Journey

Somewhere in your town, maybe even right down your street, there is a karaoke bar that stays open long past midnight. That, friend, is the place to experience the music of Journey.

We can pass over Journey's early incarnation as a Frisco hippie band ("Wheel in the Sky") and go straight to the moment when the band figured out that its meal ticket was Steve Perry, who clobbered power ballads like an old Italian lady with an umbrella catching a pickpocket on bingo night. Man, the guy could shred: "Who's Crying Now," "Faithfully," "Only the Young," "Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin'," "Lights," and the love theme to the popular film The Last American Virgin, "Open Arms."

Best of all, or maybe just most of all (the distinction is meaningless with Journey), there was "Don't Stop Believin'," a perfect cheese-metal hymn to streetlight people everywhere, the strangers searching up and down the boulevard, paying anything to roll the dice just one more time. (Fun fact: There is no such place as "South Detroit.") It was over much too soon, with the 1986 hit "I'll Be Alright Without You" a poignant farewell. The band fell apart, reunited, and recorded with both Perry and his sound-alike replacement, Steve Augeri. Greatest Hits captures Journey in all its mullet-tastic splendor. But it's still no substitute for the karaoke bar: To really comprehend the music of Journey, to understand what Steve and the guys were trying to say, you have to go there and join the streetlight people, as the lights go down in the city. Especially when somebody gets drunk enough to tackle "Don't Stop Believin'." (R.S.)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide