...Steve Perry himself in the show's final scene? Wasn't he the guy that came in, sat at the counter, then got up, looked at Tony, and went to the men's room? The guy that may have killed Tony?

Our glimpses of him were so fleeting, yet I believe that may have been Steve Perry.

As for the pros and cons of Journey, they were never a band I respected, never a band whose records I bought, yet also never a band I loathed the way I loathed certain other bands of my youth, (i.e., Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, and other icons of corporate 70s rock, etc.). This may be because by the time Steve Perry joined I was in my later 20s and I no longer defined myself as much by who I wasn't as by who I was, by the music I "hated" as much (or more) as by the music I loved. I had come to see that such distinctions were unimportant, artificial, and silly.

This is not to say there isn't music I do not enjoy; but, then, I don't listen to it. I don't scorn it or insult those who play it or who listen to it. I enjoy music for the pleasure it gives me and I assume that those who enjoy music not to my taste are, at the least, entitled to their similar pleasure without my unasked for and unwarranted dismissal.

Oh, and, while I still wouldn't buy their albums, I have come to enjoy a number of Journey's songs, and I also have come to find pleasure in Steve Perry's fine voice. I have actually bought a couple of their songs on iTunes. At the same time, I still enjoy free jazz monsters such as Charles Gayle, free improv masters such as Evan Parker, avant-garage pranksters Pere Ubu and their Cleveland peers the Electric Eels, and on and on (and on and on...).

(I've also come to admire and respect Led Zeppelin, so long after the cultural detritus that surrounded them in the 70s and that annoyed me so terribly are now three decades gone.)

There's much more room in my world for music of all types than there was when I was 20 or even 30.

Now, does anyone else have any information as to whether that was or was not Steve Perry in the last scene?

Thanks for the info about Paolo Colandrea. I won't be wondering about whether I only imagined Steve Perry in the scene...now I know I did.

The first rock concert I ever attended was by YES, on their 1972 CLOSE TO THE EDGE tour, (the Eagles were their opening act, believe it or not!).

Rick Wakeman did employ a keyboard instrument at that concert that produced the sounds of symphonic string sections, etc., but we knew this instrument as a mellotron, (already mentioned by a previous commenter).

Are they they same thing? Is there a difference? Did Wakeman play a mellotron, as we thought, or a birotron?

I agree with "formerprof" that Li'l Butch appears to be a narcissist, and I'd bet he suffers from other personality disorders as well. (The book BUSH ON THE COUCH makes convincing arguments to this effect.) I also tend to suspect Li'l Butch believes in his own good vs. evil rhetoric...I've long believed that true believers can be the most dangerous of persons and we should be leery of them. (I don't mean by this simply persons with strong ethical principles--which we should admire and which our elected representatives should possess--but I do mean dogmatists and fundamentalists of every stripe.)

I think Glenn's book may be valuable not because it will change or mitigate our view of the evils which have flowed from Li'l Butch's administration and policies, but because it may allow for a greater scrutiny of the tendency in all of us--in our nation as a whole--to view the world in a binary good/evil way...a crippled worldview that will always draw us into disaster. It matters less that Li'l Butch may or may not legitimately believe what he claims to believe than that so many of our fellow citizens certainly do seem to believe it and have eaten it up, thus allowing this administration to do its great harm.

Needless to say, our mass media has greatly aided and abetted this administration in its serial disasters and crimes by abdicating its raison d'etre: keeping the public informed to allow for our educated participation in the process of government. The mass media have made our people stupider and more credulous, and thus less effective citizens.

When a nation's citizenry abandons skepticism of its government and embraces self-serving, black and white mythologies of "manifest destiny" and binary views of us-good/them-bad, when the populace discards rational debate and discourse in favor of superstition, ignorance and "belief," that nation is in danger of collapse into decadence and tyranny.

(My subject heading derives from the title of Carl Sagan's final book, and it is a stirring primer on much of what bedevils our nation today. I recommend it highly.)