ESCAPE [AKA: E5C4P3]

Breaking away a bit from the Trans-Am hood artworks, Escapes uses again the scarab/beetle this time escaping another planet's prison to rejoin their Infinity planet (the explanation was sumthin' similar at the industry's album release party and the usual MTV coverage, etc?), but one thing is certain, all progheads should find Planet Gong's adventures a lot funnier and interesting and certainly a lot less laughable than this sad excuse of Sci-fi imagery!! If I'm taking the piss on this album, it's partly because the last musician I cared about in this group Greg Rollie, had left and like Dunbar before him, replaced by a much lesser but less rebellious and more chart-inclined Jonathan Cain, who will almost directly become equal to Schon in terms of credits to songs, with Dictator Perry clearly deciding with whom he wanted to work with?. Taking the hint, Neal??? Stay a good boy and do what I say!!

Actually if memory serves, this album became their biggest selling with no less than three top 10 hit-singles and a few more in reserve. Not that the songs were any good, but the industry had managed to regain complete control (lost back in 67) of the music business and its airwaves to spread the news. It didn't matter whether the songs were that good, they had decided that this album was going to sell millions and they would hammer it in the brains of countless brainwashed numbed skulls. So Journey could've written 10 turds, they would've sold, because it was simply their time to cash in (this is normal payback when you sell-out) and this corporate rock band was not taking any lessons from anyone at this task. As a matter of fact, the Stones' Mick Jagger did indeed come for a lesson or two in "raking in the dough", by hanging around the band on tour, to see how it was done. Of course Escape was not made of 10 turds, but only 5; and the rest were songs that came to epitomize some of the saddest years in rock's history, the atrocious hits like Don't Stop Believin' and the soppy Who Crying Now. As you'd expect, the music is much in the line of the previous album, just typical slick radio-friendly AOR ballads and mid-tempo rockers that's pretty close to REO Speedwagon (actually it's the reverse REO resembles Journey) and the Foreigner of these times.

Even though Journey's take on music-making came through the classic method of impeccable playing and spotless production (for those year's standards, of course), unlike many of these younger generation group taking instruments that did the job for them. No matter how little respect I have for the Perry-era of Journey and its sell-out scheme, I will always allow them the point that they were real and gifted musicians caught in a certain context and goldmine to exploit.