Hmmm...

It's funny to hear Journey nowadays panned due to excessive ballads... I find Andrew's definition of what a ballad is even more questionable, but lets go back in time to Journey's History

Infinity's Ballads (using Andrews Definition: any song with slow tempo it seems)
Lights
Feelin That Way
Patiently
Winds of March
Something to Hide
Opened up the Door
I could almost thrown Anytime in there

Evolution (this one had a much lower ballad count to it)
Sweet and Simple

Departure:
Walks like a Lady
Someday Soon
People and Places
I'm cryin
Good Morning Girl
Stay With Me
Departure

Escape:
Who's Crying Now
Still they Ride
Mother-Father
Open Arms

Frontiers
Send Her My Love
Faithfully
Troubled Child (this one is somewhat borderline)

Raised On Radio
(to be honest..I didn't know how to analyze this one... half the songs weren't what I would call Rock)

Trial by Fire
WYLAW
Dont be Down
Still She Cries
When I think of You
So Easy to Fall
Its Just the Rain
Trial By Fire

As you can see.... Journey has a major history of what people would consider a ballad (low tempo) song. People want to hail the early Perry days as Journey's more rockin days, but these days were in all reality no different (excluding Evolution and Frontiers) Journey averages about 50% ballad stuff in general spread out over the albums I just listed. Trail By Fire, Infinity, and Raised on Radio all fall into the high ballad category (although again I really dont know how one would evaluation ROR). So I reject that Journey is doing more ballads than normal (unless you consider Evolution and Frontiers the normal, but when spread over their span of Perry-Era albums, they're more of an abberation(sp?))

Captured doesn't count because 1) mostly a rehash 2) isn't really 'that' live according to Kevin Shirley (see cavemanproductions.com and look for the Journey Q & A and specifically page 3 I think)

BL



F.O.R.D. wrote:
-------------------------------
Evolution. Infinity. Captured. start with their best stuff....
then move to Escape and Frontiers to see where they started to slide......

And then get the stuff after that, but only purchase with a barf bag.