheon and concert at Konocti Harbor Resort. It was during the planning for JPP2002 that we got the idea for Bammies Walk of Fame (after setting aside the Hollywood Walk of Fame for the moment.) Darla, Cheryl, Emerson, Mary Ann, Leslie F. & I had completely fallen into the role of part-time Journey PR/Fan Club operators and that was really only the beginning. It was an insane amount of work we were doing in our free time out of our sheer love for the band that had given us so much through their music.

In my role of fan contact point, my on-line presence in Journey-land grew even more and led to some interesting experiences. One I'll never forget is being at a pre-show barbeque at someone's house outside of Chicago with a large group of Back Talkers, some I knew, some I didn't. While chatting with one of the folks I knew, one of the other guests walked up to me and said "Oh YOU'RE MNM! So nice to meet you!" I'm pretty sure I responded politely with a similar greeting, but in my head I'm thinking "Who the hell are you and how the hell do you know who I am?!" My small community notoriety taught me quickly -- I'm glad I never had any desire to be famous! It was a very weird feeling, especially since by this time I had met so many people across the country at various Journey shows I was having a hard time remembering everyone's name and face. Still, it was nice to know that, should I so desire, I could probably find a place to crash in every major city in the country! The internet can be a weird place, but it was also a place I was able to find so many new friends it was worth some of the weirdness.

When the hordes of fans descended on San Francisco in April 2003 for JPP2003 and the Bammies Walk of Fame I got to experience one of my favorite moments in my Journey journeys. Beyond the feeling of accomplishment it took to get it done after a year's hard work and seeing the general joy the other fans were having, I got my biggest kick during the post-show/event hang outs in the JPP hotel suites. It was then that I actually got time to sit down and relax and talk with people instead of running around making sure things ran smoothly. There was the night with the crew from Kansas City hanging out into the wee hours of the morning and the following night with some local Bay Area fans. Those are memories that are burned into my brain.

JPP2005 in Hollywood was another crazy crazy weekend with now about 150 people in attendance (double JPP2003) and it got impossible to see and chat and visit with everyone that I would have liked. There was just so much going on with so many people that when I recently re-watched the DVD from that weekend I had a hard time putting names to faces. I did get to visit some with some people, but no where near as much as I would have liked and that is still one of the things I wish could have gone differently that weekend.

Things changed a bit after Hollywood. A combination of Journey burnout from six straight years of planning fan conventions, changes in the band, changes in online communications, and the growing expense of traveling saw me pull back a lot from the Journey community. I still see my local friends, but losing Darla in 2008 was an emotional blow that still leaves a big hole, especially when I'm at a Journey related event.

So now Journey is finally getting inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame -- yet another project that I spent some time on in the early 2000s -- and I'm flying off to New York for the ceremony. Not going was not an option. And with all of that the thing I'm most looking forward to is seeing some of those friends I met along the way. There's about 20 of us getting together for lunch before the ceremonies and at least another half dozen folks who will be in town for the show that I hope I can meet up with during the weekend.

There were a lot of adventures and experiences criss-crossing the backroads of Journeyland between the fateful day Trial by Fire was released and when I stopped my Journey journeys after the 2006 tour. The thing I still value above it all isn't the opportunities I got to meet and get to know the band a bit but the opportunities I got to meet and get to know so many of my fellow fans. It's a truly great bunch of people I've gotten to know over the years. Even if we don't see each other or even stay in touch as much as we once did, I will always cherish the times spent with everyone I met (even some of the odd ones.) So, to my Journey fan friends around the globe I say:

Don't stop believin'...

We Will Meet Again.