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by Dan Stacy
I'm sure we've all been there before. You'll be listening to the radio and you'll hear a certain guitar riff that you recognize instantly, and start humming along or singing along to the song you think it belongs to. Only seconds later you realize that guitar riff has been lifted from one song and used by another artist for their own song. To some it's no big deal. Others consider it a form of compliment. And then there are those retentive of us enough to be slightly irritated about it. I figure hey, if someone is successful enough to write music that actually gets airplay on mainstream radio, why can't they do the work themselves? Come up with their own music.
Of course there are exceptions. I know that sometimes entire remakes of songs are done, and sometimes it works out well, other times not so well. I'm reminded of a couple days ago while listening to a (gulp) country station. Now before you all go sending me hate mail, or making fun of me, it was at work where I had no control over the radio station. Certain co-workers of mine live considerably to the north of me, where the pace is slower and country is the popular genre. Enough said. Anyway, as I'm halfway listening, not really paying attention, I can hear the lyrics to Aerosmith's I don't want to miss a thing. The only problem with this is that it's being redone, might I add massacred, by a country singer. I wonder what the Aerosmith crew thinks about this. Seems like there should be some sort of permission involved. You can't just have any ol' yokel redoing your song, that would be just too easy for others to capitalize on your work.
Well this brings me to my main point. Sometimes artists will creatively use portions of their own previous works, intermingled here or there, in their newer offerings. I know in concert Journey makes good use of this tactic. Many of us remember hearing the intro to "Of A Lifetime" and it made us take notice. I think that while it may be impossible for a band like Journey to play all of their old standards, let alone the obscure songs as well, and it would be very impractical, it is still possible to use an intro here or there, a riff in a nicely placed spot, in order to remind us that this is the band that brought us all the other music we so cherish.
I've noticed in the latest album, Arrival, the bridge in the song Signs Of Life seems to be completely reminiscent of the Escape song "Who's Cryin' Now" and I've uploaded mp3 clips of the similar portions for you to check out. You can check out the Escape version here and the Arrival version here.
Some would call this a lack of creativity. Some would criticize it. We've been there before, remember what was said by critics about Message of Love on the Trial By Fire album? I think it was something along the lines of "this song is nothing more than Separate Ways repeated again for us by a band that can't write new material." Well, had those same sceptics taken a few extra minutes to give the rest of the CD a listen, they'd realize it was brilliant. The band's use of a few similarly structured chords in the bridge portion of Message Of Love was brilliant, and tied the new work to the foundation laid so many years previous in the popular Separate Ways.
I am looking forward to the upcoming concert tour to see if the band makes further use of this type of material. I would like to see them use some of the new material they've written but not included on Arrival, such as Having A Good Time, World Gone Wild, Love Theme From Spartacus, Filmore Boogie, and other material we heard from them live in concert for the first time. And I do know that I am more than eager to hear some of the rockers of Arrival played.
Copyright © 1994-2006 Dan Stacy, Journey Digest, JourneyDigest.com
No portion of this article may be reprinted without express written permission from the author and JourneyDigest.com