Rolling Stone of the '70s and '80s was a joke ... liberal white guilt run rampant. Any record by any black artist, from Motown to The Fantastic Johnny C doing "Boogaloo Down Broadway" -- got five stars; white acts started with a one and anyone who got a two or three had to be John Lennon.

Exactly.

Even though this song would have been very popular at the time he and Carmella came of age. (Tony turned 47 at the beginning of this last season.)

But, they have always seemed more of their parents' generation than their own. Maybe it's because they obviously got married and started their family while they were very young. Maybe it's because New Jersey Italian-American culture seems to more into the Frank Sinatra/Dean Martin era than disco or stadium rock.

...only if you're uptight, self-conscious, or a too-cool-for-school wannabe hipster. They're excellent musicians and singers, their arrangements are tight and often clever, they came up with a whole lot of great melodies, and they're still big sellers and radio staples after decades. So they don't suck.

You may not like them, which is fine. You can hate them, despise them, and that's fine. You're not wrong for doing so--that's everyone's opinion. You can say, "I love 'em" or "I hate 'em" and be right 100% of the time. But sucking is a different story, and people who can't differentiate between "it's not to my liking" and "it's objectively bad" are responsible for the massive glut of junk that makes up about 90% of all arts criticism (especially in blogs). (Which, by the way, Jethro Tull addressed artfully in their wonderful song "Only Solitaire".)

Journey played their own instruments, very well, and wrote a large body of pop music, very well, and crafted a lot of very skilled productions on record. They're legit, and they've walked the walk. That's not a band that sucked.

I like Journey. I also like King Crimson, The Church, Fela Kuti, Def Leppard, Earth Wind & Fire, Paul Galbraith, Herbie Hancock, Men Without Hats, James Brown, and a ton of other artists who are loved by many people and hated by many others. But they all believe in what they do and they do it with integrity, passion, and skill. To me, that's what makes an artist 'suck-proof', whether you love 'em or hate 'em.

But then, that's my opinion. :)

Wow. The fact that you mention the Ramones and Nirvana when talking about Journey is a disgrace. Even worse, you are trying to say that Journey is not far from punk because their songs aren't very long? What planet are you on??

Why does Journey suck? Because of Steve Perry. That high, sugary, completely overdone vocal is what is so hateful about them. The vocals are why they are easily compared to two other awful bands of that era, Styx and REO Speedwagon. Crap. It was crap then, and it's crap now.

A very valiant defense. Unfortyunately, you're defending the undefendable. Journey sucks. Beliedve me, I love as much cheesy, 80's schlock as the next guy. Hell, if I'm in the car flipping through stations, i may even sing along to a Journey song. But it's more out of a nostalgia for a time when me and my brothers would watch their god awful videos and crack up then because they're a good band. I would never pay for one of their albums, and if I never heard another Journey song, I wouldn't be any worse off for it. Maybe that's what happened at the end of the episode. Tony was so sick of hearing that song that he shot himself.

They were accomplished musicians. Neil Schoen was a truly great guitarist underneath it all. Perry's voice was amazing, if somewhat generic (Journey was able to replace Steve Perry with someone who sounded even more like Steve Perry in short order) but he was completely unlikable, kind of like that guy from Styx that does the Liberace-type act in Vegas now. But above all, listening to that particular song makes me remember hearing it for the first time and thinking that it was (if you ignored the actual lyrics, just listened to the sounds they were making) impossibly perfect. And there is value in that. A lot of value.

And Tony sure as hell would have picked that song off the jukebox. For white people in North Jersey that kind of shit is soul music. It's uplifting. It defines optimism. It doesn't make you think too hard. It's catchy. It's everything pop should be.

But what I take objection to is mentioning Journey and the Ramones in the same sentence. No, the same paragraph. Hell, they shouldn't be mentioned on the same internet. Journey took pop and added a level of talent and polish that were rarely seen. The Ramones created perfection, in the sense that adding or removing a single thing, one note, one riff, one word, would have destroyed the song. The Ramones were perfect in the same way that great white sharks are perfect. Journey, by comparison, was just a bigger, prettier goldfish.

It's not Journey that arouses my ire, per se, so much as the highly-irritating Steve Perry. In much the same way that REO Speedwagon is not particularly irritating until Kevin Cronin opens his mouth, or Styx is less egregious without Tommy Shaw's antics.

Some people grate; Perry is one such person. When his vocals are ladled on top of the 80s-era synths, the overly-glossy production, and everything else, it's simply too much. In much the same way that Bush's voice causes me to reach for the volume knob during news stories, Perry's voice causes me to fumble for the preset buttons.

"Don't Stop Believing" was the theme of my Senior Ball back in '83, one of the happiest times of my life. "When the Lights Go Down In the City" is the best song ever written about San Francisco save the one and only "San Francisco Open Your Golden Gates!" (now "We Built This City" - that's pure cheese). I tear up every time I hear that song because I was living on Green Street and Laguna (lower Pacific Heights) on October 17th, 1989 at 5:04pm. Later on, a bunch of people were on our apartment roof, looking out at the eerily dark city when someone, somewhere started playing "When the Lights.." on a horn (trumpet? fugle?? I'm not sure). There were other people on the roofs of their buildings in our neighborhood, and, little by little, they and we all started singing along with the horn. It was incredible, a moment I'll remember until the day I die. So there's the nostalgia.

As for Perry's voice, well, what can I say? It could be by turns overpowering and as gentle as a windchime. He was one of the very few who were allowed a brief solo moment during "We Are the World", and the only performer who made a bigger (positive) impression was Ray Charles. The guy was one of the greats, whether anyone wants to believe it or not. And the reason he had to "beg" to get people to sing along to "When the Lights..." at Graham's memorial (I was there too) was because of the asshole poseurs who were booing him. Yeah, that turned my stomach too, but for entirely different reasons.