Jennifer Finch swears she's never once heard a Journey song, not even "Open Arms," which in 1982 (when Finch was 14), had hazed Top 40 listeners gasping, "Thank you, sir, may I have another?" "In the early Eighties I was doing a lot of drugs and I only went to local shows," she explains. Now a singer-guitarist for OtherStarPeople, a band she formed after leaving L7 in July '94, Finch is first making her Eighties rock journey.

"I said, 'Oh, that's such a great song. [OSP singer/guitarist] Xander [Smith], you wrote a great song,'" Finch says, recalling an ignorance-of-Journey-is-bliss story. "And he's like, 'Yeah, it's so good.' And he started teaching it to me, and I'm like, 'God, I love it. We can do this on the bridge and we can do this and don't you think this solo's too long?'"

Refusing to take the joke all the way to a music publisher, Smith caved and revealed it was Journey's "Any Way You Want It," one of the band's first hits with second vocalist Steve Perry. "I listened to college and alternative radio since I was nine," she further explains. The Journey jokes were whizzing by Finch's head during the recording of OSP's yet-untitled debut, due on Interscope this July. Producing the effort was Seventies-turned-Nineties-legend Roy Thomas Baker, who recently produced Local H's Pack Up the Cats, and much earlier two Journey albums, including the one that included "Any Way You Want It."

"We like to think of [Baker] as the guy who did Foreigner's 'Wheel in the Sky,'" Finch says. Foreigner? "Oh, I mean Journey. He also did Foreigner's 'Hot Blooded.'" Ah, progress.

OtherStarPeople will show their wares to industry personnel and music critics this Friday at Austin's South by Southwest. There, she, Smith, bassist Junko Ito and former Juliana Hatfield drummer Todd Philips will perform a cover of "Any Way You Want It" and new material, which Finch says is "song-driven pop." "There's definitely a heavy rock element, 'cause I'm in the band," she says. "There's definitely a singer-songwriter element because I'm in the band." Former Cars keyboardist Greg Hawkes, who recorded under the tutelage of Baker for the Shake It Up and Candy-O albums, plays on the entire record.

Finch and Smith share vocal duties for OSP -- Finch singing in a higher key, and Smith in a lower one. Finch, who was an L7 bassist for ten years, now handles guitar duties for OSP. She left L7 five years ago to pursue a college degree in American Studies. One new song, "Locked Out," deals with alienation and her unsettling departure from L7. "It was so traumatic at the time," she says. "I spent a lot of time trying to deal with it and recover from it.

"The only regret I have is that in the process of [leaving the band], it was unfortunately inevitable I had to cut ties with everyone," she says. "I hope some day that aspect can be repaired. I was in the band ten years. That's a long time. Marriages don't last that long."

Ironically, it's OSP with a record deal and L7 on the outside looking in, having just released a limited quantity indie live album. And Finch may get her wish to bury the hatchet sooner than she thinks: After she and her band finish their set at Austin's Emo Main Lounge, she'll have just enough time to head over to nearby Stubb's and watch L7 play theirs, if she so chooses.

BLAIR R. FISCHER
(March 19, 1999)